Memorial: https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=53989254

Anita Peek Dies, Met Disease With Courage   by Bob von Sternberg (The Wichita Eagle-Beacon, November 30, 1983)

Anita Peek rarely let on that pain and uncertainty were her companions for the last 10 years of her life.

“She made no bones about her problems but she never dwelled on them,” said Dorothy Belden, who worked with Miss Peek. “She was always very hopeful she was going to lick this thing.”

Miss Peek of Wichita died Monday after suffering a stroke. She was 34.

“Anita was a celebration of joy,” said Joan Baker, who also worked with her at Active Aging newspaper. “She had more courage in her little finger than most of us have in our whole bodies.”

Miss Peek, who was the newspaper’s circulation director, had been besieged by health problems since 1973. While being treated for an earache, she fell into a coma and suffered strokes, all caused by a rare blood disease. She faced a long rehabilitation period because her kidneys were ruined by the disease.

After receiving kidney dialysis at St. Francis Regional Medical Center for three years, she underwent a kidney transplant in 1976 – the first of three.

When her body began rejecting the transplant, a second transplant was performed in 1977. Both transplants had been performed in Kansas City, because Wichita hospitals still were not performing the procedure.

But that had changed by late 1981, when Miss Peek needed a third transplant. Her mother, Doris Peek, donated one of her kidneys and Miss Peek received the transplant in December 1981 at St. Francis, becoming the hospital’s 14^th transplant patient.

The constant uncertainty of her life meant that “being able to carry plans out is a thrill,” she said in a recent interview in Active Aging. “I don’t feel that I am an inspiration, just a survivor”

A Wichita State University student for the past three years, she was studying health care administration while working part time at the newspaper.

“She’d always wanted to be a nurse and with all her dialysis and everything, she’d been in close contact with people in health care,” her mother said.

She began volunteering at Active Aging in 1981, said Belden, the newspaper’s editor. “She was out on her own for the first time in years, but her doctor wouldn’t let her go back to school yet,” Belden said. “She wanted something constructive to do.”

Outside of work, her hobbies included fishing, square dancing and needlework.

Other survivors include sisters, Marilyn Durocher and Jan Peek, both of Wichita.

Services will be at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Broadway Mortuary. A memorial has been established with the Kidney Foundation.