Lebanon, NH – Blair Carter Wood Jr. was born on November 5, 1940, in Waterloo, IA. He was the second of four sons born to Eleanor Alice and Blair Carter Wood Sr. Along with his brothers, Blair grew up in a close-knit neighborhood known as ” The Ridge” in Cedar Falls, IA.
Blair and his family had many passions, foremost among them being skiing, wilderness cabin-building and shooting. They created a ski hill on The Ridge complete with a rope tow and annual races, which Blair occasionally won. They cleared land and built remote cabins in the forests of northwestern Wisconsin and Summit County, Colorado. Blair also played varsity football.
Upon graduating from Cedars Falls High School in 1959, Blair attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, where he was an ROTC cadet and a member of the Outing Club and Phi Kappa Psi. He spent his summers working for the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado. He graduated with B.A. degree in English in 1963.
In the fall of 1962, he met the woman he would later marry at an Outing Club event held at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After serving as a First Lieutenant in the Army’s Artillery Division in South Korea, Blair married Margaret “Peggy” Jane Pierce in Greenfield, MA, on October 3, 1965.
The couple first lived in Seattle, where Blair completed his service with the Army, and later moved to Boulder, CO, where Blair attended law school at the University of Colorado and upon graduation served as a law clerk for the Hon. Edward Pringle, Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court.
On July 12, 1970, the couple’s first daughter, Heather Margaret, was born, and the young family moved to a house on Mascoma Lake in Enfield, NH. Blair joined the law firm of Stebbins & Bradley in Hanover where he practiced primarily property and land use law for the next 30 years, eventually becoming a partner. On January 13, 1974, Hilary Blair was born, and the family moved to a home Blair and Peggy built on Eastman Hill in Lebanon, NH.
Blair was an attorney by trade and enjoyed the challenge of practicing law, but his true vocation was a woodsman. He was happiest clearing trails for Peggy to ride her horse on, splitting and stacking firewood, building, sugaring and hunting birds with his numerous Britney Spaniels. He was also an avid outdoorsman and athlete. He and Peggy spent their lives together hiking, road and mountain biking, paddling, camping and skiing (both downhill and backcountry). Blair and Peggy climbed all of the “four thousand footers” in the White Mountains and most of the “fourteeners” in Colorado.
In 2000, Blair retired from practicing law, and in 2005, he and Peggy moved to a home they built in Montezuma, CO, on an old mining claim named The Defiance at the end of a miles-long dead end road in Summit County. There they continued hiking, skiing, bicycling and mountain biking, and Blair continued working in the woods with his tractor and chainsaw. A few years later they purchased a second home in Moab, UT, where they spent the springs and falls hiking and biking in the High Desert.
In 2017, Peggy began showing signs of cognitive decline, which was eventually diagnosed as Alzheimer’s Disease. In 2020, the couple moved to a home they built in Missoula, MT, where Blair devoted himself to caring for Peggy until her peaceful death at home. By choice, he survived her by little more than a day and died at their home just before sunset on December 28, 2025. He is survived by his daughters Heather Wood of Waterbury, VT, and Hilary Wood of Missoula. He is also survived by a grandson, Damian Blair Jensen of Missoula and his three brothers, Michael Wood of Dillon, CO, George Wood of Denver, CO and John Wood of Salida, CO.
There will be a memorial gathering for Blair and Peggy from 2:00 to 5:00 on December 12, 2026 at The Norwich Inn in Norwich, VT.
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