Peter James Baston passed away Jan. 7, 2026, after a valiant battle against cancer. He was at home, receiving hospice care, in the loving company of family members.
Pete was born Feb. 7, 1947, in Gravesend, Kent, England, to Freida Mary Baston and James William Cheeseman. His father abandoned the family shortly after Pete was born, and from when he was four Pete divided his time between England and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he lived under the care of his beloved “Uncle” Eric. When he reached the age of conscription, Pete chose Rhodesia as his home country.
As a citizen soldier, Pete proudly served in the Rhodesian Army intermittently from 1966 to 1978, rising in rank from trooper to warrant officer, and was honorably discharged in 1978. He served mainly in logistics deployment, specializing in ground-based convoy utilization and protection, especially in the use of innovative methods to prevent IEDs and other threats to convoy personnel and cargo.
When not deployed, he earned a Bachelor of Science in engineering from the University of Rhodesia, a Bachelor of Science in engineering management and an associate degree in cognitive psychology from the University of Natal, and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Rhodesia. He also began his apprenticeship at Ajax Ltd., a Rhodesia-based conglomerate engaged in light and heavy construction and civil engineering that was owned by his uncle.
Pete rose from apprentice to division manager and part owner of the company, overseeing the design and construction of petrochemical and power plants, dams and roads, and large commercial structures in Rhodesia, Mozambique, South West Africa, Swaziland, Botswana and Angola. It was due to his experience as chief engineering troubleshooter for Ajax that Pete developed what became a lifelong passion for quality assurance.
With the rise to power of Robert Mugabe and the formation of Zimbabwe, Ajax and everything else that Pete and Eric owned were seized, and Pete was forced to leave the country he loved, carrying one suitcase and the equivalent of $500. While job hunting in Europe, he attended an engineering conference where he met a senior engineer from the Fluor Daniel division of the Fluor Corp., the largest construction and engineering company in the United States. A program mishap found Pete extemporaneously leading a session on quality assurance. At the end of the session, his newfound friend offered him a job at Fluor Daniel. Though Pete turned the offer down at first, six months later he became a senior consulting engineer for Fluor Advanced Construction Services in Irvine, California.
At Fluor, Pete founded and led the “Buildings of the Future” research and development group that developed advanced technology for rapid, high-quality modular construction, then successfully launched a new subsidiary to sell advanced products and services to the utility, petrochemical, civil engineering, aerospace and defense industries. In 1986, Pete left Fluor to form Monkradle Design, a company dedicated to the development and manufacture of advanced support equipment and systems to promote best practices and quality assurance in facility construction, operations and maintenance in public utilities and in the petrochemical, aerospace, civil engineering and defense industries, among others. The platforms that Pete patented, constructed and marketed for temporary installation inside power plant boiler furnaces to facilitate inspection and repair reduced shutdown time from 12 weeks to three and, by one estimate, reduced on-the-job injuries by about 200 per year.
Pete married Mary Ellen Deponte in 1984. In 1993, Mary Ellen sued for divorce, and Monkradle closed its doors, a victim of the property settlement. Once again, Pete set out in search of a new adventure. Realizing that computers and information technology would eventually drive best practices in industrial design and maintenance, he set about learning digital technology from the ground up at the University of California San Diego, Northwestern University, the University of British Columbia and MIT. Pete pursued an independent and eclectic course of studies that eventually led to a list of technical certifications as long as his arm.
In 1996, on a visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Santa Fe Institute, he decided to settle in New Mexico. Over the following decade, Pete took on a number of large projects in technical concept development, best practices and problem-solving for government agencies and private companies as a solo consultant, earning the nickname “IdeaPete” along the way.
In 2005, Pete married Lilli Segre, and in 2007 Pete and Lilli joined forces to formalize his consultancy business as IDEAS Business Technology Integration, LLC. Pete believed parametric technology would be the cornerstone for future development of advanced best practices using digital workflow. IDEAS demonstrated the value of rule-based cyber information modeling technologies on several small projects, but the fledgling company could not survive the Great Recession. In 2010, Pete and Lilli moved to Boulder, Colorado, and Pete gave a passing thought to retirement.
His severe allergic reaction to mediocrity and passion for “doing it right in the real world” led Pete to become a frequent speaker and lecturer on the pursuit of excellence and the integration of technology in quality assurance and business systems. He served as a board member of the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association, was a member of the American Society for Quality and the American Society of Civil Engineers and was an advisor member guru of Engineers Without Borders. He also served for several years on different citizen advisory working groups in the City of Boulder municipalization charter effort, and he collaborated on the Quaker Institute for the Future focus book, Toward a Life-Centered Economy: From the Rule of Money to the Rewards of Stewardship (2019).
In Boulder, Pete and Lilli discovered a community of kindred spirits in the Boulder Friends Meeting, of which they became members in 2012. The simple stillness of unprogrammed Quaker worship spoke deeply to Pete’s African upbringing, and the testimony of integrity, in particular, resonated with the strong moral compass that had guided his entire life. Pete saw that of God in everyone he met long before he heard the concept put into words. The friendship of Friends sustained him through several health challenges, including his final battle with cancer.
Pete is survived by his wife, Lilli Segre, and stepson Alec Tossani; sister Patricia Mary Mason, nephew Shaun Mason (Bev), and niece Lynn Jackman (R.J.). A memorial service in the manner of Friends will be held on Saturday, Feb. 14, at 11 a.m. at the Boulder Friends Meeting House, 1825 Upland Ave., Boulder.