Peter John Hilton Bentley, 84, of Yarmouth, Maine, formerly of Barrington, IL, died peacefully at the Mooring on Foreside in Cumberland, Maine on June 24, 2019. Peter was born November 8, 1934 in Bournemouth, England. He lived with Parkinson’s for 22 years and bore the strain of the condition with much courage and dignity.
Educated in England, he read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he earned a Half Blue and two first class honors, achievements that he valued throughout his life. He served in the British Royal Navy and first practiced at the law firm of Linklaters & Paines in London.
Peter moved to the United States in the 1960s and spent most of his working years as a well-respected partner at the law firm of Baker McKenzie in Chicago. After retiring he spent ten years as a pro bono attorney, helping asylum seekers who faced FGM in their home countries, a selfless contribution that was a source of great satisfaction for Peter.
He enjoyed and excelled in many areas throughout his life outside the office. Peter was a beekeeper, bread maker, competitive equestrian, thespian, avid sailor, pianist and gardener. His love for his family comes in just ahead of his summer home in Brooklin, Maine, which he felt to be his spiritual home. Peter was a man who always strove to improve himself, and said, at the end of his life, that he “had become the kind of man I always wanted to be.”
Peter is survived by his loving wife, Terri Ellen Pease Bentley, of Yarmouth, ME; his four children: Marion Bentley and Paul Bentley of Baltimore, MD, Becky (Anthony) Garrido of Des Plaines, IL, and Francesca Bentley of Barrington, IL and Yarmouth, ME, and his brother, Richard (Margaret) Bentley, of Corbridge, England as well as many nieces, nephews and other family from across the pond and his stepdaughter, Rebecca Michals of San Francisco, CA. Peter was predeceased in death by his parents James Hilton Bentley and Marjorie Wimpress Bentley of Bournemouth England.
Celebrations of Peter’s life will be held August 10 at the Mooring on Foreside, where he and Ellen found a deeply caring community for the last years of his life; and later this fall in Chicago, on a date to be determined. In lieu of flowers, his family requests that donations be sent to the Maine Access Immigrant Network of Portland, Maine.
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