CRESTVIEW — Former state senator Dr. Durell Peaden died Tuesday night of illness related to a heart attack he sustained while in Pittsburgh. He was 69.
Born in DeFuniak Springs, Peaden graduated from Crestview High School before attending Tulane University in New Orleans. He obtained his medical degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, Mexico, and a law degree from the Thomas Goode Jones School of law.
Dr. Peaden served the area as a family physician, and as a member of the Florida House of Representatives from 1995 to 2000. He was a Florida State senator from 2001 to 2010, when he left due to term limits.
He was a member of the First united Methodist Church of Crestview.
Local leaders remembered Peaden as a visionary for Northwest Florida who was instrumental in directing opportunities to the Crestview and North Okaloosa County area.
“Crestview and Okaloosa County and all of Northwest Florida have lost a favorite son in Durell Peaden,” Mayor David Cadle said. “He was one of the most positive men that I ever met. He was just bubbling over all the time.”
“He was a great patriot and a great sponsor of projects for our area,” Okaloosa County Commissioner Wayne Harris said.
Cadle cited Peaden as the driving force that brought the Florida A&M University Rural Diversity Healthcare Center and its pharmacy school to downtown Crestview, and for bringing the Florida International university physicians assistant program to town next year.
“I will miss our times together as we drove around looking at building sites and looking toward the future growth of Crestview together,” Cadle said. “Those were special times.”
Cadle said like hundreds of families, his will also remember with fondness the kind ways of a gentle country doctor.
“We remember Dr. Peaden as the physician who cared for our families and would sit by the bedside of a sick child, all night if necessary,” Cadle said.
Harris asked residents to “please keep his wife, Nancy, and their family in your thoughts and prayers.”
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Editor's Note: A previous version of this article stated that Mr. Peaden was 71 years old when he died. The article was corrected.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Former Crestview area state senator Dr. Durrell Peaden dead at 71