Peyton Houston; Business Executive Wrote Poetry

Peyton Hoge Houston, 83, a business executive who wrote 10 volumes of poetry over six decades. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Princeton University, Houston began as a free-lance writer and poet, publishing his first volume of verse, “Descent Into the Dust,” in 1936. His final volume, “XVI Complex Songs at the Borders of Silence,” was published in December. He worked in the management consulting firm started by his father, George H. Houston. In 1949, he became vice president of the Equity Corp., a New York investment firm. He helped transform Equity into Wheelabrator-Frye Inc., and retired as corporate secretary of a spinoff, Pullman Co. of Princeton, N.J. On Tuesday in Rincon, Puerto Rico, of heart failure.