Peter Thomas

Peter Addenbrooke Thomas (June 28, 1924 – April 30, 2016) was an American announcer and narrator of television programs and advertisements. Possessing a "smooth and silky baritone" voice, Thomas enjoyed a career spanning more than 70 years, and was best known as the narrator of the television series Forensic Files. His father, John D. Thomas, was a Welsh-born World War I veteran and pastor of Pensacola's First Presbyterian Church. His mother, Sybil A. Thomas, was a schoolteacher originally from Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

In 1943, Thomas turned down a draft deferment and volunteered for the United States Army, serving with the First Infantry Division in five major campaigns of World War II, including the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He was a recipient of the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the French Croix de Guerre, and Belgian Fourragère. After his World War II army service, Thomas worked briefly as a television announcer in Mobile, Alabama, before moving to Memphis, Tennessee in 1946. While attending college in Memphis, Thomas starred as "Uncle Pete" on the WMCT television comedy The Unhandy Handyman until 1951. During that period, he also narrated the radio program Dream Time.

In 1951, Thomas took a television job with WCBS in New York, working primarily on newscasts, but also lent his voice in announcing the radio soap opera Young Doctor Malone from the late 1950s to 1960. and the documentary How the West Was Lost for the Discovery Channel.

Thomas was especially proud of his narration of the Academy Award-winning HBO documentary One Survivor Remembers, chronicling the experience of Gerda Weissmann Klein, who was interned at the Nordhausen concentration camp.

In 2002, Thomas's mastery of his craft was praised by the Naples Daily News, saying, "Narrator Peter Thomas has a voice that spans generations. It's a measured, reassuring, emphatic voice, that enunciates each word clearly and pauses in the all the right places for dramatic effect—a confident, practiced voice."

Personal life and death Thomas married his high school sweetheart, Stella Barrineau, on June 29, 1946; she died on June 16, 2014. The couple raised three children (Peter Jr., Douglas, and Elizabeth) in Greenwich, Connecticut, and in 1985, they settled in Naples, Florida. He was heavily involved in work with veterans, having served on the board of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation and in other similar roles. Having been involved in liberating Nordhausen, Thomas also was a strong supporter of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; he narrated the museum's original audio tour and documentary.

Thomas died on April 30, 2016, at the age of 91. He was memorialized at the end of the first episode of Forensic Files II which aired on February 23, 2020.