Pilot kneeling on the left is First Lt. Dennis L. Peek, along with two other servicemen. Pictured on right is Miss Universe 1967 Sylvia Hitchcock. A single photograph displayed at the Standin’ Proud Veterans Museum in Bartelso, showing a Carlyle Marine beside a newly crowned Miss Universe in 1967, will soon reach readers around the world.
The Van of Valor project, dedicated to preserving the stories of Purple Heart recipients and Gold Star families, has announced the release of the official book trailer for “A Wingman for Miss Universe: Explore the Homefront of the Vietnam War Through the Eyes of Miss Universe.”
The novel, written by cultural anthropologist and Van of Valor co-founder L. Wright Wallace of North Port, Florida, will be published globally on April 21.
It traces the remarkable true story of Marine First Lieutenant Dennis Peek, a Carlyle native, and Miss USA Sylvia Hitchcock.
In the summer of 1967, Peek was assigned as Hitchcock’s escort at the Miss Universe pageant in Miami, Florida. Before deploying to Vietnam, he gifted her his aviator wings — a promise to remember. Months later, Peek was killed in action.
The novel follows Hitchcock’s 50-year journey to honor that promise, a path that ultimately led her to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Pictured above is the photograph that inspired the novel about First Lt. Dennis Peek of Carlyle and Miss Universe 1967 Sylvia Hitchcock, "A Wingman for Miss Universe," which will be released April 21 on Amazon. “The story emerged from a single photograph and the trust of the Peek family,” Wallace said.
That photograph — now preserved inside a shadowbox memorial at the Standin’ Proud Veterans Tribute in Bartelso — shows Hitchcock, wearing her Miss Universe crown, standing beside Peek on a staircase during the official winning photos.
A description of the photo is placed beside the image:
“While Denny was stationed in Pensacola, FL for pilot training in 1967 his Marine troop was assigned to be the escorts for the 1967 Miss Universe pageant contestants. He was originally assigned to Miss Spain but since he could speak no Spanish and she no English he was re-assigned to be escort for Miss USA. As it turns out Miss USA won the Miss Universe contest that night.”
“Beyond its striking resemblance to a scene from Disney’s Cinderella, I was struck by an observation: Why was his uniform white?” L. Wright Wallace said.
Her question launched a deeper research effort.
Marine officers, she discovered, were issued white dress uniforms for hot weather and ceremonial occasions — fitting for a pageant held in Miami. The uniform later fell out of use in the 1980s and was fully phased out by 2000.
The inspiration for “A Wingman for Miss Universe” came during a visit to the Standin’ Proud museum, where L. Wright Wallace and her husband, Dr. Kevin P. Wallace, were interviewing local families as part of their national storytelling project.
There, in front of a memorial containing Peek’s uniform, photographs, medals, and personal artifacts, his younger brother Ron Peek and sister-in-law LuAnn shared his story — and a single anecdote that would spark the book.
“Dennis’s story is exactly the kind we at Van of Valor work to preserve — a reminder of the profound humanity behind the uniform,” L. Wright Wallace said. “While this is a novel, it is deeply inspired by their memories and the reality of service during the Vietnam era.”
The Van of Valor project itself was born from a 280-day, 27,000-mile journey across the United States, during which the Wallaces collected stories that might otherwise be lost to time.
“We started the Van of Valor for a simple reason,” said Dr. Wallace. “We believe every veteran has a story worth hearing, and every Gold Star family deserves to have their loved one remembered not just as a name on a wall, but as a person. We sit at kitchen tables, VFW posts, and memorial sites, and we listen. No politics. No agenda. Just stories.”
While interviewing the Peek family as part of the project, they said Ron Peek recounted the details documented in the shadow box, but they truly came to know Dennis when he spoke about how his brother lived.
“He (Ron) shared what it was like to look up to an older brother who set the example, made their father proud, and was an absolute pillar of light to everyone he met,” said L. Wright Wallace.
Dennis Peek graduated high school during the draft, enrolled in college, and participated in a General Motors program that allowed him to earn a mechanical engineering degree while working in the factory.
“Four years later, he had both his degree and years of work experience,” said L. Wright Wallace.
During the interview with the Peek family, she learned that upon completing college, Dennis became eligible for the draft once again.
“Taking charge of his own destiny and following his love for precision and speed, Dennis commissioned into the Marine Corps and became a fighter pilot. He drove his Corvette on land and piloted the Douglas A-4E Skyhawk through the clouds,” she said.
Before deploying, it was essential to accumulate as many flight hours as possible. At the time, Peek’s family owned a dairy farm just a short drive from Scott Air Force Base.
“Ron recalled with youthful excitement his father’s expression when Dennis would buzz the farm. His mother, too, would drop everything at the sound of the plane; she would hop in the car and drive to Scott, often risking speeding tickets to get there,” said L. Wright Wallace.
For Dennis, training required practice flights from coast to coast.
“Planes need fuel, and Scott AFB had it. He (Dennis) and his wingman would deliberately time their refueling stops to buzz the farm, then hop into the waiting car while the plane was essentially at the gas station. They would enjoy a home-cooked meal at the farm before speeding back to the base for takeoff. This part of the interview marked the first time I began noting how Dennis took care of his wingman,” she said.
L. Wright Wallace said the interview with the Peek family concluded with a sense that Dennis was present in the room, almost as if he were looking over his younger brother’s shoulder from the uniform on the wall.
“This experience led me to reflect on how individuals possess two spirits: the one that lives in them and dies with them, and the part of that spirit that endures in the hearts and minds of others,” she said. “In this case, the Dennis we came to know was the one Ron looked up to, a brother 12 years his senior at the time of his passing.”
Dennis was fatally shot down in Vietnam on Jan. 9, 1970, at the age of 26; he did not eject, and his sacrifice saved many others.
“When news of his death reached home, the community came together to build a steeple atop St. Felicitas Catholic Church in Beaver Prairie, a church not originally designed for one,” said L. Wright Wallace. “That response reflects the kind of person Dennis was: someone so deeply impactful that the church itself had to expand to hold all who came to honor him.”
L. Wright Wallace said every part of that interview left her compelled to tell more of Dennis’s story and to explore what it meant to leave such a lasting mark.
“Following that line of thought, I began considering how many people had told his story and listening for the silence,” she said, adding that was when her research into the 1967 Miss Universe pageant began.
“Until then, I had only known the anecdote Ron shared: it was Dennis’s last stateside assignment before shipping out,” she said.
Dennis Peek was originally assigned to escort Miss Spain but, unable to communicate with her, was reassigned to Miss USA, who ultimately won.
“Ron recalled Dennis mentioning holding the million-dollar crown, his voice trailing off as if reciting the story exactly as Dennis had told it,” L. Wright Wallace said. “I began wondering what kind of backstage conversations might have taken place, and what subtle encouragement or moments of clarity might have given her the confidence to win.”
Given who Dennis was to his classmates, family, and wingman, Wallace said, it seemed natural to imagine him as no less supportive in that setting.
The pageant took place in Miami in July of 1967, against a backdrop of war, protest, and complex geopolitics.
For Sylvia Hitchcock, an art student and Miss USA, the pageant represented an opportunity to represent her country at a pivotal moment.
“Regardless of one’s views on pageantry, her voice would carry far beyond the stage,” L. Wright Wallace said, adding that she found herself drawn to the question of what conversations Dennis and Sylvia might have shared.
Sylvia passed away from cancer in 2015, taking with her any chance for Wallace to ask. “As I continued working on the Van of Valor mission, Dennis’s story remained on my desk longer than intended,” said L. Wright Wallace. “Finally, one night when the stories were circulating in my mind, I sat down at the computer, framed out a narrative, and used the available facts to build an outline.”
Where there were key gaps, L. Wright Wallace made the choice to move from nonfiction and “into the realm of what might have been,” filling in conversations that felt “true to the characters,” based on the absence of evidence to the contrary.
“The result was rough, but it allowed me to move forward,” she said.
It took multiple visits to Clinton County to get the story how she wanted.
“As a writer, you put a piece of yourself into your work,” L. Wright Wallace said. “I felt a responsibility to honor Dennis’s story while also respecting the memory of a woman who had passed away a decade earlier.”
She said the Peek family were the first to read the initial draft, aside from her husband.
“I was fully prepared to rewrite any portion if necessary, even to change character names and turn the work into pure fiction, if they were uncomfortable with the direction,” she said. “Instead, I received a letter thanking me for the story.”
She said their only critique was that she may have portrayed Dennis as “a bit more of a saint than he was.”
“I was floored by their response and received the green light to proceed,” she said.
Although Sylvia appears as a foreground character, L. Wright Wallace said the true focus of the story is Dennis and the search for the answer to what kind of hole he left in the heart of Miss Universe.
She added that the resulting work is not a traditional romance; rather, it explores the home front of the Vietnam War through the eyes of Miss Universe.
What surprised L. Wright Wallace the most was the depth of connection that continues to exist between the living and those they have lost.
“Through this process, I became deeply aware of what I now think of as the spirit that lives on in the people left behind,” she said. “When speaking to Gold Star families, there is a profound sensation that washes over the room, a presence that lingers long after the cameras are turned off. It is not something that can be easily captured or explained, but it is unmistakable.”
With the Peek family, she said that presence was particularly strong.
“Ron carried Dennis with him, not as a distant memory, but as an active, shaping force in his life,” she said. “I found myself thinking about how stories do not simply preserve a person’s legacy, they continue to transmit it. Every time a story is told, a piece of that person’s spirit is passed along to someone new.”
She was also surprised by how much the story demanded of her personally.
“Writing ‘A Wingman for Miss Universe’ required me to sit with uncertainty, to accept that some questions would remain unanswered, and to trust that the emotional truth of the story could be honored even when the factual record had gaps,” she said. “There were moments when it felt less like I was constructing a narrative and more like I was receiving one; guided by photographs on my desk and the trust placed in me by the Peek family.”
Perhaps most of all, she added, she was surprised by the responsibility she felt toward Miss Universe Sylvia Hitchcock.
“Though she is no longer with us, I wanted to ensure her portrayal was treated with the same care and dignity as Dennis’s,” she said. “Balancing those two commitments, to honor a fallen Marine and to respect the memory of a woman whose side of the story I could never directly access, was the hardest part of the process. In the end, I had to accept that the story was not about having all the answers, but about honoring the questions themselves.”
The official book trailer for “A Wingman for Miss Universe” is now available on YouTube, with the novel set for worldwide release on April 21. Pre-orders are currently available through Amazon.
To learn more about the Van of Valor project, go to the website, https://helpvov.com or their Facebook page, “Van of Valor.” There are also local veterans and families that are also featured through the Van of Valor project.
To learn more about Dennis Peek, or to check out the photo that inspired the book, “A Wingman for Miss Universe,” stop in at Standin’ Proud Veterans Tribute, 1507 Carlyle Road in Bartelso.
