At the age of twenty-five, he was a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which nominated the Truman-Barkley ticket.
[2] He was appointed in 1975 by Governor Edwin Edwards as a trustee of the University of Louisiana System and was its first president from 1975 until his death in 1980.
He had a sister, Bernice P. Harang, and three brothers, Donald Louis Peltier, Richard Benton Peltier, and Dr. James R. Peltier Sr., a Thibodaux oral surgeon, a founder and president of the Louisiana Society of Oral Surgeons, and member of the "good government" groups the Public Affairs Research Council and the Council for a Better Louisiana.
[11] In February 2014, four months before the death of his wife, Peltier Jr. was posthumously inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.
Peltier's colleague in the Louisiana House, Richard P. "Dick" Guidry of Lafourche Parish, was inducted in the same ceremony.