Archive - November 2012

Joe Kennedy III won the race to replace retiring Representative Barney Frank in the Fourth Congressional District of Massachusetts. Kennedy, a Democrat (of course!), is the great-nephew of JFK and Senator Edward Kennedy. He went to Harvard Law School and was in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. Most recently he was an assistant district attorney in Massachusetts’ Middlesex County. Kennedy, 32, is among the youngest members of Congress. He won easily. Kennedy joins two term Congressman, John Garamendi (Ethiopia 1965-67) of California third District, who also won by more than 10 points. RPCV Sam Farr (Colombia 1964-66) won in California, as did Mike Honda (El Salvador 1965-67), also of California, and Republican Tom Petri (Somalia 1966-67) won in Wisconsin. It is possible that I missed an RPCV in the house and senate, if so, let me know.

George Packer (Togo 1982-83) has a long and fascinating profile piece entitled, “Washington Man” in the October 29 & November 5, 2012 issue of The New Yorker. The profile is on Jeff Connaughton who came to Washington from Alabama in 1994 and was swept up into the political cycle, where, as George writes, he went “from public servant to rich lobbyist.” At the end of his “political career, (and near the end of his article,) Packer writes: “Outside, he [Connaughton] stood at the corner of Nassau and Wall Streets, exhilarated. He had just blown himself up in the heart of American finance. He would never again be a member of the permanent class. Connaughton’s Senate job ended in the middle of the month. He flew to Costa Rica and went on an eight-hour hike. When he returned to his hotel room, he took a long shower, letting the water soak him . . .

Tino Calabia (Peru, 1963-65) who rallied all of us RPCVs in support of Ambassador Christopher Stevens sent me a note about our collective efforts to reach 1000 signatures. He also noticed that the most recent signer–number 883–is Mary Pendleton who was a PCV in Tunisia and later became the first U.S Ambassador to Moldova. Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) established a petition at SignOn.org that we hope you will sign. This is what Tino had to say: Over 880, Going for 1,000 Signatures on ‘Honor Chris Stevens’ Petition The elections finally end tomorrow, yet RPCV/Ambassador Chris Stevens’ death in Libya may still come up in some post-election partisan gamesmanship.  So it remains up to RPCVs to try to illuminate Stevens’ service as a remarkable Peace Corps Volunteer, charismatic diplomat, and our fallen US Ambassador to Libya. Honoring Stevens by dedicating prominent space in his name at Peace Corps HQ may . . .

The New York Times obituary notice reads:”Jack Hood Vaughn, who led the Peace Corps at the height of its volunteer enrollment in the late 1960s, died on Monday at his home in Tucson. The cause was cancer.” The notice included this photograph of Vaughn taken in 1966 with President Johnson and Shriver. It’s a lengthy obituary, but does not tell the story of Vaughn at the Peace Corps. Only a novel could do Jack Hood Vaughn’s life full justice. Born and raised in Columbus, Montana, where the Yellowstone River pours out of the Rocky Mountains, Johnny Hood, as he called himself back then, felt an early attraction toward Mexico. “I was bumming around Mexico,” he told me later in his life, “and I ran out of money.  I decided I would take my boxing skills and turn pro, but I didn’t know enough Spanish at the time to tell whether . . .