Archive - November 15, 2016

I’ve saved this “character” for my last round-up of  Peace Corps Mad Men.  A television producer might think of  featuring this person as the main character for a new series. He wouldn’t be a bad ‘concept’ as they say in Hollywood for a new show. In those early days of the agency he invented a new way of doing things in the government (it didn’t last,) but did propel the Peace Corps from being a minor bureaucracy into a major player in D.C. Warren Wiggins credits Bill Moyers as the key figure in the Peace Corps during those first years, citing Moyers role in creating full bipartisan support in Congress, and how he got Young and Rubicam to develop those award winning ads some of us today are old enough to recall. All true. Warren was right about Moyers. However, recently I read a draft of an essay “Reflections on the Peace Corps” by the late Robert Textor, a former professor of . . .

In Come As You Are: The Peace Corps Story, Coates Redmon tells how Shriver came back from Hyannis Port that Monday morning and charged into the Conference Room “waving the two memos” and declared, “I have talked to my wife, Eunice. I have talked to my sister-in-law, Ethel. And I have talked to General Maxwell Taylor. They all believe that married Peace Corps Volunteers should be able to have their babies overseas.” The Mad Men of the Senior Staff sat stunned and silent. The Medical Division stared at Sarge in disbelief. Betty Harris tried hard not to look smug. What had really transpired in the mythical Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port? Betty Harris would reach this conclusion: “What Sarge was revealing in all innocent candor was that the Kennedy family felt fully  empowered to influence Peace Corps policy on matters of family. The Kennedy family would proclaim and decree at this level. Of course. Who . . .