Archive - November 29, 2016

Donald Trump has chosen Elaine Chao, the former Labor Secretary, Peace Corps Director, and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to be Transportation Secretary, an official briefed on the matter told CNN on Tuesday. The announcement is expected to come this afternoon. RPCVs will remember how Chao would burst into tears when talking about meeting PCVs overseas. It became a joke with them; they would laugh at the woman who couldn’t believe Americans would “volunteer” to live in the developing world. (She wouldn’t, of course.) She also earned the reputation of scheduling hair appointments every day while traveling in the developing world, and for not meeting with government officials but rather spend her time, when she could, playing volleyball with Volunteers. Back in DC, she was famous for her ‘little bell’ that she kept on her desk so she could summon her secretary from the outer office when she . . .

Regardless of what else might be said about the “Gale Method” it established two important elements for the Peace Corps. HQ staff now understood how recruitment was done, and had acquired the skills that would make them effective recruiters. More importantly was that within the first years, the Peace Corps was established as part of campus life. Peace Corps Recruiters would be invited back every year, and would be welcomed, often with the same deference and cooperation shown in 1963. By now, and this was early in 1965, the Peace Corps was starting the “In, Up & Out” policy that Robert Textor had crafted in a memo for the agency, and Bob Gale was thinking of leaving. He didn’t want to be Director of Recruiting for Life, as Shriver had declared at the senior staff meeting in March 1963. Gale wanted to leave when the going was good. In the academic year 1963-64, his recruiting techniques had bought in thirty-six . . .