Author - John Coyne

The following email note from “Peace Corps Response’ (i.e. The Crisis Corps) has been making the rounds of the RPCV world. I ask, why isn’t the agency doing the job? Why isn’t the Peace Corps going to Haiti with its Crisis Corps Volunteers? I’m told, the U. S. Embassy in Haiti, and the bureaucrats in Washington responsible for Haiti relief, have stymied Peace Corps efforts to get Volunteers in there. Part of this problem is the lack of a government in Haiti with which to have an agreement. If so, then how are all the other relief efforts able to go forth? Sean Penn seems not to have any trouble getting to volunteer in Haiti. I’m also told that Aaron and his Chief of Staff have been banging on the State Department doors, but they aren’t getting anywhere. Perhaps what the Peace Corps needs is another ‘Push for Peace Corps’ . . .

In the summer of ’62 slightly more than 300 of us traveled early in July to Georgetown University to begin Peace Corps training for Ethiopia. I was one of many ‘Kennedy Kids” coming out of the Midwest. Just out of college, just off an Illinois farm, it was the first time I had ever been on a plane. In those days all the airlines had beautiful stewardesses serving free drinks and endless snacks, and somewhere over the Allegheny I fell in love with my stewardess. It was a short romance as I was heading for Africa and in those days of the New Frontier the great adventure was the Peace Corps. But my first weekend in Washington at Georgetown was like being back at college. I had graduated from another Jesuit college–St. Louis University–and I knew all about stone wall campuses, College Gothic Buildings, and Jesuits in religious garb saying . . .

Training for PCVs going to Ethiopia in the summer of ’62 at Georgetown University [and, I guess, at colleges and universities across the country] began with calisthenics at 6 a.m. six days a week. We were out of our dorm beds by 5:45 and walking sleepy-eyed across the still-wet grass of the Georgetown campus to the athletic fields. This was the start of our 14-hour day of training for Ethiopia. The famous training camp in Arecibo, Puerto Rico [which is always recalled with a photo of Barbara Wiggins (mother of Warren Wiggins) at age 65 rappelling down a wall in Puerto Rico]. And it was Arecibo where Margery Michelmore was spirited off to after arriving back from Nigeria. It was an Outward Bound extension program for Trainees run by the late Reverend William Sloane Coffin. No one really knew ‘how’ to prepare so many soft Americans for the Third World . . .

These were the plans for the 50th Anniversary done late in the tour of the last Peace Corps Administration. Grand plans as you can see, but very little of these good ideas will take place, given the current pace of planning underway in Washington, D.C. today. However, the University of Michigan will launch a kick-off week of events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps in October. Over the years, the U. of Michigan has sent more thand 2,230 U-M alumni have been PCVs. You can read the activities that the University of Michigan has planned at the website: http://peacecorps.umich.edu Meanwhile, back in D.C….this is what they were day-dreaming about:   Goals Are To… v Make the public aware of the success of Peace Corps in fostering peace and understanding. v Advance the Third Goal of the Peace Corps – bringing the world back home. v Support recruiting to . . .

Now that Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams has announced PCVs will be returning to Colombia, I thought it would be interesting to recall what one of the original PCVs to Colombia, Ron Schwarz (Colombia 1961-63), remembers about his first days in the Peace Corps. From the day after JFK’s inauguration until June 26, 1961, Sarge was surrounded by staff he recruited. The best and the brightest.  But not on the 26th of June. That day, the Director was surrounded by strangers, Colombia I Trainees. No one knew if they were the best, or the brightest. Sarge was ill at ease, with reason,” Ron remembers. “The selection committee complained of the “paucity of good, fully qualified candidates.” Some were high school graduates; others had completed only two years of college. A dozen or so had not even taken the Peace Corps test. References for were incomplete, few met minimal language qualifications, and our “special skills” fell . . .

Jim Brown (Colombia 1962-64) served as a PE instructor and coach in Bucaramanga, Colombia, and the other day he sent me this short piece about his group of “PE Guys.” He had read it to a gathering of twenty-nine other Colombia RPCVs, and their  spouses and adult children, who had gathered for a reunion at the National Conference Center, near Leesburg, Virginia. Since his Peace Corps years, Jim has been a coach, college professor, writer, and editor. He lives now in Atlanta with his wife, Arlene, where they produce health, medicine, and sports content for various organizations, including the Cleveland Clinic, the Duke School of Medicine, and the Steadman-Philippon Research Institute in Vail. Thanks, Jim, for sending us, When the “PE Guys” Arrived in Bogota. When we – the “PE Guys” – arrived in Bogota in January of 1963, the English teaching part of the group was already there after training . . .

Making a Difference: One Life at a Time by Nancy and Joel Meister (Peru 1964-65) This is another chapter in the early  history of the agency. We published this essay several years ago in www.peacecorpswriters.org. [While serving overseas, many PCVs take a host-country national youth under their wings. Many even provide these girls and boys help in school within their own country, and on occasion arrange scholarships for them to study in the U.S. Often this “adopting” of a young girl or boy is the first building block of life-long friendships and successful lives for these children. While often the “Peace Corps kids” of Volunteers go on to have productive lives within their own country, few of them become presidents of their nations.    At the NPCA’s 40+1 celebration of the Peace Corps, Joel and Nancy Deeds Meister (Peru 1964-65) were scheduled to introduce the keynote speaker at the Opening . . .

[In an attempt  to bring together all the loose threads of the ‘Peace Corps’ early days, if not under one roof, than one blog, here is my quick summary of the reasons, causes, studies, movements, persons, and congressional legislation that resulted in the creation of the agency. I have written about some aspects of this in other blogs, but this is an attempt to pull the events into some sort of order, (if only my own!) for those of us who are tracking the development of the Peace Corps as we reach the magical half century.] In early 1960, Maurice (Maury) L. Albertson, director of the Colorado State University Research Foundation, received a Point-4 (precursor to USAID) contract to prepare a Congressional Feasibility Study of the Point-4 Youth Corps called for in the Reuss-Neuberger Bill, an amendment to the Mutual Security Act. The Youth Corps was “to be made up of young Americans . . .

It is interesting to see what the public reaction was to the agency in its first days. Here is part of an editorial from the Norristown, Pennsylvania Times Herald back on February 15, 1962. • WHEN THIS ADMINISTRATION entered office, one of its most novel proposals was for creation of the Peace Corps. The idea was, and is, that numbers of dedicated young people with particular talents and education would be sent to underdeveloped countries to aid them in becoming responsible nations. Members of the Corps would, so far as possible, live with the people, and accept a more or less comparable standard of living. The proposal was nonpartisan — and it was met with a nonpartisan response. Members of both parties greeted the plan with enthusiasm — and other members of both parties shook their heads in doubt. In any event, Congress approved, and the President appointed his brother-in-law, R. Sargent . . .

May 4, 2010 1:45 PM Katie Couric interviews RPCV author and environmental expert Mike Tidwell about the massive oil spill in the Gulf and its potential consequences to coastal communities. Entire interview available at: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6460705n  @katiecouric is a weekly online webshow on Tuesdays at CBSNews.com.  The webshow is hosted by Katie Couric, Anchor and Managing Editor of the CBS EVENING NEWS, and features candid one-on-one interviews with top newsmakers from the worlds of politics, business, entertainment and more.  Past interviews have included Glenn Beck, First Lady Michelle Obama, pop star Justin Bieber, and Sesame Street’s Elmo.

A Peace Corps Test In the early days of the Peace Corps there was a Placement Test given to all applicants. Actually it was two tests. A 30-minute General Aptitude Test and a 30-minute Modern Language Aptitude Test. The areas of testing were in Verbal Aptitude, Agriculture, English, Health Sciences, Mechanical Skills, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, World History, Literature, United States History and Institutions, and Modern Language Aptitude. One-hour achievement tests in French and Spanish were also offered during the second hour. The instruction pamphlet that accompanied the tests said that the results would be used “to help find the most appropriate assignment for each applicant.” For those who missed the opportunity to take the tests, which were given – as best I can remember – from 1961 until around 1967, I am including a few of the questions. Lets see if you could still get into the Peace Corps. . . .

The Committee of Returned Volunteers (CRV), established around 1965, was the first national organization of RPCVs to actively oppose the Vietnam war. Their copious writings–newsletters, information kits, analytical papers–portrayed the goals of U.S. foreign policy as exploitative. The true function of the Peace Corps, they believed, was to mask this imperialism by putting a warm and friendly face on America’s presence overseas. CRV members were among the marches showered with tear gas at the 1968 Democratic convention, and in 1970 they occupied the Peace Corps building in Washington for 36 hours to protests the student killings by National Guardsmen at Kent State and Jackson State Universities, as well as the invasion of Cambodia. All of this is detailed by Karen Schwartz who found out this information by filing a Freedom of Information Act request back in 1988 when she was researching her book on the agency, What You Can Do For . . .

On Saturday, May 1, President Obama gave the Commencement Address at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Towards the end of his talk, he turned his attention to government service and to what happened at Ann Arbor nearly 50 years ago. Here are three short excerpts… Participation in public life doesn’t mean that you all have to run for public office – though we could certainly use some fresh faces in Washington.  But it does mean that you should pay attention and contribute in any way that you can.  Stay informed.  Write letters, or make phone calls on behalf of an issue you care about.  If electoral politics isn’t your thing, continue the tradition so many of you started here at Michigan and find a way to serve your community and your country – an act that will help you stay connected to your fellow citizens and improve the . . .