Archive - June 4, 2009

What I remember best about him were his small and delicate hands. They were like a woman’s hands really, soft and gentle. His handshake, even when I first met him as a teenager, was soft and gentle. He never tried to impress anyone with his strength, for he wasn’t big or imposing. Professional Golfer magazine referred to him as “little Tony” when he won the 1953 Texas Open. Once, back in the early ’50s when he broke the course record at the Monterey Peninsula Country Club in the first round of the Crosby Golf Championship, the Chicago Tribune headline read something like, “Tiny Tony Shots 63 at Crosby.’ His size didn’t matter when there was a golf club in his hands. When he was on the tee everyone took notice. Compact as he was, he could generate enormous power and drive a golf ball, as we used to say back . . .

Doug Worthington ( Ethiopia 1963-65) writes: “As I listened to Obama’s sensitive and culture-bridging talk in  Cairo, I tried to imagine myself as a returned PC volunteer giving a similar speak. I think each of us, having travelled and lived aboard, could have given a similar speech. Obama seemed like a PCV to me. In a sense, he has had the Peace Corps experience. He sees the world from a different perspective than does the average American.” Well said, Doug!