Archive - August 6, 2010

Peace Corps HQ was not for the faint-hearted. It was not for the flower children of the early Sixties, or for those who talked peace and love and sang Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land to Rose — everyone’s favorite elevator operator — when they went to work in the morning. In his book on the early days of the agency, Gerard Rice talks about how the senior staff meetings were among the most brutally frank in Washington, and Sarge, too, wasn’t above the fray. For example, in September 1961, young Bill Josephson rebuked Shriver and John Corcoron, associate director of Management, for revising an organization chart without prior consultation with the rest of the senior staff. There were more than one Super-Ego at the conference table and around the building; everyone was out to prove he or she was The Best. And the ‘best’ meant to get the best PCVs. I remember in . . .

I’m getting all these emails saying that the questions is too hard. After all, there were 18 lawyers in PC/HQ. That’s more than enough within that group, and we’re not even counting all those Ph.D.! Too hard. Okay. I’ll narrow the guessing game. One of these six. Bill Josephson–Deputy General Counsel Doug Kiker– Chief of the Division of Public Information Bill Haddad–Associate Director for The Office of Planning and Evaluation Ruth Olson–Special Assistant to the Chief of the Division of Volunteer Field Support John Alexander–Director of the African Regional Office Franklin Williams–Chief  of the Division of Private Organizations The prize for the first winner is a copy of a fabulous new Peace Corps book, the first one in our PeaceCorpsWriters collection. Autographed by the author.