Archive - October 31, 2010

[On the 35th anniversary of the Peace Corps, in March of 1996, Mark Gearan, then Director of the agency, had the wisdom to stage three days of celebration for the agency in Washington, D.C. One event was at the Mayflower Hotel–where the agency was hatched in a suite of hotel rooms–was a dinner and speeches by key figures in the creation of the agency and in the administration. Coming to that event that evening where many of the ‘cast of characters’ who first brought the Peace Corps into being, including Warren Wiggins. Harris Wofford was there that night and spoke; Sarge Shriver spoke, as did PCV Congressman Sam Farr, former Director Loret Miller Ruppe, and a good friend of Mark Gearan, the Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine K. Albright. Also speaking was Theodore C. Sorensen, speechwriter and special council to President John F. Kennedy. Sorensen wrote most of JFK’s speeches, including the one JFK gave at the Cow Palace in San Francisco . . .

“I thought he was a bit of a nerd,” said RPCV Stacey McKeever. That was the line that caught my attention in the detailed profile (written by Rosalie R. Radomsky) in the wedding section of The New York Times this Sunday. (NO, I don’t usually read that section, but a friend of ours was also married this weekend.) So I started to read about Stacey McKeever and Charles Fogelman who were married yesterday in New York by a friend of theirs, a Universal Life minister, at a bar/event space in Brooklyn. (That’s the way we do things in NYC!) Stacey & Charlie met during Training for Lesotho and while Charles from the very first thought that Stacey was “very pretty, and something about her independence and faith in herself is what drew me in.” Stacey thought Charlie was a nerd. Of course, at the same time, during Training, Stacey was keeping her distance from all the . . .