Archive - August 30, 2013

Letters from the Sixties: College, Peace Corps, Marriage by Jon C. Halter (Venezuela 1966-68) Self-published (available on Amazon.com) $9.99 308 pages 2013 Review by Barbara E. Joe (Honduras 2000-03) Having lived through the staid Fifties as they morphed into the tumultuous Sixties, I fully expected a wild ride, given the title of this book. Instead, these selected letters reveal a rather wholesome young man, Jon Halter, apparently a straight arrow throughout, someone whose most significant deviation from ordinary middle-class American life -and it did turn out to be significant-was joining the Peace Corps and marrying the Venezuelan sweetheart he met while in service. He is revealed as a conscientious son and faithful husband who saved his prolific college correspondence with his parents and, later, with his new wife, who was waiting alone in Venezuela for her visa to join him in the U.S. After the birth of their son, also . . .

Bonefish Bob: A Tribute by Bernard F. Blanche (Brazil 1965-67) Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co. $13.97 (paperback) 160 pages 2011 Reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) This is a book for the passionate fisherman, one who longs to fish eternally. It is also a testament to the life of a man who took solace on water and relished the challenge, Bonefish Bob Berger. The author met Bonefish Bob in Islamorada, Florida in 2004, when his subject was 70 years old and only two years shy of suicide, a death that forces survivors to second guess whether they could have done more. In the author’s case, he decided to write about Bonefish Bob’s life. This is a delicate obituary, a tribute to a man whom the author admired. Robert Edward Berger was born in 1934. He grew up in York, Maine where he developed a keen love for fishing. . . .