Archive - November 18, 2016

Following Sarge’s ‘T’riffic!’ and approval for the new recruitment campaign, Gale went up to his rabbit warren of rooms and started to call everyone he knew at the University of Wisconsin. “They were all old pals of mine, and they were going ape over the phone about my plans for the Peace Corps at the university. But it wasn’t an easy job. In 1963, the campus covered nine hundred acres on the shores of Lake Mendota. There were over 17,000 undergraduates, another 7,000 grad students. Gale realized early on that he (and the Peace Corps) had to see the recruitment trip as a presidential campaign. There were two of them assigned by Sarge for the first campaign–Doug Kiker and Bob Gale–neither of them knew each other at HQ. Both were new to the Peace Corps. They couldn’t do it all Gale realized so he decided on a second team to arrive in Wisconsin a . . .