Archive - 2016

Reading the Eyes Only memo from the Medical Division to Sarge in her recently commandeered fifth-floor office, Betty Harris went ballistic and charged into Shriver’s office. “The memo raised the question: What if a married Volunteer got pregnant by her own husband? Oh, no!,” said Betty, What if one of our precious, upper-middle-class American flowers got pregnant in one of those dirty, backwater countries? Surely, the Peace Corps would bring the couple home. A nice American couple couldn’t risk having a baby in a country where women squat to deliver a child. “I went in screaming over this one. I screamed to everyone, even Sarge, saying that the one thing that all women in all countries have in common was childbirth, and if we really want to insult countries to say, in effect, that your country’s so dirty that this healthy, nutritional American woman cannot bear a child therefore if . . .

At the emergency, Saturday morning meeting to determine the fate of this pregnant unmarried PCV, Betty Harris, for the first time, realized there was a problem with the Mad Men of the Peace Corps. “….The thought began to occur to these grown men that possibly the pregnant Volunteer had got herself in the ‘family way’ by means of intimate contact with a national,” Betty recalled. “Oh. God! Well, the guys were just falling apart. A Peace Corps woman is pregnant and she’s not married to anybody! And who’s the father? And what happens now? Do we bring her home? Do we inform her parents? Do we throw her out of the Peace Corps? One fool present at this meeting actually suggested that we ‘can’ women Volunteers altogether. No one ever suggested that our male Volunteers might be shacking up with female ‘nationals,’ getting them pregnant, or what the implications of that . . .

Fiction Richard Wiley, 7 pm Sat Nov 12, 7:00PM Book Court Brooklyn, New York Dr. Ruby Okada meets a charming man with a Scottish accent in the elevator of her psychiatric hospital. Unaware that he is an escaping patient, she falls under his spell, and her life and his are changed forever by the time they get to the street. Who is the mysterious man? Is he Archie B. Billingsly, suffering from dissociative disorder and subject to brilliant flights of fancy and bizarre, violent fits? Or is he the reincarnation of Robert Louis Stevenson, back to haunt New York as Long John Silver and Mr. Edward Hyde? Her career compromised, Ruby soon learns that her future and that of her unborn child depend on finding the key to his identity. With compelling psychological descriptions and terrifying, ineffable transformations,Bob Stevenson is an ingenious tale featuring a quirky cast of characters drawn . . .

Why didn’t Betty Harris become the head of the first Women’s Division in the Peace Corps? What Betty found out later was that Paul Geren, Sarge’s vert first (and short-lived) Deputy Director, killed the idea of her being in charge of women Volunteers. “I knew Paul from Dallas,” Betty recalled in Coates Redmon’s  book. “Sarge told Geren that he was thinking of bringing me up from Texas to deal with women’s issues and Geren replied–or so the story went–‘That’s like putting Marilyn Monroe in charge of the Boy Scouts!’ Apparently, Paul thought I was too wild for his type of southern Baptist upbringing, and his objection had short-circuited my appointment. But I thought the comparison to Marilyn Monroe was the best compliment I’d ever had.” When Betty did arrive in D.C. she was given a desk and told to read up on early Peace Corps documents until some job was found . . .

On the way to work out this morning I was listening to BBC (you have to get up early for BBC) and they had an interview of an American factory owner in Mexico. The interviewer was asking the owner if he would have to move back to the US because of the anticipated new regulations from Trump. The factory owner said that his company refurbished (as far as I could tell) cars, rebuilding and remanufacturing them. He said that he did employ ‘some’ Mexicans to clean up the factory and also move boxes, but that all his employees were robots. He admitted that his “skilled engineers” made about 10% to 30% less than they would in the U.S. but it is clear that factories like his won’t bring back jobs to the heartland of the Midwest. Then on the Elliptical I was watching Morning Joe and host and former Congressman . . .

  To the Peace Corps Community, The victory of President-elect Donald Trump leaves much to be asked about the future of the Peace Corps and the causes returned Volunteers and the greater community have championed over many years. What we know is that President-elect Trump—and millions of Americans—have already reassessed America and her role in the world, and the overwhelming conclusion is that change is needed. How that change will manifest itself is uncertain. Who will influence it is not. Since the day four years ago when I came aboard as President and CEO of National Peace Corps Association, I have been inspired and motivated by the commitment to Peace Corps ideals by every member of our community. As individuals and affiliate groups, in communities across America and all over the world, each and every day the Peace Corps community rises to the challenge in pursuit of peace, progress and . . .

Mark Walker ((Guatemala 1971-73) wrote me this afternoon, saying: I think the election of Trump will represent some new challenges to the PC Writers group and was thinking of writing a commentary on the post-election implications of a new President with no overseas experience promoting mistrust of immigrants and refugees and what we need to do in order to promote the objectives of the Peace Corps. We can understand the election results as the growing impact of populism here and around the world so what does this mean? The most recent “Foreign Affairs”, The Power of Populism has some answers to that question and then we need to focus on how to focus our collective talents to respond to this trend. My guess is that someone else could make this commentary but if not I’d like to put something together if you think it would be appropriate. Please let me know what you . . .

Betty Harris was what we used to call a ‘a piece of work.’ She was thirty-nine-years old in 1961 and had been a political organizer and a public relations executive in Dallas, Texas, before arriving in D.C. She had also been a pioneering journalist in New York City before women had such jobs, working with among others, Newsweek and NBC. When she arrived at the Peace Corps in 1961 she had just gone through a bitter divorce with Leon Harris, the son of man whose department store in Dallas that became the model of Neiman-Marcus. Betty always, in fact, looked as if she had just stepped out of the pages of a Neiman-Marcus catalog. ‘Chic’ is the term that Coates Redmon uses to describe Betty in Come As You Are. Betty Harris knew Shriver longer than anyone else at the Peace Corps, having first met the man in the 1940s when they both . . .

Two real power-house-women in those early years of the Peace Corps were: Cynthia Courtney, English-speaking Africa Division Director, and Francesca Gobi, French-speaking Africa Division Director. Both were recruited from the Africa American Institute (AAI), which years later was exposed by Ramparts magazine as being a CIA front. (Sorry, Sarge!) I met Cynthia Courtney in the late summer of ’64 when I returned from Ethiopia and went to work in the Office of Volunteer Services (DVS). Cynthia was one of the original ‘characters’ at the agency. She was a tall, demanding presence in the African Region, a woman of experience within Africa. One of her favorite tricks in the early years to get the very best PCVs for her countries (at the expense of other countries) was to go downstairs to the Selection Division late in the day, pull up a chair, and thumb through the files of new PCVs, and pick up the best candidates. She was looking for ‘the best and . . .

Arriving for work on or before March 1, 1961, there were a few women, early volunteer staffers, at the Maiatico Building. They, too, would become famous in the first years of the agency. The majority of these women were connected by family or friends to the Peace Corps and they were eager to work at the new agency. The Peace Corps was  ‘hot’ and everyone, of course,  wanted to be connected in some way to the new administration. If they couldn’t be in the White House, then they wanted to be with his brother-in-law and the shiny new idea, the Peace Corps. In the world-of-work at the time, women were mostly ‘second class’ citizens. They were not, for example, sitting at the ‘big conference table” in Senior Staff meetings. Looking at old black-and-white photos of Peace Corps HQ meetings, you might see, however, that Elizabeth (Betty) Forsling Harris had wedged  herself into the . . .

A few years ago I picked up the Friday, March 29, 2013, issue of The Wall Street Journal and glancing through what they call their Mansion Section the name Nan Tucker McEvoy popped out. My god, I thought, Nan is still alive! Alive and well and at 93 she was running with her only child, age 60, a 550 area olive farm 8 miles from downtown Petaluma in Northern California. The WSJ wrote, “Ms. McEvoy is the granddaughter of Michael de Young, who in 1865 co-founded the newspaper that would become the San Francisco Chronicle. After living in Washington, D.C. for many years, Ms. McEvoy served as chairmen of the board of the San Francisco Chronicle from 1981 to 1995.” Okay, lets go back to Nan’s Washington years. This is when Nan worked for Shriver at the Peace Corps.  Shriver hired her, as he hired everyone that first year, to be the deputy director of the African Regional Office. By . . .

As we know the agency attracted to Washington the ‘best and the brightest,’ all of them wanting to work in the Kennedy Administration, with the majority wanting to work at the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps also attracted Republicans and one of them was Richard (Dick) Graham from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who worked with Bill Moyers as the Deputy Associate Director for Public Affairs. Dick Graham was one of the nicest guys to work at the Peace Corps, a selfless self-made millionaire in the days when being a millionaire meant real money. Dick had his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree from Cornell University, graduating in 1942 and going directly into the army. During the war, he was in Andimesk in the Zagros Mountains of Iran constructing roads, buildings, and installed power and water systems. Coming home, he joined his father’s firm, then struck out on his own and started an electronics . . .