Archive - October 18, 2018

On October 16, 1961, Raymond C. Parrott joined the Ghana Staff as Deputy Representative. From New Hampshire, he graduated from high school in 1947 and enlisted in the Navy for three years. Taking a completive military examination, he made the highest mark of anyone from New Hampshire and was admitted to West Point. There, he was told he had a bad shoulder and would have to have an operation or get out. He got out and went to Trinity College and graduated in 1953 with a degree in economics. He received another scholarship and went to Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy where he received his master’s degree in 1954. He then went to work for Arthur D. Little. He first heard of the Peace Corps through his work on the International Economic Affairs Committee of the National Association of Manufactures. He came to Washington, where Shriver offered him the . . .

During the first week of May, 1961, Richard Thornell landed in Ghana to lay the groundwork for the arrival of the first Volunteers to be sent overseas. He was stricken with TB the end of August and entered the hospital only five days before the Volunteers stepped off the pane in Accra on August 29, 1961. A number of dignitaries, however, including Ghana’s Minister of Education A.J. Dowuong-Hammond, were on hand to greet the 50 PCVs, men and women, and their escort officer, Padraic Kennedy, at the big airport on the outskirts of Accra. In response to expressions of welcome, one of the Volunteers stepped forward and delivered a thank-you for the group in Twi, the principal local language. The Twi was far from perfect, but the fact that Americans would try to speak it at all was met with smiling enthusiasm on the part of the welcoming Ghanaians.   . . .