Archive - 2018

In April, 1989, Marian Haley Beil and I published a 4-page newsletter entitled RPCV Writers. I had — as a writer — been tracking other Peace Corps writers, and had already organized a panel discussion about Peace Corps books for the 25th Anniversary RPCV Conference in 1986. Marian, also an Ethiopia I (1962-64) Volunteer, agreed to help me. She designed, published and circulated the quarterly newsletter. We saw our newsletter as a way of sharing information about publications, readings, writing grants, and teaching positions for RPCVs. To recognize and promote Peace Corps writers, in 1990, we established annual awards for outstanding writing in a variety of genre. We funded the award prizes and have (so far) given out 143. In July of 1991 we changed the publication’s name to RPCV Writers & Readers and increased the number of issues to six a year. In November 1998, we published our last . . .

In 1986 the Peace Corps celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. As part of the preparation for that event, an effort was made to establish a repository for the personal papers of returned volunteers relating to their experience in the field. This project was carried forward after the anniversary by a small committee of RPCVs, including Suzy McKee Charnas (Nigeria 1961-62), Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961-62), Margaret Pollock (Korea 1966-68), and myself under the auspices of the then NPCA known as the Natonal Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. While the official records of the Peace Corps are preserved in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., no institution at the time had been systematically saving personal papers and documents of the former Volunteers and staff. With the passage of time it had become increasingly urgent to gather and preserve the irreplaceable records and observations of PCVs service all over the world. That is . . .

One of the many hidden treasures of Peace Corps history is the RPCV Oral History Collection at the JFK Library, begun more than seventeen years ago by RPCV Robert Klein,(Ghana I). Bob interviewed members of Ghana I for his book, Being First: An Informal History of the Early Peace Corps Robert Klein (Ghana 1961-63) Wheatmark, 2010* and realized how valuable those taped interviews were. He decided to expand to interview as many RPCVs as possible, at his own expense. For years, he crisscrossed the country, interviewing RPCVs and teaching them how to interview others. The JFK Library agreed to archive the tapes. Bob Klein died in 2012 and his work was carried on by his good friend, Phyllis Noble.  Sadly, Phyllis, too has passed on.  But, the JFK Oral History project lives on.  RPCVs have continued this incredibly important work.  Now they have affiliated with the National Peace Corps Association. Here . . .

   WAGING PEACE: The Peace Corps Experience A film by Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963-65) • I was a Peace Corps teacher in Sierra Leone from 1963-65. For the past 50 years I’ve been a documentary filmmaker. WAGING PEACE: The Peace Corps Experience tells our stories through letters, journals, emails and blogs combined with the profiles of four former Volunteers whose work today shows the enduring impact of these experiences on their own lives and the lives of others. At times hilariously funny, and at other times grimly sad, WAGING PEACE is full of perceptive insights into sacrifice and hardship, courage and defeat—and, ultimately, hope. At a time when society desperately relies on volunteerism, WAGING PEACE is an inspiring call to other Americans, young and old, to cross cultural lines in order to discover a new awareness of the world and, in the end, to wage peace. You can watch . . .

Thanks to a “Heads Up” from Don Beil (Somalia 1963-65) James Comey, the former FBI Director and author of A Higher Loyalty is married to an RPCV: Patrice Failor (Sierra Leone 1983-85). Comey writes about visiting his then girlfriend in the summer after his first year of law school. The two had met in college. Corney writes in this new book: “All of us have encounters with death in our lives. It’s inevitable. I’ve had my share, even after the Ramsey Rapist receded into my nightmares. There was, for example, the time I visited Patrice, who at this time was just my girlfriend, while she was in the Peace Corps in a remote village in Sierra Leone, West Africa, and I nearly died from contracting malaria. If she had not driven me in the middle of the night on the back of her motorcycle and literally dragged me into a . . .