Archive - 2019

The Peace Corps’ original executive secretary was Bradley Patterson Jr., who had been one of the State Department’s veteran executive secretaries. A mountain climber by avocation, Patterson helped set up the first Cabinet secretariat and then served as assistant secretary to the Cabinet under President Eisenhower, where his performance led to  his receiving the Arthur S. Flemming Award for 1960. His duties have taken him to international conferences and to George Washington University, where he lectured on public administration. He left the Peace Corps to become special assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury. The man who set up the Medical Division was Dr. Lee J. Gehrig, an honor graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School and veteran surgeon with the U.S. Public Health Service. Part of his career was spent roaming Alaska in a campaign against tuberculosis and part on the high seas—as ship’s physician aboard the three-masted . . .

The first face that the visitor to Peace Corps headquarters usually saw belonged to receptionist Helene Farrall. Helene, who studied at the University of Maryland and had worked for the American Friends of the Middle East. She wa born and raised in Faulkner, Md. and she still lived there. Her dedication to the Peace Corps was shown by the fact that she undertook a daily commute of 45 miles in each direction.       John D. Rockefeller IV, was a Far East program officer in charge of the Philippines and North Borneo/Sarawak. Previously he was special assistant to the Director and ran the talent search. “Jay” went to Harvard, his travelled widely throughout Asia, did postgraduate study in Chinese affairs at Yale, and spent three Peace Corps-type years as a student and teacher in a Japanese university. He has written on Japanese affairs for both the New York Times magazine and Life. . . .

On May 2, 1962, the Peace Corps sent Lawrence Williams to Rabat, the capital city of independent Morocco. Williams, then operations officer for French-speaking Africa, joined in discussions which soon led to Peace Corps programs in three countries of West Africa—Morocco, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. These discussions were comparatively brief—a sign that in its second year the Peace Corps was becoming an established institution around the world. In mid-June, Williams went to the Ivory Coast for two weeks, returned briefly to Rabat, and on June 29, took off to Dakar in Senegal. By July 8, he was back in Washington. The program in Morocco called for English teachers and rural community action workers where the emphasis was on surveying and irrigation. The 56 Volunteers who were to carry out this program went into training at California State Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo on October 12, 1962. They arrived in . . .

  Thanks for the ‘heads up’ from Barry Hillenbrand (Ethiopia 1963-65).   Peace Corps Mission and Operations Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen delivered remarks about the volunteer organization’s mission and operations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She stressed the Peace Corps’ relevancy and the work of volunteers when they are serving abroad in a host country. https://www.c-span.org/video/?455661-1/jody-olsen-discusses-peace-corps-mission    

In 1947, John Alexander followed his graduation from the George Washington University, where he received his degree in economics, by entering Government service. He was promptly sent overseas, the beginning for him of ten years’ uninterrupted activity in the nation’s Foreign Service. Before he returned to take an administrator’s desk in Washington, he had acquire a working familiarity with the overseas side of foreign aid operations. Starting out as an economist with the U.S. Military Government in Germany, Alexander worked for two years on taxation and budget problems in Berlin and Stuttgart. He was then transferred to the U.S. Commissioner’s Office under the State Department and assigned first to Frankfurt, then to Bonn. He concluded his German tour with the Economic Cooperation Administration, a predecessor agency to AID, working on problems of occupation costs and the financing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizing. In 1954, Alexander was sent half way . . .

“They (the Volunteers) have done a very good job, mixing with the people and encouraging self-help measures. We hope to get more of them.” –Prime Minister Rashidi Kawawa of Tanganyika. “The Peace Corps I think is a wonderful idea. I think it is terrific. There is no better way to show the world what we are than to have our young people, acting just as themselves, going throughout these under developed countries.”—News commentator Richard C. Hottelet “Just a year ago many people were holding their fingers crossed. ….We know, a year later, that these bright and dedicated Peace Corpsmen of ours stood the test.” –Farmers Union Herald “I hope that when they come back, many of them will decide to make the Foreign Service their life work. If they do, we will have a better chance for survival.”–Max Lerner New York Post. “I have had an opportunity to meet many . . .