To Preserve and to Learn: “Doing the Blitz-Peace Corps Recruitment in the 60s”
Doing the Blitz Peace Corps Recruitment in the ’60s by Hal Fleming (Staff: PC/W 1966–68; CD Cote d’Ivoire 1968–72) • IN 1966, I CAME DOWN TO WASHINGTON from New York. It was a time in our country when the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War divided the nation. I had been tapped to work as a staff member in the Public Affairs and Recruiting office for the Peace Corps. On my very first workday in Peace Corps/Washington, I was told to join Warren Wiggins, the Deputy Director of the Agency, in his government car for a one-hour ride to a conference for new campus recruiters at Tidewater Inn in Easton, Maryland. Wiggins, preoccupied with his opening speech to the conclave, said very little to me except to read out a phrase or two of buzz-word laden prose, mostly unintelligible to me as the new guy, and ask for . . .
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I recall Hal Fleming — with some degree of awe — as he was a definite presence during two of…