Archive - May 2022

  What continues to surprise me is how few people–since that morning in the Mayflower Hotel–have read “A Towering Task” the position paper written by Warren Wiggins and Bill Josephson which was the first draft of defining the Peace Corps; it was the bible for the future Peace Corps. When I asked Warren Wiggins about this, he commented, saying, “It’s marvelous that nobody has read it because, you see, in most ways I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. In some ways I was dead on, but I did recommend that we ship air-conditioned trailers to the Philippines to house the Volunteers. It’s a far cry from the theology of the Peace Corps that evolved, but then, those were the early days.” What is clear now from the safety of time and distance is that being anti-establishment, amateurish, anti-professional was the reason for the success of the . . .

The following profile is drawn largely from a Peace Corps WorldWide article.   by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • Rob Schmitz, lived and worked in China from 1996 to 1998 as a Peace Corps Volunteer, first as a teacher, and later as a free-lance print and video journalist. He joins other well-published Volunteers who served in China, e.g., Peter Hessler and Michael Meyer, as a living symbos as to why our government needed to sustain Peace Corps’ presence in China as it emerged into a global economic presence from a distant reality. Their combine out-put of award-winning books, literary awards, newspaper articles, radio and TV presentations — all had their creative starting points rooted in their China Peace Corps experiences. In a contemporaneous manner, this provided Americans with a window — and most especially, a much-needed view into rural China. In a significant case, one of Rob’s books was in . . .

  What strikes anyone reading about the creating of the Peace Corps was 1) how creatively it was organized; and 2) how fast it was put into operation. The reason was that the ‘founding fathers’ (and they were only fathers) took chances. Wofford remarks in Of Kennedys & Kings how a management consultant said to him one evening, “You guys had a good day today. You broke fourteen laws.” Then the consultant promised to straighten out the paper work and urged then all on, saying, “Keep it up, we’re making progress.” Wiggins in his interview with me listed 7 reasons why the Peace Corps was so successful in those early days of the Kennedy administration. Bill Josephson and Warren Wiggins kept the idea of a “Peace Corps” simple. At first, the PCVs were only to teach English. As Wiggins told me, “Our cardinal rule in crafting ‘A Towering Task’ was . . .

  Warren Wiggins would tell me in an interview I did with him in January 1997 (published in RPCV Writers & Readers) that the greatest weakness of the original idea of the Peace Corps was that it didn’t have a constituency beyond “the youth of America.” The Peace Corps, Warren said, “was not an outgrowth of development experience. It didn’t have a constituency in the Congress, the press, or other leadership institutions in the U.S. nor did it have a constituency abroad.” This proved to be an immediate and immense problem. Kennedy had created a Peace Corps and no one wanted it! There were 25,000 potential PCVs waiting to go do something for America, but no Third World country asked for them. Getting requests for PCVs was a major problem. “Shriver almost terminated me in those early months,” Warren recalled in his interview. “He would never admit that, and I . . .

  The signs that the special role for the Peace Corps in foreign aid was in trouble were all over Washington. Wofford ran into Ralph Dungan in the White House mess (Wofford was then a Special Assistant to the President on Civil Rights) and Dungan told him the Peace Corps would be a subdivision of the new AID. “Not if Sarge has anything to say about it,” Wofford tossed off, half joking, but also firmly believing Shriver walked on water. The truth was that all these “new guys” Shriver brought in to work for the Peace Corps believed Sarge could get anything he wanted from the White House. But Shriver was scheduled to leave D.C. and the U.S. Who would carry the fight that was developing in D.C.? Before leaving for his ’round the world trip to secure placements for PCVs, Shriver lobbied Sorensen, Dungan, and Labouisse, trying to persuade . . .

  REMEMBERING THE CREATION OF THE PEACE CORPS ON THIS MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND   This is an early blog I posted on  the website Marian Beil set up some thirty years ago. It focuses on the creation of the agency. JC  • Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo Peace Corps! At the time of Shriver’s February 22, 1961 memorandum to President Kennedy — stating that the Peace Corps should be established as a semi-autonomous agency — there was a lot of professional resistance to the whole idea of sending young Americans overseas to do good. Career diplomats like Elliot O. Briggs described the Peace Corps’ team cry as “Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo. Let’s go out and wreak some good on the natives,” as Wofford reports in his book, Of Kennedys & Kings [1992]. Throughout the State Department diplomats were indifferent to hostile to the whole idea of a Peace Corps. But not Dean Rusk, Kennedy’s new Secretary . . .

  From a “mad tea party” infused with vodka and the sheep-head delicacy called beshbarmak (“five fingers”), to places less traveled like the dying Aral Sea, A Five Finger Feast is a story about a young American in a foreign land. A Five Finger Feast is a collection of “lessons” and coming-of-age stories by RPCV Tim Suchsland set to the backdrop of Kazakhstan. It’s about the ups and the downs, the excitement and the thrill of living abroad as a young person. A Five Finger Feast is a story about the Peace Corps, an institution at the heart and soul of what it means to be American. It is a memoir about growing up and better understanding what is “home” while living far away. Through Suchsland’s story, he unfolds a place of contrast and beauty. He discusses the tragic, yet hopeful history of Kazakhstan and its people, helping to give . . .

Peace Corps Volunteer credits Wilmette teachers for his dedication to service work     After a two-year wait, Wilmette resident Robert “Bobby” Richards is one of the first Peace Corps volunteers to return to overseas service since the agency suspended global operations in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Richards is serving in Colombia in the education sector of the Peace Corps, an international service network from the US government that pairs volunteers with communities seeking support in education, health, environment, agriculture, economic development and youth development. Richards will work in the school system alongside teachers and educators, focusing on curriculum and lesson-planning techniques and strategies. He was expecting to start with the Peace Corps in September 2020, but the pandemic upended those plans before he could even leave the country. “It’s something I’ve been looking forward to since 2019,” Richards said in a phone call from . . .