Father Ted Hesburgh and the Peace Corps: A Story Not Often Told
by Tom Scanlon (Chile 1961-63) Father Hesburgh was leaving his office at the Civil Rights Commission on March 1, 1961, walking through Lafayette Square across the street from the White House, when he encountered two friends – Harris Wofford, a former legislative assistant on the Commission, and Sargent Shriver, with whom he had a long-time friendship, and who was the brother-in-law of President Kennedy. Wofford and Shriver were ebullient. They held in their hand the text of a Presidential Executive Order that President Kennedy would sign that day, creating the United States Peace Corps. Returning to South Bend and the Notre Dame campus, Father Ted was working late in his office that same evening and received a call from Wofford and Shriver, still together and still “celebrating.” In the call they challenged him to “bring us a Peace Corps project.” Father assembled the Notre Dame Latin American faculty and . . .
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Father Ted and Tom Scanlon were a dynamo team, a driving force in Peace Corp’s earliest days!!