Archive - May 15, 2024

Gary Lynn Garrison (Tunisia 1966-69) died  on May 4, 2024, age 79, in Sarasota, Florida, surrounded by his family. Gary’s life served world peace through international cultural understanding. Born in Pittsburgh, Kansas, on November 2, 1944, he grew up in Kansas, graduating from The Chanute High School in 1962 and from Kansas University in 1966 with BA degrees in French, History, and International Relations. Upon graduation he served three years in the Peace Corps in Tunisia, using his knowledge of French and Arabic to teach English in the secondary schools and becoming a Peace Corps trainer in Yemen. In his first marriage to fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Jeannie Dodson he had daughters Shadia and Emily. He attended the CASA program, an intensive Arabic Studies year at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and then worked briefly in Cairo for the Ford Foundation. He received an MA in comparative education from . . .

PCV Accused of Murdering His Wife in Tanzania by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) OVER THE SIXTY PLUS YEARS OF THE PEACE CORPS more than one PCV has slipped a thick blank-paged journal into their luggage, ready to record their experience while on this great new adventure. Many, of course, think that perhaps someday they’ll turn all the notes into a novel or a memoir. Paul Theroux, for example, used his journals in writing his 1989 novel, My Secret History, which is set partly in Malawi and Uganda. Mike Tidwell turned to his journals when he wrote The Ponds of Kalamabayi about his time in Zaire. And Kathleen Coskran used the journals she kept in Ethiopia for several of her stories in her prize-winning collection, The High Price of Everything. But it was the journal of another PCV, William Kinsey, which first brought Peace Corps writers into international headlines. In 1966, five years after the founding . . .