#3 Still More Mad Men of the Peace Corps

It was not all ‘work’ and no ‘play’ at the Peace Corps for the Mad Men and Women. Here’s a story from the early years that has been told and retold a couple thousand times, and is retold in the late Coates Redmon’s book Come As You Are: The Peace Corps Story. Coates, as I mentioned, was a writer for the Peace Corps in the early days, later press person for Rosalynn Carter, and later still, director of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

Blair Butterworth (Ghana 1962-64)

It is a story–as all good Washington, D.C. do–that begins in Georgetown. It was a Sunday evening in the fall of 1961 and Dick Nelson, who was Bill Moyers’s assistant, and Blair Butterworth, whose father was ambassador to Canada, and who worked as a file clerk at PC/W, were living together at Two Pomander Walk in Georgetown. That Sunday, Moyers’ wife and kids were in Texas and Moyers came over to see the two guys, who had been roommates at Princeton. Nelson and Butterworth were both twenty-two or three at the time. Moyers was, maybe,  twenty-seven.

Moyers was a Baptist and didn’t drink, so Blair and Dick decided to teach Moyers how to drink. And they did. After a few drinks, Nelson does his imitation of JFK and Blair does his imitation of Bobby. Moyers thinks they are uproariously funny. [It could have been the booze.]

Moyers says, “Dick, why don’t you call Warren Wiggins. (Warren was the co-author with Bill Josephson of ‘The Towering Task” and a key figure in the new Peace Corps) “and tell Wiggins you’re the president?” People who knew Moyers in those days know he would rather play jokes on people than do anything.

Nelson is not sure it will work. He thinks Warren might smell a rat or as Dick recalls, “What if he believes me?” and Moyers replies with glee, “Then we’ll really have some fun.”

They dial Wiggins at his suburban Virginia home. Edna Wiggins, Warren’s wife, answers the phone and Nelson says in the purest possible Kennedy tonalities, “Uh, this is the president. Is Sahge theah by any chahnce?”

Edna goes berserk, as who wouldn’t. She puts her hand over the mouthpiece and shouts, “Warren, get out of the shower! It’s the president!”

Dripping wet, Warren rushes to the phone to say hello. Nelson continues, “Mistah Wiggins, I am looking for Sahge. Do you know wheah he is?”

Warren Wiggins

Warren crisply says, “No, sir. But I’ll find him, sir.”

Warren hangs up and calls the White House because the White House is famous for finding anyone. They connect him to Sarge and Warren says, “Sarge, this is Warren. The president’s looking for you.” And Sarge replies, “Warren, someone is pulling your leg. The president is right next to me. I’m in his car.”

Meanwhile, back at Two Pomander Walk in Georgetown, Moyers, Nelson and Butterworth are thinking how hilarious it all is. Then Nelson thinks, “Say, can the Secret Service trace that call? What about the FBI?” They begin to panic.

They pull the shades. They begin to tremble. Not Moyers. He rallies. He rushes from the house. He races down to the Peace Corps office and signs himself in (as we all had to do to get into the building). And Moyers back-dates his arrival time by two hours so it looks as if he was at the Peace Corps at the time of the call.

The next day Sarge calls a senior staff meeting and complains that somebody had been imitating the president on the telephone–and it must be somebody on his staff–Moyers immediately speaks up and volunteers to “help” have the FBI find out who did it.

In 1963, Nelson went into the Marine Corps and later to become an investment banker on Wall Street. Butterworth became a Peace Corps Volunteer with Ghana II, then went to Seattle and headed up a political consulting firm FDR Services until his death several years ago.

Moyers and the President who he worked for before and after the Peace Corps

We all know what happened to Bill Moyers.

Oh, by the way, no one was ever caught by the FBI in spite of Bill Moyers best efforts to ‘help’.