Be # 1000 on our Petition for Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sign UP!
Chris Stevens is a most awsome example of the best of the JFK vision for Peace Corps.
Carol Gelhaus of Five Point, South Caroline is # 999
You can be #1000!
[Tino Calabia (Peru 1963-65) who rallied all of us RPCVs in support of Ambassador Christopher Stevens sent me a note about our collective efforts to reach 1000 signatures. Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) established a petition at SignOn.org that we hope you will sign. This is what Tino had to say, writing today from Tokyo where he is visiting his son, the FSO at our Embassy in Japan.]Several Senators and House Representatives have finally brought Hillary Clinton before them to regurgitate their pre-election criticism of the Administration’s initial description of the Benghazi killings that left four Americans dead.
The winds of punditry swirl with conjectures regarding the reasons Clinton’s harshest critics are attempting to besmirch her coming departure as Secretary of State. Some commentators suggest that a few of her critics were launching preemptive strikes aimed at weakening a Presidential candidacy she may seek in 2016.
Ambassador Stevens
Any mention of RPCV Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was among the four Americans slain in Benghazi, seemed mainly to magnify and justify the politics of the event.
But fortunately the quality of Stevens’ life and career was depicted earlier this month by Time Magazine writer Joe Klein.
In Klein’s column, “In The Arena,” (appearing in Time’s 2012 Person of the Year issue) Klein bestowed his annual “Teddy Awards for Political Courage.” Named for President Theodore Roosevelt, one such award was given to Stevens. Klein writes that Stevens “. . . Represented the best in American diplomacy, a man who insisted on being out with the people in dangerous places, learning from them and demonstrating, by his grace and courage, what America is all about. . . .”
Come to think of it, Klein might as well have added that Stevens represented the best in Peace Corps Volunteerism, wouldn’t you agree?
If so, please join over 970 RPCVs and other Peace Corps alumni who have signed our petition to honor Stevens by dedicating in his name some prominent space in the Peace Corps Headquarters Building. We’re aiming for 1,000 supporters to commemorate Stevens with our own kind of Teddy award. The petition can be accessed at:The petition appears when you click on: http://signon.org/sign/honor-rpcv-ambassador?source=c.url&r_by=5761851
Chris Stevens is a most awsome example of the best of the JFK vision for Peace Corps.