Author - John Coyne

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Taylor Dibbert’s (Guatemala) FIESTA OF SUNSET
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#5 Mad Men of the Peace Corps – Med Bennett
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Will Newman (Nepal) Remembers Early Peace Corps Years
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Early Peace Corps History Books Worth Owning
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# 4 Peace Corps Women Staff Who Worked for the Mad Men
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#3 Still More Mad Men of the Peace Corps
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# 2 More Mad Men of the Peace Corps
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United States and Mozambique sign Memorandum of Understanding for Peace Corps Volunteers
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Towering Task Film Now on DVDs (and Streaming)
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Review | IF YOU TURN TO LOOK BACK by Tom Hazuka (Chile)
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Mad Men and Women of the New Peace Corps
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An interview with North Africa Folklorist Deborah Kapchan (Morocco)
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PCV Vanessa Paolella | Letter from Madagascar
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William Hershey’s (Ethiopia) book on his Peace Corps experience
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Dwight Yates (Tanzania) Obituary

Taylor Dibbert’s (Guatemala) FIESTA OF SUNSET

Taylor  Dibbert (Guatemala 2006-08)  is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. He’s author of the Peace Corps memoir Fiesta of Sunset. Invictus, his debut poetry collection, is due out in January 2024, and he’s expected to have three other full-length collections published later that year. Taylor is a Program Director at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Before joining the ICFJ team, he worked at the US Counsel on Sri Lanka, a DC-based advocacy organization. Prior to that, he worked for human rights NGOs in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. Taylor began his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala. Over the years, his writing and journalism has appeared in a variety of outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, World Politics Review and HuffPost. Taylor holds degrees from Columbia University and the University of Georgia. Fiesta of Sunset: The Peace Corps, Guatemala and . . .

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#5 Mad Men of the Peace Corps – Med Bennett

I mentioned that in those early days of 1960s the agency was full of Mad Men (and a few Mad Women) who were living in a world-of-work atmosphere very much like the provocative AMC TV drama Mad Men. They were wonderful characters, some charming, many nice, and a few not very . . .  vOne terrific guy was Meridan Hunt “Med” Bennett. He was sort of a  ‘Peace Corps Jimmy Stewart.’ I met him in Ethiopia in, I think, 1965. He was totally unlike the smooth types that crowded Shriver’s big conference table back in D.C., but he was smarter than most, a writer, and a farmer who had grown up in the Canadian Rockies. It was so remote a farm, he said, that he had to ride three miles on a horse to attend a one-room schoolhouse. vHe farmed when haying was done with horses and a beaver slide stacker. He rode . . .

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Will Newman (Nepal) Remembers Early Peace Corps Years

By 1970 most of the country desk officers had been Volunteers and APCDs in the field.  We were a noisy, can-do bunch, within the NANESA Region roughly half females. I was on the Nepal desk my second 30-month tour from mid-1970 through early ‘73. Don Hess was the Peace Corps Director, leading the formerly independent agency that was then part of ACTION. On my last day Hess called me to his office and asked me to contract to lead a team to revise the entire Peace Corps Manual. [It was not lost on me that the last gasp of a dying bureaucracy was to redo their rule book.] I did agree, provided I could hire an editor and an experienced typist. I also asked for someone from A&F to serve with me.  Hess agreed. Don Romine joined our little team. My first act was to visit the Peace Corps print . . .

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Early Peace Corps History Books Worth Owning

Peace Corps Chronology 1961-2010 by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) iUniverse May 2011 120 pages $9,99 (Kindle); $12.60 (Paperback); $22.95 (Hardcover)   Peace Corps Bibliography by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) Create Space Publishing May 2018 76 pages $5.00 (Kindle); $9.99 (Paperback)     Here are two books by Lawrence Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) full of valuable historical information about the early years of the agency. Lawrence’s travels and work has taken him from southwestern Alaska to Argentine Pampas. His studies have included master’s in urban planning at la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City, art and ccreative writing at Skyline College in San Bruno, California and education at. California State University Fresno. Now retired, he earned his living as an urban planner for many years, working in Honduras, Mexico, Alaska, Arizona and California. He is author of some twenty books.  

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# 4 Peace Corps Women Staff Who Worked for the Mad Men

Early Peace Corps Women Staff Who Worked for the Mad Men  Helene Farrall The first face that a visitor saw at the Peace Corps Headquarters usually was receptionist Helene. Mrs. Farrall, who studied at the University of Maryland and recently had worked for the American Friends of the Middle East, was born and raised in Faulkner, Md., and she still lived there. Her dedication to the Peace Corps was shown by the fact that she undertook a daily commune of 45 miles in each direction.   Sally Bowles Sally Bowles, daughter of Ambassador Chester Bowles, was an honor graduate in history from Smith College where she was named editor of the college newspaper and was elected president of the student body. She had already traveled and lived in Southeast Asia, India, Mexico, Morocco, France and Spain. She was a legislative assistant to Congressman John Brademas (Dem-Ind) and as administrative assistant . . .

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#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. 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 . . .

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# 2 More Mad Men of the Peace Corps

John writes —   If you ever had watched the TV show Mad Men you know all about the office atmosphere and the thick layer of smoke that filled the offices. It was no better in the Peace Corps during those early years of the 1960s. Flipping through pages of old Peace Corps publications, I see half a dozen people who I knew, all with cigarettes in their hands. Al Meisel in the Training Division; Charlie Peters, head of Evaluation; Jim Gibson, head of Agricultural Affairs. He liked cigars and smoked them in the building! The wonderful Jules Pagano. Other heavy smokers: Howard Greenberg in Management; Jack Vaughn, the second director; Frank Mankiewicz; evaluator Dick Elwell, (as I recall, everyone in evaluation smoked and drank and wrote great prose). Doug Kiker and his crew in Public Affairs knew how to light up. And so did Betty Harris. When the Mad . . .

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United States and Mozambique sign Memorandum of Understanding for Peace Corps Volunteers

   December 7, 2023 – Today, Peace Corps Mozambique Country Director Lisa Heintz and Permanent Secretary of State for Youth and Employment (SEJE) Ivete Alane signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) starting the process of the return Peace Corps Volunteers to Mozambique in 2024. Also present were U.S. Ambassador to Mozambique Peter H. Vrooman and Secretary of State for Youth and Employment Oswaldo Petersburgo. This agreement demonstrates the partnership and continued commitment between the United States and Mozambique as Volunteers are welcomed back to promote the mission of peace and friendship. This MOU between the Peace Corps and SEJE demonstrates the shared vision for supporting and empowering youth throughout Mozambique in education, health, environment, entrepreneurship, culture, information technology, sports, and other areas. Since 1998, nearly 1,500 Peace Corps Volunteers have come to Mozambique to join community efforts in development, health, and education. “Thanks to the efforts of Peace Corps staff . . .

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Towering Task Film Now on DVDs (and Streaming)

Documentary Now Available on DVD & for Streaming Finally, A Towering Task is available on DVD and to stream! And just in time for the holidays or to celebrate a birthday or milestone. You can purchase DVDs: DVDs can be purchased through Amazon. CLICK HERE Through First Run Features, you can purchase a DVD or view (while supporting a small film distributor). CLICK HERE View online by renting or purchasing: Rent or purchase online viewing through Amazon, and be sure to leave us a review! CLICK HERE  If you would like to, instead, view through your local library – or if you are a student or teacher – you can do that through Kanopy. CLICK HERE Take a look, and do share these options with friends, family, colleagues, and schools! Video montage from the upcoming new website. Stay tuned! PBS Broadcast Update: In the past few months, A Towering Task: The Story of the Peace Corps has been broadcast across the . . .

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Review | IF YOU TURN TO LOOK BACK by Tom Hazuka (Chile)

  If You Turn to Look Back: A Memoir and Meditation by Tom Hazuka (Chile 1978-80) Woodhall Press 388 pages September 2023 $19.95 Paperback; $9.99 (Kindle) If You Turn to Look Back combines memoir with political, social, and economic investiif gations of what it means to be an American and a citizen of the world. American influence is ubiquitous in South America, and If You Turn to Look Back explores these relationships in a personal context. For Tom Hazuka was once part of that influence, from 1978-1980 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Chile, first in the capital of Santiago, then in the far northern city of Arica, near the Peruvian border. In a chain of events springing from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in 2003 Hazuka returned to Chile to examine changes in the country, the people and himself. He left Chile at twenty-four and returned at forty-seven. Every human knows what . . .

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Mad Men and Women of the New Peace Corps

 John writes —    In this series that I published years ago and republishing for those who have come lately to the site, I will attempt, in short-hand fashion,  to tell the history of the first years of the agency and the men and women who created the Peace Corps.   The history begins In those early days of 1960s the agency was full of Mad Men (and a few Mad Women) who were living in a world-of-work atmosphere very much like the provocative TV AMC drama Mad Men, the program that followed a handful of ruthlessly competitive men and women in New York City who worked in advertising on Madison Avenue. They were living (in case you never saw the series) in an ego-driven world where “selling” was all that matters. That series, set in the early Sixties and has everything many of us grew up with: cigarette smoking, drinking, . . .

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An interview with North Africa Folklorist Deborah Kapchan (Morocco)

RPCVs in the news — Deborah Kapchan is an American folklorist, writer, translator and ethnographer, specializing in North Africa and its diaspora in Europe. In 2000, Kapchan became a Gugenheim fellow. She has been a Fulbright-Hays recipient twice, and is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society.  She is professor of Performance Studies at New York University, and the former director of the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology (now the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies) at the University of Texas at Austin. After completing her Bachelors of Arts in English Literature and French at New York University while studying flute performance with Harold Jones in New York, Kapchan went to Morocco in 1982 as a Peace Corps Volunteer. There she learned Moroccan Arabic, and in 1984 got a job doing ethnography in Marrakech and in El Ksiba, Morocco. This experience reoriented her life and in 1985 . . .

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PCV Vanessa Paolella | Letter from Madagascar

  Sometimes, I imagine I know what it’s like to be Patrick Dempsey. Everyone stares at me when I go grocery shopping. Making small talk on the street inevitably draws a crowd. Strangers want to take photos of me. Girls giggle to each other when I say “hello,” or, too shy to approach, they instead point and call to me from yards away. The major difference in my comparison, as I’m sure you might guess, is that no one has graced me with the title of “Sexiest Man Alive.” Not yet, anyway. That, and my only claim to fame here in Madagascar is presumably being the lone white person for miles. I’m the first Peace Corps volunteer to live in this village and likely the first foreigner. Being able to hold a basic conversation in Malagasy only draws more attention. Foreigners rarely make the effort to learn Madagascar’s native language, . . .

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William Hershey’s (Ethiopia) book on his Peace Corps experience

  by Michael Douglas Beacon Journal editorial page editor (retired)   William Hershey admits to “a touch of idealism” in joining the Peace Corps nearly six decades ago. He also had in mind avoiding the draft. As a twentysomething completing graduate school, he easily could have found himself on a path to joining the massive American military deployment in Vietnam. Thus, a persistent tension informs his engaging and insightful new book, “Taking the Plunge into Ethiopia: Tales of a Peace Corps Volunteer.” American idealism contends with indelible realities. In telling his story, Hershey also helps us understand our own time and dilemmas, from the plight of refugees to the Russian aggression in Ukraine. The book is part of the indispensable (to followers of Ohio political life) Bliss Institute Series, published by the University of Akron Press. Hershey has made multiple contributions, including an entertaining biography of Ray C. Bliss, “Mr. Chairman,” written with . . .

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Dwight Yates (Tanzania) Obituary

In the news — Published by Redlands Daily Facts Nov. 21, 2023 We sorrowfully announce that Dwight Yates (Tanzania 1964-66) passed away Sunday, November 12th, 2023, at the age of 81. Dwight was born in Helena, Montana, and traveled widely in his youth. He taught in Tanzania, East Africa, during his time with the Peace Corps and continued his education in Arizona, where he met his wife, Nancy Carrick. Dwight moved to Redlands, CA in 1980 and quickly became a staple within the academic community in the Inland Empire. He was a widely-published writer and professor of creative writing at UC Riverside. He knew how to connect deeply and – in written word – capture the range of our humanity completely. Dwight Yates’ stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His first collection, Haywire Hearts and Slide Trombones, received the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award from SnakeNation Press. His second, Bring Everybody, was . . .

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