Miscellany

Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation About PCCF In January 2014, the United States Congress authorized the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation to establish a commemorative work on Federal land in Washington, D.C. Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation is the public name of the Peace Corps Foundation, a District of Columbia 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. The Design Competition The Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation (PCCF) is sponsoring a two-stage, national design competition to select an artistically exceptional design concept for a permanent commemorative work in the heart of Washington, DC. This competition will provide designers from all across the United States an opportunity to create a compelling work of public art that will be bold and inspirational. The design should focus on and express American ideals and values that are the essence of the Peace Corps and Peace Corps service. It should be about America and our aspirations as a people, and about the Peace Corps . . .

Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) who has a long history of working for his host country has sent me the following link which is the official Nepal Peace Corps link, and updated since the earthquake, for those who wish to know the situation and help the victims. Thanks, Don. http://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/faf/nepal/

As he announced Warren Weinstein’s death Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama praised what he said was Weinstein’s lifelong dedication to service, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and later as a USAID contractor. Weinstein, Obama said, was someone who “willingly left the comforts of home to help the people of Pakistan,” focusing his work on helping families escape poverty to give their children a better life. “This was a man who basically dedicated his life to service, to people in general, but especially to people in a country where the standard of living was low and difficult. … It’s tragic that he was killed the way he was,” former U.S. Ambassador Dan Simpson said. In a letter to the Washington Post, however, Weinstein said he had been a country director in Togo and Ivory Coast but did not mention being a PCV.

RUTH MacKENZIE SAXE, Deputy Director of the Peace Corps under Carolyn Payton in the early ’70s, and a long time Washington resident, died at The Washington Home on March 15, 2015 at the age of 86. The cause of her death was complications from a series of strokes. A divorcee with two small children, she drove across the country from Minnesota, arriving in Washington on August 28, 1963, the day of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream Speech” on the National Mall and worked for the Peace Corps as a program office in the Caribbean-area region until 1970, yet another Washington staffer to break Shriver’s famous 5-year-rule. In 1970 Saxe became the first Director of Volunteers at the citizens’ lobby Common Cause where she helped originate “The Washington Connection” linking DC area volunteers to the 435 congressional districts. She later served in a number of other positions at that . . .

The Man Who Made the Masters This is the first in a series on Clifford Roberts, the co-founder of Augusta National Golf Club and the chairman of the Masters Tournament from 1934 to 1976. By John Coyne FROM THE HILLSIDE AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL one looks into a natural amphitheater and across a landscape of interlacing fairways and greens, golden sand and blue-green stately pines. The old Berckman’s nursery fills smooth valleys and soft hills to the far edges of Amen Corner with a maze of color: azalea, dogwood, and redbud. In so many ways, this ancient acreage and southern plantation club house still has the look, code and culture of those antebellum times. It is, also, a very modern golf course, as architect Robert Trent Jones defined it in The Complete Golfer. Jones wrote, “The Augusta National is the epitome of the type of course which appeals most keenly to the . . .

The Man Who Made the Masters, Part II This is the second part of a series on Clifford Roberts, the co-founder of Augusta National Golf Club and the chairman of the Masters Tournament from 1934 to 1976. By John Coyne CLIFFORD ROBERTS WAS BORN IN MORNING SUN, Iowa, in 1894 and reared in small towns in Iowa and Texas. He never attended college and didn’t graduate from high school. He left in the ninth grade after a fight with the principal. His family life was troubled; his father couldn’t keep a job; his mother was suicidal. And yet Roberts became one of the most iconic figures in the world of golf. At the age of 19, Roberts, a traveling salesman of men’s suits, was on the road in the Midwest when he heard his mother had taken her own life. “It was a tragic event,” writes Steve Eubanks in his . . .

The Man Who Made the Masters, Part III By John Coyne CLIFFORD ROBERTS IS OFTEN REMEMBERED (and quoted) for saying about Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament, “As long as I’m alive, golfers will be white and caddies will be black.” Today, however, it is difficult to find an African-American caddie looping at the Masters as all the pros (and amateurs) bring their own caddies, and they are, almost exclusively, Caucasian. (The first full-time white Augusta National caddie, around 1986, was Tripp Bowden who writes about it in his book Freddie & Me, Augusta National Legendary Caddy Master). In a 1997 article in Sports Illustrated  Rick Reilly would write, “Someday Eldrick (Tiger) Woods, a mixed-race kid with a middle-class background who grew up on a municipal course in the sprawl of Los Angeles, may be hailed as the greatest golfer who ever lived, but it’s likely that his . . .

The Man Who Made the Masters (Conclusion) This is the final part of a series on Clifford Roberts, the co-founder of Augusta National Golf Club and the chairman of the Masters Tournament from 1934 to 1976. By John Coyne ONE MIGHT SAY SUICIDE RAN in Clifford Roberts’ family. His mother, suffering from back pains and depression, killed herself with a shotgun in 1913, and his father, who had health issues of his own, in 1921 walked in front of a train and was killed. No note was left, but it had the markings of another family suicide. Now how would Clifford end his life? Roberts’s final day is well told in David Owen’s book, The Making of the Masters, a history of Augusta National written with the help and cooperation of the club, to combat negative accounts of life at Augusta National. Owen, a New Yorker staff writer, gives a . . .

The Peace Corps Mourns the Loss of Volunteer David Ripley WASHINGTON, D.C., April 2, 2015 – Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet is saddened to confirm the death of Peace Corps volunteer David Ripley. David, 29, passed away while visiting Tanzania on March 31, 2015. “David was a deeply compassionate and empathetic person, which in turn made him an extraordinary Peace Corps volunteer,” Hessler-Radelet said. “He was committed to putting his experience to work improving the lives of those in his community of service, and was seen as a leader among his fellow volunteers. We are devastated by his loss, and the thoughts and prayers of the entire Peace Corps family are with the Ripley family during this difficult time.” A native of Palmetto, Fla., David served as a health volunteer in Rwanda. He worked at community health centers and read books to children regularly at the Kigali Reading Center. He . . .