Miscellany

Meleia Egger (Malawi 2007-09) wrote a poem in the summer of 2011 in honor of the 50th Anniversary. She recently put the poem up on YouTube check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YTS10nBO5A

Marian Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) and Tino Calabia (Peru 1963-65) set up a petition on SignOn  on October 19, 2012 to rally the Peace Corps Community to ask the Peace Corps to honor RPCV and Ambassador Chris Stevens (Morocco 1983-85) at the Peace Corps Headquarters. A month later, in mid November, the Acting Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet (Western Samoa 1981-83) said  the agency would do so, and on May 2, 2013, in Shriver Hall an event was held by the agency.  The Celebration of the life and Service of The Honorable J. Christopher Stevens was a simple and touching event, with short words of rememberance from former Morocco Country Director David Burgess; fellow Morocco Peace Corps Volunteer Amie Bishop; Ambassador Stevens’ Father Jan Stevens; Ambassador Stevens’ Sister Hilary Stevens; and Ambassador Stevens’ Mother Mary Commanday. The special event was opened and closed with remarks from the Peace Corps Deputy Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet. Good Afternoon.  It’s my pleasure to welcome you . . .

[I caught this program tonight, Thursday, May 9, 2013, on the PBS News Hour….if you can, catch it. And, read this account. Now here is an RPCV still at work in her host country. She is amazing, and she is making amazing progress.] Changing Minds in Senegal to Protect Girls From Genital Cutting] By: Fred de Sam Lazaro  NewsHour special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro asks Molly Melching about her efforts to educate Senegalese women about the harms of genital cutting. Molly Melching didn’t think she had much more than curiosity — and a love of the French language — when she ventured off soon after college for Senegal. It turns out that this product of a conservative Midwestern Lutheran upbringing may have brought exactly the qualities and experiences needed to help engineer one of the most sweeping shifts in social norms and behavior in history. Her organization, Tostan, has . . .

[This documentary film was shown the other evening at the Asian Film Festival in New York City. The film was done by a good friend, Mirra Bank, and my wife, the Executive Editor of MORE magazine, later interviewed Mirra for the MORE website. I thought that the RPCV Community, especially PCV who served in India, would like to know about the film, and would enjoy reading the interview.] One Woman’s Power of Persistence Award-winning director Mirra Bank heard about the plight of a people halfway around the world and decided she wanted to help-but it took six years. Here, the story of what she did, the film she made (“The Only Real Game”), the obstacles she overcame…and how you can help now by Judith Coyne Devika, a mother in Manipur, India, hopes to support her family by becoming a baseball coach.Photograph: Axel Baumann for Baseball Dreams, LLC More: The film, The Only . . .

A Salaam Alaykum. We’re here today to remember Chris Stevens – particularly his service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco from 1983 to 1985.  In some respects that’s a bit of an oxymoron:  In three decades, I haven’t come across anyone who met Chris Stevens who didn’t remember him quite well.  He was truly a remarkable person and made a profound impression on people he met. So we do remember him. Thirty years ago next month, Chris Stevens had his first encounter with North Africa when he arrived for Peace Corps training in Azrou, a predominantly Berber town in Morocco’s Middle Atlas Mountains.  And North Africa had its first encounter with Chris Stevens. It was evidently love at first sight, for North Africa and the Middle East kept calling him back; and Chris spent the better part of his life either working there, or moving the necessary levers so . . .

Marian Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) and Tino Calabia (Peru 1963-65) set up a petition on SignOn  on October 19, 2012 to rally the Peace Corps Community to ask the Peace Corps to honor RPCV and Ambassador Chris Stevens (Morocco 1983-85) at the Peace Corps Headquarters. A month later, in mid November, the Acting Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet (Western Samoa 1981-83) said  the agency would do so, and on May 2, 2013, in Shriver Hall an event was held by the agency.  The Celebration of the life and Service of The Honorable J. Christopher Stevens was a simple and touching event, with short words of rememberance from former Morocco Country Director David Burgess; fellow Morocco Peace Corps Volunteer Amie Bishop; Ambassador Stevens’ Father Jan Stevens; Ambassador Stevens’ Sister Hilary Stevens; and Ambassador Stevens’ Mother Mary Commanday. In the days to come, we will post the remarks by the friends and family of Chris Stevens.     Peace Corps Dedication to Chris . . .

Marian Beil (Ethiopia 1962-64) and Tino Calabia (Peru 1963-65) set up a petition on SignOn  on October 19, 2012 to rally the Peace Corps Community to ask the Peace Corps to honor RPCV and Ambassador Chris Stevens (Morocco 1983-85) at the Peace Corps Headquarters. A month later, in mid November, the Acting Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet (Western Samoa 1981-83) said  the agency would do so, and on May 2, 2013, in Shriver Hall an event was held by the agency.  At the May 2, 2013 event no mention was made by the agency of the petition and call-to-action by this website that generated over 1,000 signatures for the Peace Corps to recognize the work of Chris Stevens. The Celebration of the life and Service of The Honorable J. Christopher Stevens was a simple and touching event, with short words of rememberance from former Morocco Country Director David Burgess; fellow Morocco Peace Corps Volunteer Amie Bishop; Ambassador Stevens’ Father Jan . . .

An invitation to signers of the petition requesting that the Peace Corps honor RPCV Ambassador Chris Stevens: …………………………………………………………………………………… Please join Peace Corps Deputy Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet in a celebration of the life and service of The Honorable J. Christopher Stevens U.S. Ambassador to Libya Thursday, May, 2, 2013 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Shriver Hall Paul C. Coverdell Peace Corps Headquarters 1111  20th Street, NW, Washington, D.C Please RSVP by Friday, April 26, 2013 by clicking HERE NOTE: Seating is limited.

Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1962-64) alerted me to this small piece of information. “The daughter of an emergency room doctor, Katie, as she was called, grew up in a Christian household in North Kingstown, R.I., graduated at the top of her class at her high school in 2007, and said in her yearbook she wanted to go into the Peace Corps. Instead she ended up married to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Several sources carry the story: Several sources. huffingtonpost.com is one. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/22/katherine-russell-tsarnaev-feds-interview_n_3131242.html also People at http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20694041,00.html

[Thanks to Mary-Ann Tirone Smith (Cameroon 1965-67) who mentioned this New York Times article that I had missed. Here it is. Another RPCV doing great Third Goal work on his own.] Jim Wilson/The New York Times Chase Adam, 26, a former Peace Corps volunteer, is the founder of Watsi. By NICOLE LaPORTE, The New York Times April 13, 2013 TWO YEARS AGO, Chase Adam, a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, was riding a bus through a town called Watsi, when a woman got on board asking for money. Her son, she said, needed medical attention and she couldn’t pay for it. As the woman walked through the bus, she showed people a copy of her son’s medical record. Mr. Adam, who is now 26, noticed that nearly everyone donated money. Watsi raised money for Chenda, top, a 1-year-old boy in Cambodia, who badly burned his hand. Nuro, 11, of . . .

[I received this email from Marcia Kauffman Krasnow saying that Lawrence Fuchs, the first Peace Corps Director in the Philippines, has died. Fuchs in 1961-62 had one third of all the Volunteers in the world. It was the largest Peace Corps country. Philippines, in fact, was the test-case for Warren Wiggins paper, The Towering Task, the original document that Shriver used to create the agency. Following is Ms. Krasnow’s email to me, and the death notice about Professor Fuchs.] Dear John Coyne, I enjoyed meeting you at the 50th Anniversary events in Washington, D. C.  I am the daughter of the late Dr. Joseph F. Kauffman who was the first Chief of the Peace Corps Division of Training at the Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C. (1961-63) Both Prof. Fuchs and my father (Dean of Students) were at Brandeis University (outside of Boston) prior to serving in leadership positions in the Peace Corps.  . . .

I got an email the other day from David Raphael who was a college student back in 1962 and worked as an intern at the Peace Corps HQ.  My piece on Nan McEvoy got him thinking about the ‘other’ women in the building when he arrived in Washington from Antioch College in the summer of ’62. He was assigned to the Africa Regional Office and worked with, he said, two real power houses: Cynthia Courtney, English-speaking Africa Division Director, and Francesca Gobi, French-speaking Africa Division Director. David said that these women, and others in the Africa Regional Office, were all recruited from the Africa American Institute (AAI), which years later was exposed by Ramparts magazine as being a CIA front. Little did we know! I met Cynthia Courtney in the late summer of ’62 when I returned from Ethiopia and went to work in the Office of Volunteer Services (DVS). Cynthia was one of the . . .

Years ago, inspired by the television program Man Men, I began to do an occasional blog about the early founders of the agency, who I nicknamed, The Mad Men and Women of the Peace Corps. And indeed they were, back then in the early Sixties. From time to time I’d get comments from later PCVs, words to the effect that I get over it Coyne! Those days are long gone. Indeed they are. Still I’m going to document the people, the lives, and the times, as best I can, of those early years of the agency when everyone, and I mean everyone, didn’t give the Peace Corps a chance to survive, let alone thrive and be around so that they–later day PCVs–might have a chance to join an organization that would change their lives, and organization that today is something like Mom’s Apple Pie in the eyes of most Americans. So, keep quiet. I have more to say about . . .

The current issue of The Council of Independent Colleges newsletter, Independent has an article entitled, “Campuses Reap Benefits of Hosting Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows.” In Woodrow Wilson’s current impressive list of Fellows is a senior executive of the Coca-Cola company, a former U.S. ambassador to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and ‘the former chief of staff for a U.S. Representative from California, our own Charles “Chic” Dambach (Colombia 1967-69). In a brief paragraph on the “Fellows” the article states: “Charles “Chic” Dambach’s wide-ranging career includes serving as chief of staff for U.S. Representative John Garamendi (D-CA) (Ethiopia 1966-68) and six years as president and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, during which he established a network of organizations and professionals to help built sustainable peace and security worldwide. Previously, Dambach restructured and revitalized the National Peace Corps Association, where his career began as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia. He . . .

One of the original Mad Men of the Peace Corps, Harris Wofford, is 87 today. Wofford was the first person Sarge Shriver called when President Kennedy asked Shriver to establish a “Peace Corps” in the days after JFK became president. A year later, Harris would leave the White House, where he was  Special Assistant to the President on civil right, to become the first CD in Ethiopia, as well as, Shriver’s Peace Corps Representative in Africa. After two full years in Addis Ababa, Harris returned to Washington as the Associate Peace Corps Director. In the years before the Peace Corps, he was many things, including an early civil rights leader and advisor to Martin Luther King, all of which is describes in his book, Of Kennedy & Kings, that detailed his work with the Kennedys, the Peace Corps, and Dr. King.  After the Peace Corps, Harris would go onto be president of  two colleges, and later the Senator . . .