Miscellany

From the day after JFK’s inauguration until June 26, 1961, Sarge Shriver was surrounded by staff he recruited from among the best and the brightest.  But not on the 26th. That day, the Director was surrounded by strangers, trainees selected by others, the Volunteers for Colombia I. Sarge was ill at ease, with reason. The selection committee complained of the “paucity of good, fully qualified candidates.” Some were high school graduates, others had completed only two years of college. About a dozen had not even taken the Peace Corps test. References for most were incomplete, few met minimal language qualifications, and the “special skills” fell far short of what the Colombian government, Peace Corps and CARE, the project administrator, had requested. It was a hot, humid day in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Sarge removed his jacket. With the Bay of Pigs fiasco the most recent media story on Latin . . .

I found an old document, a pamphlet really, published by the Peace Corps with a letter from Bill Moyers, then Associate Director for Public Affairs. The pamphlet has a date of November 1, 1961 [Moyers’ letter, which is with the pamphlet, is addressed “FOR YOUR INFORMATION and dated November 8, 1961. This ancient Peace Corps document is the “Descriptions of the first 9 projects, including purpose, training, Volunteer skills needed, technical qualifications of Volunteers, and information about the taining officials.” In his letter, Moyers adds, “Since this edition of PROFILES was prepared, three additional projects have been announced. They are Thailand, Maylaya and Sierra Leone.” Moyers sums up, “I hope you will find the PROFILES helpful in providing you with specific information about the work of the Peace Corps overseas and of the role it is playing in the struggle for economic and social progress among the developing nations thorughout . . .

Gary Garrison (Tunisia 1966-69) is the Assistant Director, Middle East/North Africa at the Council for International Exchange of Scholars. He emailed me recently to say that the Fulbright Scholar Awards for 2010-11 are open to college and university faculty and independent professionals who want to “contribute to educational development in countries worldwide.” Gary writes, “The program values the experience and expertise of former Peace Corps Volunteers who wish to participate in another great international program, the Fulbright Program.” The Fulbright has sent overseas teachers and researchers in creative writing, filmmaking, visual and performing arts, education, TEFL, human rights law, public health, business and entrepreneurship and many other fields. If you’re interested in being a Fulbright Scholars in the Middle East or North Africa, contact Gary at:ggarrison@iie.org.

Mike McCaskey (Ethiopia 1965-67) recalls another story about Bobby Kennedy in Ethiopia. It seems that while in-country he flew with Ethel to the small northern town of Bahar Dar where he landed in the grass field in the middle of the small village and was met there by a handful of Volunteers who had come in from neighboring villages for the senator’s brief visit. Gathered together on the grass in the shade of the small plane, Bobby asked the PCVs if they had any questions or problems and one of the women piped up that she did. The Peace Corps was about to cut their living allowance, she complained. Bobby took that in, then looked over at his wife and said, “Well, Ethel, that does it. We’re not joining the Peace Corps.”

The event at the Kennedy Center this week for Senator Ted Kennedy reminded me of the time that Bobby Kennedy came to Ethiopia back in the 60s. As I have written elsewhere, here is a little known story about Bobby Kennedy and the time he met up with PCVs in Asmara, Eritrea. We go back to the summer of ’66. Bobby had been to South Africa where he was a huge success with college students, and given his famous “Ripple of Hope Speech” that contains one of the most quoted paragraph in political speech making. The speech was written by Richard Goodwin and Adam Walinsky and delivered on June 6, 1966 in Cape Town. The famous paragraph went this way: “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot . . .

[Steve Buff (Ethiopia 1963-65) sent me this news. The director of this award winning film, Haile Germa ,virtually lived with Steve and John Coe (Ethiopia 1962–64) in Addis Ababa as a student. Later Haile Germa received support from Gwendolyn Carter, Director of African Studies at Northwestern, when he came to the States and studied film at UCLA. Here is news of Haile’s latest.] By Katrina Manson OUAGADOUGOU, March 8 (Reuters) – A film set in Ethiopia about a bloodthirsty regime under which political dissidents and village children alike were ruthlessly killed has won best movie award at Africa’s top film festival. “Teza,” a feature by award-winning director Haile Gerima set during Mengistu Haile Mariam’s 1974-1991 rule, won the top prize late on Saturday at this year’s 40th pan-African FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso. Judges praised the film, 14 years in the making, for its strength, depth and poetry conveying . . .

To close out “Peace Corps Week” here’s a little history lesson on the beginnings of the agency for all the X,Y,Z Generations who ask, “how in the world did all of this happen?” Encouraged by over 25,000 letters responding to his call to serve abroad, Kennedy took immediate action to make the campaign promise a reality. He asked Shriver to direct a Peace Corps Task Force–the famous Mayflower Hotel gang–and within two months the task force had outlined “seven steps” to form the Peace Corps in a February 22, 1961 memorandum to Kennedy. This memo is interesting for several reasons. The first point Shriver made was that the Peace Corps should be established by an Executive Order within the Mutual Security Program. William Josephson, then the only lawyer in the ‘new’ Peace Corps was the principal author of the President’s Executive Order. [This is not entirely true for Shriver was . . .

People are still asking that question as we approach the half century of the agency. Back in May of 1966, Joseph Colman, who was then the Acting Associate Director of the Peace Corps for Planning, Evaluation, and Research published a paper in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences and Marian Beil recently asked if I knew about it. I tracked down a copy of Colman’s paper that reports on several studies of motivation for joining the agency, based on a 1962 study of 2,612 applications’ replies to a motivational question on the application form; a 1963 interview study of why people who apply later decline a specific invitation to enter training; and a 1964 interview study of college series’ interest in the Peace Corps. Colmen’s paper concludes that Volunteers can be successful in the Peace Corps with a variety of motivations for joining. Well, no . . .

RPCV Jeffrey Crowley (Swaziland 1989-91) was appointed by President Obama on Thursday to head the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP). Crowley, is a former officer of the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) and a current research scholar at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. Crowley earned a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. As deputy executive director for programs at NAPWA, he worked on both the National HIV Testing Day campaign and the Ryan White National Youth Conference. He is openly gay. As far as I know, this is the first appointment by President Obama of an RPCV to a political position.

For twenty plus years, Congress has been voting to double the size of the Peace Corps. They vote yes, then they don’t vote (on a separate bill) to fund the increase. Bait and switch. Whatever hope there is to increase the number of Peace Corps Volunteers serving overseas must come from the top, from the president. I hope (and expect) that  our new president will double its number. What is important is not that the Peace Corps is bigger, but that more Americans have the opportunity to serve others in other lands, and that host country nationals learn ‘up close and personal’ what Americans are really like. Peace Corps Volunteers are a different breed of Americans. They come into a village or community and live at the level of the people. They learn the language and they learn the host culture. They unpack their bags and they stay for two years. They become . . .

Like many of us, I wake up in the morning to Imus. Lately he has been talking about Netjets and flying around America. He swears by Netjets. And if I had his money, I would swear by them, and let them fly me around America. And back in the mid-sixties in the highlands of Ethiopia I did a lot of flying on Ethiopia’s small fleet of single engine prop planes, piloted by young French guys on contracts with the airlines. It was difficult even in the best of weather to fly over the high plateaus of the Empire, with its sudden drafts of air, high altitudes, and only a few tarmac runways. But it was fun and also breathtaking to sail over the landscape, to see clusters of tukul compounds spotting high, dry ridges, like birthmarks on the African horizon. I was the APCD in Ethiopia back then and had as my responsibility . . .

Harry Cooper is in many ways the forgotten man of professional golf. He never won the Masters, the PGA or the U.S. Open. But for three decades, beginning in the Twenties, he played some of the best, and fastest, rounds of golf on the PGA Tour, winning more than 30 tournaments, culminating in 1937, when he won nine times and was both the leading money winner ($14,000) and winner of the Vardon Trophy for the best scoring average. Born in England in 1904, he moved when he was a child with his father, a golf pro, to Texas where he grew up to win the Texas PGA Championship in 1922 and 1923. His first big win, however, was the inaugural Los Angeles Open in 1926. It was here that he was nicknamed “Light-Horse” by the famous journalist and short story writer, Damon Runyon. Damon wrote that he needed a racehorse . . .

The President has just named on of his campaign advisors to be the director of Obama’s Faith-Based Initiatives. My guess is that within days the Peace Corps will have a new Director as Obama is moving on to making the second and third level appointments for his administration. My guess is the Peace Corps Director will be 1) a woman, 2) a minority, 3) someone from Chicago, 4) someone from Obama’s campaign, 5) a former PCV, 6) someone who has paid all his/her taxes! Let’s see how close I come. P. S. No, I have no idea who it will be.

The New York newspapers, as well as other papers, and cable news stations, have been spinning stories on “what happened with Caroline?” Did she or didn’t she want to be the next senator from New York? Why did she bail at the last moment just when her number was about to be called by Governor Paterson, or was she edged off stage by Paterson’s people? The governor certainly has suffered from the ineptness of his senatorial decision-making. Well, now right-winger, Blue Dog Democrat, Iraq war supporter, friend of Al D’Amato, daughter of a GOP lobbyist Kirsten Gilibrand, is the new senator-designate from New York – a woman who supports all “right-leaning” positions on gay marriage, immigration and gun rights, will take over Hillary’s seat. But what about the Camelot’s kid, the last of our royal family, early supporter of President Obama, a woman who never spoke up in politics, but . . .

For over twenty years, Congress has been voting to double the size of the Peace Corps. They vote yes, then they don’t vote on the separate bill to fund the increase. What is important is not that the Peace Corps is bigger, but that more Americans have the opportunity to serve, and that host countries learn what Americans are really like. President Obama has the opportunity to make change happen with the Peace Corps. Peace Corps Volunteers are a different breed of Americans. They come into a village or community and live at the level of the people. They learn the language and they learn the host culture. They unpack their bags and they stay for two years. They become part of a village, a community, a host family. They learn more than they teach or give. Then they return home to America and teach Americans about the village where . . .