Profile in Citizenship

1
The Volunteer Who Became a Three Term Governor of Wisconsin |Jim Doyle (Tunisia)
2
The Volunteer Who Was Elected to Five Consecutive Terms in the U. S. Senate | Christopher Dodd (Dominican Republic)
3
The Volunteer Who Has Been Highly Recognized for His contributions to the Creative Arts | Tony D‘Souza (Cote d’Ivoire)
4
The Volunteer who became a National Presidential Campaign Manager | Timothy Kraft (Guatemala)
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The Volunteer who wrote songs for Korean children — Mary Kim Joh (Liberia)
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The Volunteer Who Had a Professional Career of Leadership in Agriculture and Economic Development
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The Volunteer Who Created Compelling Novels out of Her Family’s Oral History — Mildred Taylor (Ethiopia)
8
The Volunteer Who Published Nationally on Wealth Inequality in the U. S. | Robert H. Frank (Nepal)
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The Volunteer Who Ran the Table on Foreign Service Appointments — Kathleen Stephens (South Korea)
10
The Volunteer Who Became a Highly Published Novelist — Roland Merullo (Micronesia)
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The Volunteer Who Provided a Clear-eyed Look at Africa — Mark Wentling (Honduras, Togo)
12
The Volunteer who built schools in Africa . . . after leaving Peace Corps — Cindy Nofziger (Colombia)
13
The Volunteer Who Was the Very Model of a Modern Foreign Service Officer | Donald Lu (Sierra Leone)
14
Ann Moore (Togo) — The Volunteer Who Invented the Snugli
15
The Volunteer Who Used His Corporate Positions in Service to Others — Bob Haas (Ivory Coast)

The Volunteer Who Became a Three Term Governor of Wisconsin |Jim Doyle (Tunisia)

Profile in Citizenship —   by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Jim Doyle was inspired by JFK’s call to public service, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia from 1967 to 1969, working as a teacher alongside of his wife, Jessica, also a Volunteer. Thereafter, in 1972. he earned a law degree from Harvard Law School. He then moved to a Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona where he worked as an attorney in a federal legal services office. In 1975, he returned to Madison and served for three terms as a  Dane County District Attorney from 1977 to 1982. After leaving that office, he spent eight years in private practice.  In 1990, Jim was elected as Wisconsin’s Attorney General and reelected in 1994 and 1995. Between 1997 and 1998, he served as the president of the National Association of Attorneys . . .

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The Volunteer Who Was Elected to Five Consecutive Terms in the U. S. Senate | Christopher Dodd (Dominican Republic)

Profile in Citizenship   by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65)   Christopher Dodd served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominion Republic 1968-71, after graduating from Providence College. Thereafter, he was elected to the first of three terms as a U. S. Representative in 1974. Following his father’s career path, Chris ran and was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1980. He was reelected in 1986, 1992, 1998, and 2004—the first Connecticut senator to be elected to five consecutive terms. Chris’s time in Congress was marked by an interest in child welfare, fiscal reform, and education. He served on the Senate’s committees on banking, housing, and urban affairs (Chair from 2007), foreign relations, health, education, labor and pensions and rules and administration (Chair 2001-2003 In 1995-97, he served as General Chair of the Democratic National Committee. In January 2007, Chris announced that he planned to pursue the 2008 Democratic . . .

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The Volunteer Who Has Been Highly Recognized for His contributions to the Creative Arts | Tony D‘Souza (Cote d’Ivoire)

Profile in Citizenship by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65)  • • • Tony D’Souza served as a Volunteer in Cote d’Ivoire from 2001 to 2002, chronicling his life in a small African village, before, during, and after a Civil War. He was born in Chicago to an RPCV mother (India 1966-68) and Indian father. After graduating from high school, he rode a bicycle across Alaska, then went on to earn a BA in English in two and a half years at Carthage College. Afterwards, he earned a MA in English at Hollins University in Virginia, and then a Master’s in Fine Arts (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame. Tony feels that this degree gave him two years to surround himself with people who loved books, commenting that “most of life isn’t as pleasant as that. Before his time in the Peace Corps, Tony managed to work in a kibbutz in Israel, and . . .

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The Volunteer who became a National Presidential Campaign Manager | Timothy Kraft (Guatemala)

  by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • • • Timothy Kraft graduated from Dartmouth College in 1963, then went on to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala, 1963-65. After graduate studies at Georgetown University, he began a long career of professional involvement in state and federal political campaigns, beginning as Executive Director of the New Mexico Democratic party in 1974. In 1975, he connected with then-Governor Jimmy Carter who came to New Mexico to campaign for the election of a Democratic governor. In 1975, Timothy connected once again with then-Governor Jimmy Carter’s national presidential campaign as its National Field Director and then as its National Field Coordinator. In the Democratic presidential campaign, he worked to solicit contributions from ten Western states so that candidate Carter could qualify for federal matching funds under the Federal Election Campaign Act. After then-president Jimmy Carter won the presidency, he named Timothy as his Appointments . . .

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The Volunteer who wrote songs for Korean children — Mary Kim Joh (Liberia)

  Mary Kim Joh, also known as Che Sik Chu, was a Korean-American music composer and medical research specialist. She is best known for writing “School Bell” in 1945. This children’s song is taught to pre-school students in South Korea. It is often referred to as a “Korean National Anthem”. Joh was born in Seoul in 1904. She was the daughter of Kim Ik-seung, founder of Korea’s first joint stock companies, and a niece of Kim Kyu-sik. She graduated from Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea, and in 1930, she was awarded a Master’s degree in music at the University of Michigan. Later, while teaching in the music department at Ewha, she was asked by the South Korean government to compose children’s songs after the end of Japanese rule over her country in 1945. At the end of WW II, the Koreans had no Korean-language school materials. Her 1950 . . .

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The Volunteer Who Had a Professional Career of Leadership in Agriculture and Economic Development

A Profile in Citizenship Emmy Simmons (Philippines 1962-64) • by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65)   Emmy Simmons grew up in a farming community of northern Wisconsin before serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines, 1962-64. There, it was just her luck to be assigned as an education Volunteer to a farming community near the “summer capital” of Baguio where the population grew rice for food and pineapples for cash. She found herself drawn to the issues of agriculture and economic development in a context different from that of northern Wisconsin. After Peace Corps, she earned a M. S. in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University. Emmy was able to build a career in food and agriculture in the following decades, from participating in a rural development research program at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria where she focused on families’ nutrition and women’s microenterprises to serving as the Assistant Administrator . . .

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The Volunteer Who Created Compelling Novels out of Her Family’s Oral History — Mildred Taylor (Ethiopia)

  by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65)   Mildred Taylor served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia, 1965-67, after having graduated from University of Toledo in 1965. She was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1943, and is the great-granddaughter of a former slave who was the son of an African-Indian woman and a white landowner. After returning to the U. S. following her Peace Corps experience, she earned a MA degree in journalism at the University of Colorado where she was instrumental in creating the Black Studies Program as a member of the Black Alliance. Mildred’s works are based on oral history, told to her by her father, uncles and aunt. She said that without her family, and especially without her father, her books “would not have been.” She’s stated that these anecdotes became very clear in her mind, and in fact, once she realized that adults talked about the . . .

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The Volunteer Who Published Nationally on Wealth Inequality in the U. S. | Robert H. Frank (Nepal)

by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1966-68)      Robert H. Frank served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nepal, 1966-68. Afterwards, he received a B. S. in Mathematics from Georgia Tech University in 1966, then an M. A. in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, followed by a Ph. D. in Economics from UC Berkeley in 1972. Until 2001, Robert was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy in Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. For the 2008-09 academic year, he was a Visiting Professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. He contributes to the “Economic View,” a column that appears every fifth week in The New York Times. Alongside these academic achievements, Robert was the chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences from 1992 – 1993, and a Professor . . .

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The Volunteer Who Ran the Table on Foreign Service Appointments — Kathleen Stephens (South Korea)

A Profile in Citizenship   by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • Kathleen Stephens holds a B.A. in East Asian studies from Prescott College and a M. A. from Harvard University. She also studied at the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University before becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea from 1975-77, where she taught in the Yesan Middle School. Of her Volunteer experience, Kathleen said: “this is where I learned the qualities I needed to be a diplomat; I learned how to endure hardships and convince others.” Thereafter, when joining the U. S. Foreign Service in 1978, through hard work she earned major agency appointments — all the way up to serving as Ambassador to South Korea under two different U. S. presidents, and charge’ d’ affairs to India. She was well equipped to meet these professional challenges, speaking fluent Korean, Serbo-Croation, and Chinese. Early on in her . . .

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The Volunteer Who Became a Highly Published Novelist — Roland Merullo (Micronesia)

(A substantial portion of this Profile was drawn from an interview by Mike Mastromatteo of Catholic News Service, in September 2021.) by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963–65) • Roland Merullo served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Micronesia from 1979 to 1980, after receiving a B. A. and an M. A. in Russian Language and Literature from Brown University. He then worked in the Soviet Union for the U. S. Information Agency, and before publishing his first book, he was employed as a cab driver and carpenter. Roland taught creative writing at Bennington College and Amherst College and was a Writer in Residence at Miami Dade College and North Shore Community College. His first published essays appeared in the early 1980s, including a humorous “My Turn” column for Newsweek. Thereafter, a virtual flood of essays and novels followed. His first novel, Leaving Losapas was published in 1991. It was quickly followed . . .

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The Volunteer Who Provided a Clear-eyed Look at Africa — Mark Wentling (Honduras, Togo)

(A major portion of this profile was drawn from an article in the Foreign Service Journal & Peace Corps WorldWide)   by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963–65) • Mark Wentling served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, 1967-69, and in Togo, 1970-73. He retired from the Senior Foreign Service in 1996, after serving as principal officer in six African countries. Mark worked in Africa for the Peace Corps, non-governmental organizations, and as a contract employee for USAID.  He has published eight books, including the three-volume African Memoir Years: 54 Countries, One American Life. (Vol I, Vol II, Vol III Mark recently published an article entitled “Much Cause for Worry” in the September issue of the Foreign Service Journal, giving readers an uncompromising perspective of Africa in a contemporary context. His views emanate from having lived and worked in every corner of this continent, visiting 54 countries over the past 50 . . .

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The Volunteer who built schools in Africa . . . after leaving Peace Corps — Cindy Nofziger (Colombia)

  by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963–65)   Cindy Nofziger’s personal journey went from being a Peace Corps Volunteer at a leprosy hospital in Sierra Leone, West Africa, from 1985 to 1987 to subsequently founding “Schools for Salone” to help rebuild the national educational structure that had been destroyed by the country’s civil war that lasted from 1991-2001. In 2005, Cindy returned to Sierra Leone (also known as ‘Salone’) for the first time it was possible to do so since the end of the decade-long civil war.nThe civil war had rolled back all educational gains. Rural communities like Masanga, Cindy’s old site, were the worst hit. Schools were destroyed, or they just weren’t being built. While there, she reconnected with an old friend, John Sesay, from the 1980s. John asked Cindy to help build a community school, and . . . thus, Schools for Salone (SfS) was born. Since then, SfS has . . .

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The Volunteer Who Was the Very Model of a Modern Foreign Service Officer | Donald Lu (Sierra Leone)

(A portion of this Profile is drawn from a Peace Corps WorldWide publication of April 2022.)    by Jeremiah Norris  (Colombia 1963-65)   Donald Lu served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone, 1988-90, where he helped restore hand-dug water wells, teach health education, and conduct public health programs such as latrine construction, use and maintenance. Donald graduated with an A. B. from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs in 1988 after completing a 158-page long senior thesis titled “The Involvement of International Peacekeeping in Providing Humanitarian Assistance. He later received an M. P. A. from the Woodrow Wilson School in 1991. In 1990, Donald joined the U. S. Foreign Service and went on to serve in most every Office at the U. S. Department of State. Armed with a wide ranging competency in eight languages, including Chinese, Russian, Urdu, and West African Krio, his first posting . . .

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Ann Moore (Togo) — The Volunteer Who Invented the Snugli

  by Jeremiah Norris Colombia 1963-65   After graduating from the University of Cincinnati, Ann Moore taught pediatric nursing at Babies Hospital, Colombia University, in New York. In 1962, the Chief Resident of Pediatrics at Babies Hospital was asked to organized the first Peace Corps medical team to go to Togo, and Ann was recruited along with 30 other medical and health specialists — doctors, nurses, lab techs, a pharmacist, and a sanitation engineer. Their mission was to teach preventive care. For the entire first year in Togo they worked in an abandoned hospital where they treated —and nurtured patients back to health. In the second year, they were able to teach various good health promoting behaviors — like nutrition, latrine building, hand washing, etc. The volunteers all noted and remarked about the outstanding emotional well-being of African infants, either sick or healthy. All of the babies and toddlers were . . .

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The Volunteer Who Used His Corporate Positions in Service to Others — Bob Haas (Ivory Coast)

  by Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963-65)   Robert (Bob) Haas, Peace Corps Volunteer, Ivory Coast, 1964-66, subsequently served as the Chairman of Levi Strauss & Co. He is the son of Walter A. Strauss, and the great-great-grandnephew of the company’s founder, Levi Strauss. Bob received a BA degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, and a MA from Harvard Graduate School of Business in 1968. H was a White House Fellow from 1968 to 1969. He joined Levi Strauss in 1973 and went on to serve others in a variety of corporate roles. Bob was elected to the Board of Directors in 1979, then as President and CEO in 1984, serving until he stepped down in 1999. He became Chairman of the Board in 1989 and retired from the Board in 2014. Under his leadership, Levi Strauss & Company carried out the company’s engagement in corporate social responsibility; . . .

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