Profile in Citizenship

  By Jeremiah Norris (Colombia 1963–65)  • In 1962, when Paul Tsongas was in training at Georgetown University to become a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia, on that first night as trainees were beginning to know each other, they were all asking “why did you join?” He answered: “I am going to run for office and the Peace Corps would be to my credit.”  At that time, it was a distant dream. Yet, it set him on a path that would subsequently propel him to be a viable candidate for the presidency of the United States. After his Volunteer days in Ethiopia, that dream was in process of fulfilment had not that cruel master — fate — tragically intervened. After earning a BA Degree from Dartmouth College in 1962, Paul became one of the earliest Volunteers at a time when JFK’s signature on the Executive Order that authorized a Peace Corps was . . .

  The Volunteer Who Opened Doors to a Wider World of Opportunities By Jeremiah Norris Colombia (1963-65)  • Maureen Orth attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1964, then became a Peace Corps Volunteer in a rural site outside of Medellin, Colombia, 1964-66. After Colombia, she became a Peace Corps recruiter in the Midwest and then headed the Peace Corps west coast Office of Public Affairs, then earned a graduate degree in journalism at the University of California, Los Angeles. In an essay titled as “Twice in My Life,” she recorded an early experience as a Volunteer when on one memorable Sunday afternoon a dramatic posse of five men on horseback, dressed in black fedoras and wearing traditional ruanas galloped up to her front door in the barrio. They were leading an extra horse for her. They rode straight up into the mountains for about three miles to meet an isolated . . .

  A Profile of Citizenship By Jeremiah Norris Colombia (1963-65)  • The author of Our Woman in Havana, Vicki Huddleston, was raised in Hungry Horse, Montana. She graduated from the University of Montana, entered the Peace Corps as a Volunteer in Peru, 1964-65. After Peace Corps, she attended graduate school at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, followed by becoming a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Afterward, she went on to a distinguished career with the Department of State, serving as Ambassador to Madagascar, then under Presidents Bush and Clinton, as the Chief of the U. S. Interests Section in Havana, finally as Ambassador in Mali. In her book, Vicki chronicles several compelling memories of her official interventions with Fidel Castro, as well as some risky initiatives she undertook to allow Cubans an opportunity to bridge the differences between what their government was telling them and external events . . .

  Note from the editor: In the past four years, one would have to have been an expert in the forensic sciences to find any article in the press or social media on the Peace Corps. Then, in March of 2020, a virus resurrected it to public awareness when the Peace Corps withdrew all of its 7,000+ Volunteers from their overseas posts out of an abundance of caution for their health. If Volunteers in active service aren’t perceived as still a viable representation of the Peace Corps’ raison d’etre, then perhaps it can be found in the dividends that returned Volunteers continue to invest in our society as responsible citizens of the world. They are emblematic of the Peace Corps’ Third Goal: “Help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.” Since its founding in 1961, some 285,000 Volunteers have served around the world. After returning . . .

A Profile in Citizenship By Jerry Norris (Colombia 1963-64) • In my time as a country director for a Cooperative Development Group in Colombia, one of the Volunteers in that group was posted to the country’s poorest and most under-resourced area: the Choco. It is on Colombia’s west coast, has a rainfall of some 400 inches a year, is largely jungle, thinly populated — mostly by indigenous native tribal groups and decedents of former African slaves, and it has few schools beyond the primary level. It is probable that in the Peace Corps long history of having thousands of Volunteers in Colombia, not more than 5 were ever posted in the Choco. Yet, into this unpromising site with two Volunteers, Ben Moyer (1965-67), a recent graduate of Yale University, was posted as their replacement. Those early Volunteers had teed-up the El Valle Agricultural Cooperative in its formative stages, such as securing its Legal Charter . . .