The Peace Corps

On September 30, 1963, Associate Director Nancy McNulty arrived in Bogota from Lima, Peru, where she had served as an Associate Director for six months. She brought with her a specialty, and expertise in the techniques of teaching English as a foreign language. These techniques would be employed by those community development Volunteers who teach English in their spare time. They would also be used by the Volunteers specifically assigned to education programs, both at the second school and university level, who went to work about the time that the number of Volunteers in Colombia passed the 600 mark. scene of the largest Peace Corps effort. The extent of the program required further staff additions. Associate Director Betty Hutchinson arrived in Bogota on January 20, 1964. Although she was born in Rosario, Argentina’s second city, Betty compelled high school in Lincoln, Neb., in 1938. Four years later, she received her . . .

WASHINGTON – Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen released the following statement on the passing of President George H.W. Bush.  https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/library/statement-peace-corps-director-jody-olsen-passing-president-george-hw-bush/ “As we pause for a National Day of Mourning today, we send our deepest condolences to the Bush family. We also express our tremendous gratitude for President Bush, for his leadership, his kindness and his lifetime of serving others. In 1985, as vice president, George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara joined then-Peace Corps Director Loret Miller Ruppe on a visit to Mali, where they met with Peace Corps volunteers working on projects in agriculture, energy conservation and rural development. Later, as president, he stated, “The United States Peace Corps built its reputation the old-fashioned way, step by step, village by village, family by family, bringing the world a bit closer one friendship at a time.” “George Bush was a steadfast friend to the Peace Corps and we will . . .

John Ross Winnie was named an Associate Director in Colombia to head the educational television project scheduled for that nation, the first such activity to be undertaken by the Peace Corps anywhere in the world. Born in Clear Lake, Iowa, Winnie was named to Phi Beta Kappa at Cornell of Iowa where he graduated in 1936 with a degree in English. In 1941, he obtained the degree Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa. His specialty was the theater, and he became director successively of the St. Paul Little Theater, the Belfry Summer Theater at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and the Youngstown Playhouse in Youngstown, Ohio, which included a children’s theater school. In May, 1943, he enlisted in the Navy, was sent through the Naval School of Photography in Pensacola, Florida, and spent the next two years as an aerial photographer. In June, 1950, he became an associate professor . . .

In April, 1962, Sheldon was joined by his Deputy Director, Ted Banks, who thereby became the first overseas administrator to be transferred by the Peace Corps from one country to another (in his case, from Chile to Colombia.) On July 25, 1963, Banks was named the first Peace Corps Director in Uruguay. By then, the program in Colombia had become the second largest in the world with 561 Volunteers overseas and in training, and enough additional programs had been negotiated to raise the strength of the effort in Colombia beyond that in the Philippines, which had been first. A second group of 31 rural community development workers arrived in Colombia on May 18, 1962. On November 12 of the same year, the third group – consisting of 69 urban community development workers all of whom had taken training in the slums of New York – arrived in Bogota. Just before . . .

  I met “41” when he was VP with President Reagan. We met in Conakry, Guinea in March 1984. He led the U.S. delegation attending the funeral of Guinea’s first president, Ahmed Sekou Toure. I was assigned as his personal escort for the two days he was in Conakry. A highlight of that memorable event was when all the non-Muslim heads of state were crowded into a small room located on the side of the Grand Mosque in Conakry. We expected to be allowed into the Mosque from this point. We were crammed into this room like sardines in a can. It felt like a sauna bath with Conakry’s 100 F temperature and 90% humidity, especially as we were all dressed in black suits and ties. Our ambassador got separated from us. He was hopelessly blocked by the crush of the crowd from joining us. We were instructed to take off . . .

The first program to be developed for Latin America was planned for the immense, mountainous country-side of Colombia. Co-administration of this rural community development effort as assigned to CARE in the first private agency contract to be signed by the Peace Corps. CARE offered extended experience in community development work in Colombia, and the agency once counted Derek Singer among its administrators there. When he set out to negotiate a Peace Corps program in Colombia, Singer turned naturally in the direction of his former employer. For both the Peace Corps and CARE, the first Colombia program was an exciting experiment, the first attempt at the kind of community action work which has come to occupy the full time of a fourth of all Volunteers overseas. The 60 Volunteers, all men, who turned this experiment into a practical program, entered training at Rutgers University on June 25, 1961. Together with the . . .

“I’m torn between going into high megaton, overkill, intercontinental ballistic missiles, or the Peace Corps.” Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, 1964 

Timmy Napolitano came to the Peace Corps in March, 1961, “on loan” from the National Institutes of Health. For her, the move was permanent—or as permanent as anything in the Peace Corps—although she remained “on loan” for two months after responding to directions to “come now. We’ll arrange your papers later.” If the Peace Corps is not as hectic now as it was then, a certain hectic quality has continued to linger around Mrs. Napolitano’s career. After helping to organize the Near East-South Asia Regional Office, she settled down to pay particular attention to South Asia when queries about the Peace Corps came from Ceylon. In answer to these queries, Mrs. Napolitano was dispatched on October 9, 1961, to the five-year-old island nation off the southern tip of India. In a stay of four months, she surveyed the island from Jaffna to Matara and from wet western coast to the . . .

(The Washington Post,1997)