The Peace Corps

What continues to surprise me is how few people–since that morning in the Mayflower Hotel–have read “A Towering Task” the policy paper written by Wiggins and Josephson. The document was the first draft of defining the Peace Corps; it was in some ways the Holy Grail of the agency. When I asked Warren Wiggins about this, he commented wryly, “It’s marvelous that nobody has read it because, you see, in most ways I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. In some ways I was dead on, but I did recommend that we ship air-conditioned trailers to the Philippines to house the Volunteers. It’s a far cry from the theology of the Peace Corps that evolved, but then, those were the early days.” What is clear now from the safety of time and distance is that being anti-establishment, amateurish, anti-professional was the reason for the success of the Peace . . .

The question in 1961 at the Maiatico Building was: would anyone apply to the Peace Corps? Could the United States produce enough Americans of high quality and character to make the Peace Corps successful? Between March 1 and June 1, 1961, after the Peace Corps preliminary policies were set, approximately 10,000 Americans filled out and mailed in Peace Corps applications. From June to December 31, 1961, Americans volunteered at the rate of 1,000 per month. In those early months, the Peace Corps made little effort to attract Volunteers, preferring to wait until it had a clear mandate from the Congress both in terms of authorization and appropriation. That mandate came on September 22, 1961. With bipartisan national endorsement, the Peace Corps took the initiative in explaining its program and the opportunities for Peace Corps service. October and November 1961 were taken up in preparing an adequate public information and public . . .

Brian Forde (Nicaragua 2003-05) co-founded the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab and was formerly a senior advisor at The White House.  Today he is co-founded the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. • Earlier this week, President-elect Trump met with some of the top leaders of American tech companies. Some of these leaders are trying to find common ground after being on the receiving end of some of his sharp-worded tweets. Like many of my friends in the tech community, I’m faced with the reality of a Trump presidency and searching for a way to honor the calls of President Obama and Secretary Clinton for national unity and a chance for the president-elect to lead. My struggle comes from looking for common ground with a president-elect whose policy goals I largely do not support but recognizing from my time working in the Obama White House just how ineffective obstructionist politics . . .

Scratch any RPCV or PCV and they’ll tell you the three goals of the Peace Corps. While the wording varies from one publication to the next, these are the goals: (1) Contribute to the development of critical countries and regions; (2) Promote international cooperation and goodwill toward the country; (3) Contribute to the education of America and to more intelligent American participation in the world.  Now, those are the stated goals, and I know that they have been tweaked with by staff and PCVs over the last 50 years. For example, “living at the level of the HCNs” is often stated as Goal # 2. But the question is, who came up with these goals and why three? Well, at the famous Mayflower Hotel in the winter months of 1961 when the task force of Shriver/Wofford/Wiggins/Josephson and a handful of others began to draft the proposal to give JFK that would define . . .

The Peace Corps actually ‘started’ the day after Kennedy inauguration. Kennedy telephoned Shriver and asked him to form a presidential Task Force “to report how the Peace Corps could be organized and then to organize it.” Shriver telephoned Harris Wofford and they rented two rooms for offices in the Mayflower Hotel, downtown in Washington, D.C. They were the “Task Force.” They began to call people they thought might know something about international development and living in the developing world. One name led to another. Shriver says that he had no long-term, premeditated vision of what the Peace Corps might be. “My style was to get bright, informative, creative people and then pick their brains.” The first official meeting of the Task Force was scheduled for February 6. Kennedy had requested a report from Shriver by the end of February. Shriver would later say, “I needed help badly.” On Sunday night, . . .

In Shriver’s memo to Kennedy, Sarge had written, “We have submitted to your Special Counsel legal memoranda showing how the Peace Corps can be created as a program agency in the State Department within the existing Mutual Security framework….Congress can consider the program fully when it deals with the requests for specific legislation and funds for FY 1962.” Shriver and the others who had drafted this memo and come up with the “idea of a Peace Corps” saw the new agency as being within the State Department so that it “can work closely with State and ICA, drawing on their personnel, services and facilities, particularly pending reorganization of the whole foreign aid program. But the Peace Corps should be a semi-autonomous entity with its own public face. This new wine should not be poured into the old ICA bottle.” While the Band of Boys in the Mayflower Hotel thought this . . .

Sally LaRue is one of the first PCVs to enroll in the online MFA program at California’s National University. It is the start, I hope, of a full class of PCVs and RPCVs getting MFAs in Creative Writing from the special MFA program I’m trying to start that focuses on Peace Corps writers. This writing MFA is sponsored by Peace Corps Writers and the NPCA. I asked Sally to write a short note about how it is going for her as she is in her second year in Mongolia as a TEFL teacher in a secondary school where, she also writes, “I spend a lot of time teaching students funny dances.” Sally writes: Only two classes into the MCW program at NU, I have written more and learned more about writing than ever before. I debated for some time about the benefits of a Master’s degree in Creative Writing. Would . . .

WWW.DROPDEAD by Richard Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) Writing as Richard Stevenson MLR Press Publisher November 2016 (Kindle) $6.99,  $14.99 (Paperback) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971-73) • This book is part of “The Donald Strachey Mystery Series” which includes fourteen books, the first one being published in 2003. The author, Richard Lipez, AKA Richard Stevenson, is an openly gay author and RPCV Ethiopia, 1962-64. The mystery unfolds in the words of Detective Don Strachey, a droll, intrepid guide who takes the reader step by step in search of the killer of one of “KickAssQueer’s” young editors who have created a gay website for news, gossip and a forum to exchange opinions about GLBT life in America. As the plot artfully unfolds, PI Strachey must determine whether the murderer, and eventually kidnapper of the deceased editor’s companion, a harsh critic, gay or straight, is responsible for the young editor’s death and . . .

The famous “Mayflower Gang” created the Peace Corps in 30 days in two rooms of the Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut Avenue several blocks from the White House in February 1961. The ‘Gang’ was led by Shriver, Harris Wofford, Warren Wiggins, Bill Josephson and a half dozen others giving suggestions and making their points. These were ‘advisors’ like the Secretary of State Dean Rush; Father Hesburgh, President of Notre Dame;  Gordon Boyce, President of the Experiment in International Living; Albert Sims of the Institute of International Education; George Carter, a campaign worker on civil rights issues; Franklin Williams, an organizer of the campaign for black voter registration and a student of African affairs; Adam Yarmolinsky, a foundation executive. These advisers came from all corners (if not both rooms in the suite) and most of them wanted one clear statement of what the Peace Corps would be, but Sarge Shriver held the position that Peace — not Development . . .

I had an email recently from a young PCV asking for more stories about the Mad Men and Women of the early days of the agency. Well, there are lots of stories to tell. In those first days of 1961, everyone who went to Washington wanted to be part of the New Frontier, and particularly part of that new agency, the Peace Corps.  The new agency attracted the best and the brightest, or so they claimed. An early document of the agency said that the staff in D.C. and those staffers around the world was composed of “skiers, mountain climbers, big-game hunters, prizefighters, football players, polo players and enough Ph.D.’s [30] to staff a liberal arts college.” There were 18 attorneys, of whom only four continue to work strictly as attorneys in the General Counsel’s office and the rest [including Sargent Shriver] did other jobs. Also, all of these employees . . .

Brent Ashabranner (1921 -2016) was Deputy Director of the Peace Corps between 1967 and 1969. Following service in World War II, graduate school and a brief period of teaching, Brent spent thirty years working overseas, including starting the first Peace Corps program in Nigeria and becoming director of Peace Corps programs in India. Prior to his retirement in 1985, Brent worked for ten years with the Ford Foundation in the Philippines and Indonesia. It was in retirement that he wrote more than 30 books on cross-cultural topics for junior readers, books that resulted in more than 40 awards. The following is from Peace Corps OnLine, a website produced by Hugh Pickens (Peru 1970-73) Brent Remembers: I have never had any doubt that the books I read as a boy influenced the direction of my life, including my life as a writer. I grew up in a small Oklahoma town, but I was fascinated . . .

From  Producer and Director Alana DeJoseph (Mali 1992-94) TOWERING TASK MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: December 2016 ~ HAPPY HOLIDAYS ~ Please consider donating by the end of the year. Just in time for the holidays! We’re in the home stretch and would love your support to help get us there! It’s easy to donate, and your gift is tax-deductible. In return for your donation, we’ll create a gift for you. We’ll be compiling a VIDEO COLLAGE of all of you who donate. We’ll add this video to our website, include in an upcoming newsletter, and share it on our Facebook page – which you can then repost! All you need to do after donating is one of the following: * Email us a picture from your Peace Corps service at info@peacecorpsdocumentary.com; or * Post your photo to your own Facebook page, tag us, and say you donated to support A Towering Task. $1,000 or more: we’ll personally thank you in the documentary’s . . .

  Peace Corps may be “Forever Young” in the public imagination but in reality, it is one of the oldest “new” federal agencies. Its fifty-five years of operation will take a gigantic effort to accurately document. Public, independent and well funded, a Peace Corps Library needs more to be successful. It needs a professional Librarian Research staff, a RPCV advisory committee, an Internet presence as well as a physical location.   Why a Professional Librarian Research Staff? The materials, books, documents, memorabilia and electronic items are scattered all over. Some are in the public domain; some are in private or public university collections. Most of the documents from Peace Corps’ first decades are hard copy and have not been digitalized. The expertise of a professional Librarian Research staff is necessary to locate all of the items, to create a catalog system and to work to make these items accessible, even if . . .

  Far Away In the Sky: A Memoir of the Biafran Airlift David L. Koren (Nigeria 1964–67) First Peace Corps Writers Edition June 2016 346 pages $18.85 (paperback) Reviewed by Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961–63) • The Biafran war for independence from Nigeria ended 47 years ago (1970), yet the horrors that occurred before and during the civil war linger. So does the idea of Biafra: an independent African state created by Africans, not by a European colonial power drawing the boundaries, a modern state with an efficient and productive democratic government. They seem to have a life of their own. One of the reasons for this was a dramatic humanitarian airlift operated from the remote island of Sao Tome to shuttle food and medical supplies into Biafra for a civilian population being deliberately starved into submission. The airlift was organized by a hodgepodge of church and humanitarian organizations, contracted planes and . . .