The Peace Corps

In this series (that I published years ago and republishing for those who have come lately to the site) I will attempt, in short-hand fashion (suitable for blogging), to tell the history of the first years of the agency and the men and women who created the Peace Corps. In those early days of 1960s the agency was full of Mad Men (and a few Mad Women) who were living in a world-of-work atmosphere very much like the provocative AMC drama Mad Men, the program that followed a handful of ruthlessly competitive men and women in New York City who worked in advertising on Madison Avenue. They were living (in case you never saw the series) in an ego-driven world where “selling” was all that matters. The series is set in the early Sixties and has everything we grew up with: cigarette smoking, drinking, sexism, adultery, racism, etc. (I might have left out . . .

The “Peace Corps Postcard” had one more act to play. What happened to Marjorie Michelmore inspired a Broadway musical, Hot Spot. It starred Judy Holliday in her last Broadway show. Premiering on April 19, 1963 at the Majestic Theater in New York, the play closed after only 43 performances and 5 previews, gaining the honor of being one of Broadway’s most famous flops. What was the play about, you’d ask? Well, it was about a Peace Corps Volunteer, a hygiene teacher “Sally Hopwinder” who is stationed in a fictional nation, “D’hum.” PCV Hopwinder concocts a plan to obtain U.S. aid for D’hum by convincing the Pentagon that Russia is about to invade it. It was generally accepted that this political satire was inspired by the furor over the Michelmore postcard. “The New York Times drama critic wrote, “a Peace Corps girl with a warm heart and a knack for getting . . .

In 1965 Bob Gale, then running the Peace Corps Recruitment Office, traveled out to Ibadan, Nigeria, for a COS Conference. Gale had been a vice president at Carlton College and had developed the famous Peace Corps recruitment blitz [the most famous of all was the first in early October 1963 when teams of recruiters hit college campuses; these were mostly non-RPCVs as the first PCVs were just arriving back in the States. These all-out assaults on college campuses were very successful at recruiting Trainees. These early blitz teams were replaced by ’67 with teams of RPCVs working out of regional offices, and HQ non-PCV staff rarely traveled outside of Washington to recruit Volunteers.] Back in Nigeria, Gale arrived late in Ibadan from Washington and met up with a Nigeria APCD and headed for a local bar where he was the only white man having a drink. Then in walked another huge . . .

As for Marjorie. She returned to Peace Corps HQ with Ruth Olson and Tim Adams and went to work with Betty Harris and Sally Bowles to put out the first issue of The Peace Corps Volunteer. It was, of course, an appropriate job, as Coates Redmon states it in her book on the early days of the agency, Come As You Are: The Peace Corps Story, since Marjorie was the first returned Volunteers. In a memorandum to Sargent Shriver–attached to an Evaluation Report on Morocco (1963) done by Ken Love–and written by the legendary early Peace Corps Director of Evaluations, Charlie Peters, Charlie wrote, “Marjorie was as sensitive and as intelligent a Volunteer as we ever had in the Peace Corps.” The lesson that was learned by the Peace Corps was that “even the best young people can be damned silly at times.” According to Gerard T. Rice in his book entitled, The Bold Experiment: JFK’s Peace Corps, “The President’s . . .

Nigerian PCV Aubrey Brown, who had had training and experience in non-violence resistance in the late fifties, led the Volunteers, and the Nigerian students, out of this confrontation over the postcard by the end of October 1961. The PCVs had continued to take some meals and sleep in the dormitories, but they were isolated and shunned by the Nigerian students. Then Aubrey told the Nigerian students in his dorm that he would not eat if they would not eat with him. The Nigerians began to bring him dinner trays to his room but he refused to eat. And soon they invited him to join them at meals. Other Volunteers and students did the same. Slowly, a dialogue began between the students and the Volunteers, which was, as Murray recalls, “more valuable than if the incident had not taken place.” Other Nigerians came to the help of the PCVs. The Nigerian-American Society, . . .

Segments of the U.S. Press were all over the postcard incident. The U.S. News and World Report wrote, “From the moment of its inception, despite laudable aims, the Peace Corps was bound to run into trouble.” They condemned the naivete of the entire concept and claimed, “this is only the first big storm.”   Commonweal wrote in an editorial “The problem involved is really bigger than the Peace Corps for it reflects the gap that exists between the wealthy U.S. and most of the rest of the world. Given this fact, incidents like the postcard affair are bound to happen.”   Former President Eisenhower added his two cents, saying the “postcard” was evidence of the worthlessness of Kennedy’s new idea. However, columnist James Weschsler of the New York Post came to the aid of the Peace Corps and Marjorie. “Nothing in the card was sinister. It contained the instinctive expression . . .

Tom Hayden, who played a key role in student activism of the ’60s and went on to play a role in higher education as a California legislator in the ’80s, died Sunday at the age of 76. While Hayden was one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society, and was the chief author of the Port Huron Statement, which defined the goals of SDS and other activist groups of the ’60s to create a more just society in the United States. (and also known as one of Jane Fonda’s husbands), he also played a role in launching the Peace Corps. Harris Wofford points out in his book, Of Kennedys and Kings how Tom Hayden, editor of the Michigan Daily, was at the Student Union in Michigan when Kennedy spoke to the crowd of students and Wofford writes: “(Hayden) followed the development of the student organization with amazement. It had been an era in . . .

Press Release from Peace Corps https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/library/peace-corps-office-inspector-general-receives-two-awards-excellence/   WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 21, 2016 – The Peace Corps Office of Inspector General (OIG) received two awards for excellence at the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s (CIGIE) 19th Annual Awards Ceremony held on October 20, 2016. CIGIE presented the Award for Excellence in Audits to an OIG team for their “Audit of the Peace Corps’ Healthcare Benefits Administration Contract.” This audit examined how the Peace Corps, through its contractor, processes claims for medical services provided to its Volunteers. The audit team found serious flaws in the Peace Corps’ contracting practices and the contractor did not fully follow the terms in the contract. The audit found Peace Corps spent $1.2 million on services that couldn’t be verified by records. Expert Jeffrey Lee, Lead Auditor Snehal Nanavati, Auditor Ann Lawrence, Former Assistant Inspector General for Audits Bradley Grubb, Assistant Inspector General for . . .

By now at Idlewild a half dozen more Peace Corps HQ people had arrived, all having been dispatched from D.C. These were some of the famous original staffers at the agency: Ruth Olson operated as crisis manager for the occasion. She was well versed for the job. She had come to the Peace Corps in the first week of the agency from years of working in the military during World War II; Betty Harris, a former journalist and political operative from Texas was on hand; Tom Matthews had just arrived back from Bermuda. And also arriving unannounced and unexpected, sneaking through the press of people, was Marjorie’s boyfriend from Boston, an  NAACP lawyer. It was here that Marjorie received her handwritten note from JFK. I don’t know how that was arranged, my guess it was done by Bill Moyers, the rising start of the next Johnson administration, and at age 27, the Associate Director for Public Affairs for . . .

Tim Adams arrived at Idlewild Airport to a terminal overwhelmed with press people carrying tape recorders, cameras, and microphones. Michelmore and Ware were about to touch down on a BOAC flight and Adams saddled up to a group of reporters and asked innocently, “Who’s coming in?” Adams thought it might be Grace Kelly, then due back in the States. “It’s that Peace Corps girl,” someone said and Tim’s heart dropped.   Slipping away from the reporters, Adams pulled out his official government Peace Corps ID and got past the customs officials and when the BOAC flight landed pulled Marjorie and Dick Ware into an empty room. The reporters, however, could see them on the other side of Customs, see Tim frantically telephoning Shriver at the Peace Corps Headquarters. Tim asked what he should do. Shriver told him, “Tim, I don’t want the press talking to Michelmore.”   Adams told Shriver . . .

  Dorothy Cann Hamilton, Founder of French Culinary Institute, Dies in Crash at 67 By Sam Roberts New York Times SEPT. 19, 2016 Dorothy Cann Hamilton (Thailand 1972-74) founded the French Culinary Institute in New York in 1984; it produced such famed graduates as Bobby Flay, Wylie Dufresne and Christina Tosi.   Dorothy Cann Hamilton, a food aficionado who started a vocational course that evolved into one of the world’s leading culinary schools, died on Friday on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. She was 67. She died of injuries sustained in an automobile collision, said Bruce McCann, her cousin and the president of the International Culinary Center in California, the West Coast branch of the school that she founded in New York City in 1984 as the French Culinary Institute. She was the chief executive there. The police said her SUV and a truck hauling a camper collided. Ms. Hamilton, . . .

The October 21, 2016 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education has an edited excerpt of an interview that Kevin Quigley (Thailand 1976-79 & CD Thailand 2013-15) had recently with Chronicle’s Jack Stripling about the college’s unusual approach to decision making, i.e., the students have a major say in what is happening on campus and within the community of 400 students, faculty and staff.. You can watch the interview at: http://www.chronicle.com/article/Video-At-Marlboro-College/237894 Here is the transcript of the short video entitled: “At This College, Students Play a Large Role in Governance” Situated in the foothills of the Green Mountains of southern Vermont, Marlboro College is a small liberal-arts institution of only about 200 undergraduates. One of the college’s most distinctive features is the Town Meeting, a New England–style governance structure that gives everyone, from students to professors to custodial staff, a vote on decisions that range from changes in policy to . . .

I had a cab driver the other day here in Westchester who was a great Trump supporter. He was a white guy who had never been to college, never been in the army, never been in the Peace Corps, never, as far as I could see, done anything for his country. He said Trump would keep jobs in America. I asked him how Trump could keep him driving his taxi and he looked at me in the mirror and shook his head. He had no idea what I was saying. Well, I said, I just read where in Pittsburgh Uber had set up the first driverless taxicabs. The city will be losing over one thousand taxi-driving jobs because of it, once it was fully operational. Also, I read where self-driving vehicles would also replace about 20,000 truck drivers and another 10,000 bus drivers. Now the “drivers” could get ‘better paying’ . . .

Meanwhile back at Murray Frank’s home, the PCVs had assembled and were trying to understand the intense reaction of the Nigerians. Nigeria, newly independent, was surrounded, as Murray put it, “with the visages of the colonial period, including and especially white people who symbolized a colonial past.”   What had quickly emerged in Nigeria was a self-image based on their new freedom, especially among the young intellectuals. These students and others were asking: how could the Americans help us if they were writing letters home about them?   While many of the new PCVs had experienced student protests in the U.S. they were still unprepared for what was directed at them. Could they survive the postcard? They didn’t know. They began to ask themselves: why stay when so many students wanted them to leave?   Other PCVs said. We know Nigeria needs teachers. We can teach. We are not imperialists, . . .

Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69) is the author of several novels including Soldiers in Hiding, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and Ahmed’s Revenge, winner of Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Fiction Award. He is professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and now lives in Tacoma, Washington. His new book–just published–is entitled Bob Stevenson and has just been published by Bellevue Literary Press. It is the story of a Dr. Ruby Okada who meets a charming man with a Scottish accent in the elevator of her psychiatric hospital. Unaware that he is an escaping patient, she falls under his spell, and her life and his are changed forever by the time they get to the street. Who is the mysterious man? Is he Archie B. Billingsly, suffering from dissociative identity disorder and subject to brilliant flights of fancy and bizarre, violent fits? Or is he the reincarnation of Robert . . .