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Buffeted by controversy, an American institution faces an even deeper question: why it exists at all By Gal Beckerman May 15, 2011 Fifty years ago this spring, President John F. Kennedy breathed life into what had seemed at first like simply an ingenious campaign promise: to send idealistic young people – “America’s best resource” – out into the furthest villages and towns of the developing world to boost the image of the United States abroad. This was the Peace Corps. In the years since, more than 200,000 Americans have served as volunteers, and the Peace Corps itself has become more than just another government agency. It has become an idea, the perfect embodiment of America at its best: selfless and unobtrusive, trying to do good in the world by helping the less fortunate achieve their potential. This year the agency is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a plethora of parties, . . .

In the fall of 1964, just back from Ethiopia, and working for the Division of Volunteer Support at Peace Corps HQ, I met Peverley Dennett and Bill Kinsey during their Training at Syracuse University. Bill had been assigned to Malawi and Peppy [as Peverley was called] to Tanzania. In those early years groups were often staged together on college campuses, but that decision was later changed because too many PCVs from different projects were meeting up and falling in love. The Peace Corps might be the “greatest job you’ll ever love” but Washington didn’t want you “falling in love” during Training. Bill and Peverley were two young handsome kids just out of college. Bill, as I recall, had a bright smile, blond hair cut into a crew cut, an All-American looks. Peverley was sweet and shy and very pretty. They were the picture of what Peace Corps Volunteers were all about in those early days: . . .

Robert Potter with Judy Irola, who did that wonderful Niger ’66 film, recently did a short youtube piece on Jake Feldman who says he’s the first PCV. Jake was a Volunteer in then-called-Tanganyika back in ’61. He might indeed be the first Volunteer, but so many RPCVs claim that honor I’m losing count. Anyway, it is a nice piece, take a look, and for those who missed the background on this issue, here is a short blog (reprinted)  I wrote almost a year ago on the whole issue of  “who was first.” Check out the youtube item. Jake has a lot of good things to say about being in the Peace Corps, #1 or not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUpx8MVdOuI&feature=youtube_gdata_player Who Was The First Peace Corps Volunteer? Posted by John Coyne on Sunday, April 18th 2010      Lately there has been endless talk among RPCVs about who was the first PCV. Perhaps I’m partially to blame with my blogging about the early days of the Peace Corps. Or . . .

[Republican Congressman Ted Poe of Texas later this month, or early next month, will begin a series of Hearings on the Hill about PCVs being attacked and raped. Here is the speech he gave today, February 9, 2011, on the Hill.] ROLL CALL OF THE PEACE CORPS VICTIMS Washington, Feb 9 – Mr. Speaker, I want to address an important issue that has come to light recently. It has to do with the wonderful group of volunteers that serve in the United States Peace Corps. The Peace Corps was the idea of John F. Kennedy. He went to the University of Michigan way back in 1960, and he started encouraging those college students to get involved in other countries and helping those countries in their social development and their cultural development in the name of peace. A wonderful idea. When he became President in 1961, President Kennedy signed an Executive order establishing the . . .

BACK IN 1965-67, the Peace Corps had the idea of letting two RPCVs make a film about being in the Peace Corps. I’m not quite sure how it all came about, but I’m guessing the idea had the encouragement of Harris Wofford, then an Associate Director of the agency, and the film was made by two Nigeria One RPCVs: Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961–63) and David Schickele (Nigeria 1961–63). The film was called Give Me a Riddle. The Peace Corps was planning to use it for recruitment. Well, when RPCVs make a movie of their experiences, let me tell you, the agency is never going to use it for recruitment. Give Me a Riddle was too honest a representation of Peace Corps Volunteers life overseas; the agency couldn’t handle it. I was thinking about Give Me a Riddle last  night as I watched Niger’66: A Peace Corps Diary. It was done by two Niger Volunteers, . . .

Stanley Meisler is the author of When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years. Meisler was a foreign and diplomatic correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, the Nation, and Smithsonian, and lives in Washington, D.C. The family joke was that President John F. Kennedy handed his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, a lemon and Shriver turned it into lemonade. The lemon was the new Peace Corps, and Shriver, who died on Tuesday just six weeks short of the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, transformed that lemon in 1961 into the most dynamic, popular and exciting agency of the new administration. The success of the Peace Corps made Shriver a national celebrity. President Kennedy had not intended the new agency to be so dynamic nor his brother-in-law to be so celebrated. In the hierarchy of the large Kennedy family, brothers-in-law . . .

I remember back in ’95 e-mailing Susan Snelson, who was finishing up her tour as a PCV in Poland and asking her how she had become involved in the Peace Corps. In the late ’80s, she told me, she had gone to visit her son who was a PCV in Niger and she decided ‘she could do this!’ and came home to Midland, Texas, where she owned a travel business, turned the business over to others, joined the Peace Corps, and went off to Poland to help them develop their tourist business. Because she had been in the travel industry, she was assigned to the Ministry of Tourist. It all made a lot of sense to the CD and the Polish government, but they, the Tourist Bureau, had no idea what to do with Susan. They gave her a desk to sit at, and for awhile she sat at it, but the Ministry had no idea who . . .

Lately there has been endless talk among RPCVs about who was the first PCV. Perhaps I’m partially to blame with my blogging about the early days of the Peace Corps. Or is it because we are reaching the milestone of the 50? Some RPCVs are drawing on faulty memories, old plane tickets, anecdotal incidents, typewritten letters from Shriver, and yellow copies of telegrams folded and unfolded over the last fifty years, to make their historical (if not hysterical) claim. “Yes, it was I! I was the first PCV!” Well, let me take another tact. Let me suggest to you who really was the first Volunteer. We can end the guessing game, solve the mystery, and all go on and argue about something else. As we said back in the Sixties: Here’s the skinny. The Peace Corps began in a light drizzle at 2 a.m. in the early morning of October . . .

Arriving for work on or before March 1, 1961, the day President Kennedy signed the executive order establishing the Peace Corps, were a few women who were early volunteer staffers and who would become famous in those first years of the agency. The majority of these women were well connected by family or friends to Shriver and eager to work at the Peace Corps, the shining star of Kennedy’s administration. The Peace Corps was the ‘hot’ agency and everyone, of course,  wanted to be connected to Kennedy–if they couldn’t be in the White House–they wanted to be with Shriver and the Peace Corps. The women at the time were mostly ‘second class’ citizens in the world-of-work. They were not, for example, sitting at the ‘big conference table” at Senior Staff meetings. Looking at old black-and-photos of Peace Corps HQ meetings, you might see that Elizabeth (Betty) Forsling Harris had wedged  herself into the group, but that . . .