Search Results For -Mad Woman Part two

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 . . .

I got an interesting email over the weekend from a woman friend who was an early PCV. She was responding to the posted I put up about the two events on March 17 that profiles the ‘founders’ of the agency. She made a valid point, speaking about the Peace Corps HQ panel discussion, saying: “With all due respect to these folks, do you find it as perplexing as I do that none of these  panels ever includes early Volunteers–there are some fairly accomplished people around town who were part of Ghana 1 or Chile 1 or Colombia 1 or even Philippines 1! “I would think that audiences may want to know what it was like from the perspective of the Volunteer.  These guys–and you do notice that  with the exception of Mary Ann, they are all guys (shades of 1961) –provided lots of vision but they had little idea of the realities faced by the . . .

[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 . . .

 [This blog was posted this morning by RPCV writer Larry Leamer on Huffington Post website. Larry’s most recent book is  Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach.] Sarge’s Dream When I joined the Peace Corps in 1964, Sargent Shriver was my hero. I was stationed two days from a road in the mountains of the Himalayan kingdom and I never met the director of the Peace Corps. But he inspired me. He was “Sarge” to all of us, and we often talked about him. He visited Nepal once, this exuberant, inspiring presence who believed that the only thing higher than Mt. Everest was the human spirit. He thought people were capable of anything, even me. We just had to do it. When I started my trilogy on the Kennedy family in the late eighties, I got to know Sarge, and I realized it was not easy being married . . .

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 . . .