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[Larry Lesser, a retired FSO, served as DCM in Bangladesh and Rwanda and as deputy executive director of the Department’s NEA Bureau. Other overseas tours were in Belgium, Burkina Faso, India, and Nigeria – the latter as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Since retiring he has been a re-employed annuitant, chiefly for the Office of Inspector General, as an editor of human rights reports for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), and teaching mediation at the Foreign Service Institute. Lesser has been an OSCE supervisor or observer for numerous elections in eastern Europe. He was an appointed member of the Foreign Service Grievance Board 1997-2003, and an elected member of the American Foreign Service Association board of governors 2005-07.This piece appeared in American Diplomacy. They gave permission to republish it. ] Marry an Asian Woman by Larry Lesser (Nigeria 1963-65) I’m thinking about a man I saw when . . .

I got an email the other day from David Raphael who was a college student back in 1962 and worked as an intern at the Peace Corps HQ.  My piece on Nan McEvoy got him thinking about the ‘other’ women in the building when he arrived in Washington from Antioch College in the summer of ’62. He was assigned to the Africa Regional Office and worked with, he said, two real power houses: Cynthia Courtney, English-speaking Africa Division Director, and Francesca Gobi, French-speaking Africa Division Director. David said that these women, and others in the Africa Regional Office, were all recruited from the Africa American Institute (AAI), which years later was exposed by Ramparts magazine as being a CIA front. Little did we know! I met Cynthia Courtney in the late summer of ’62 when I returned from Ethiopia and went to work in the Office of Volunteer Services (DVS). Cynthia was one of the . . .

January 7, 2013 Even “Rudy” Can’t Get a B.C.S. Championship Ticket Posted by Tony D’Souza How hard was it to get tickets to Monday night’s Notre Dame vs. Alabama B.C.S. National Championship game? Even “Rudy” couldn’t land one. As much a part of Notre Dame football lore as anyone, especially since the 1993 release of the eponymous film about his time with the team, in the run-up to the game Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger found himself as just another number, one of more than a hundred thousand Notre Dame alumni and donor “friends” who applied for the fourteen thousand and five hundred “face value” tickets allotted to the school by the B.C.S. (Notre Dame took in at least $1.2 million in non-refundable ticket-lottery application fees. Another twenty-five hundred of the university’s tickets went to students.) “I didn’t get one through the lottery,” Rudy told me by phone from Las Vegas, where . . .

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. The Go-Between L. P. Hartley Pity this busy monster, manunkind, Not. Progress is a comfortable disease: e.e. cummings In the fall of ’67 I arrived on the tiny island of Menorca, the most easterly of the Balearic Islands. I arrived from the highlands of Ethiopia after finishing up two-years as an APCD. I arrived on a DC-3 in the last year before the island’s new airport opened for jets and package tours from England, Germany and the Low Countries. I arrived in Menorca before the way of life on that tiny island changed forever. It was a golden time and I thought it might last forever, this quiet eye in the hurricane rush of summer tourism to the Mediterranean. I remember how on the first evening in Mahon I walked from my hotel through the tight, winding streets of . . .

Two Dozen RPCVs Assist Washington-Area Peruvian Consulate With June 5th Run-off Election for Peru’s Presidency Twelve Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who had served in Peru or who served as Volunteers elsewhere but also worked in Peru (albeit with other agencies), answered the call from Deputy Consul General Maria Eugenia Chiozza de Zela of the Peruvian Consulate to report to the Consulate’s Mid-Atlantic Regional polling place on Sunday, June 5th.  They were recruited to help with Peru’s Presidential run-off election.  Another dozen Spanish-speaking RPCVs from Metro Washington supplemented the first 12. The contingent was headed by RPCV Mike Wolfson (Peru, 1964-66) who made and adjusted assignments throughout the day.  Mike also walked the rounds to the six polling locations spread out over the sprawling campuses of a high school and an adjacent middle school, distributing water bottles to volunteers assisting voters while sweltering under the noonday sun.  Most RPCVs were stationed outside explaining to over 13,500 voters where to find their correct building, room, and . . .

As many of you did, I watched the ABC 20/20 program last Friday night that included a segment entitled “Scandal Inside the Peace Corps: Investigation into whether the Peace Corps puts women into dangerous situations.”  I felt a great deal of sympathy for those involved – Katie Puzey, who was murdered March 12, 2009 in Benin, her family, and the RPCV women who stepped forward to tell their stories of being attacked while serving overseas. And to see Katie smiling out from the past in a homemade video shot by her cousin who visited her site only months before the brutal murder was breathtakingly sad. I also felt very sorry for the Peace Corps’ new deputy director, Carrie Hessler-Radelet, who endured endless 20/20 questions: “What did the Peace Corps Administration know? When did they know it?” Carrie was unable or unwilling to answer anything. It appeared by the end of the long interrogation that . . .

“What do you mean, Sarge?” Bob Gale asked, alone in the conference room with Shriver. “The school year is over. It’s the end of April. The students spend May studying for finals. It’s a tense time on campus. I don’t think we should impose ourselves. We hit Wisconsin at a perfect time. But there won’t be another perfect time until next fall.” Shriver wasn’t having any of that. “What’s the nearest equivalent of a school like Wisconsin?” Shriver wanted to know, disregarding Gale’s protests. “We need a big, liberal-learning place where you have contacts?” Shriver was on one side of the long conference table, leaning back in his chair, asking questions. Gale was on the other side, keeping his distance, pacing back and forth. A moving target was harder to hit, he kept thinking. “Michigan,” Gale finally answered, sighing. He had to say something. There was no turning back. Haddad had abandoned . . .

At Idlewild Tim, Ruth, and Betty convince Margorie to go to Puerto Rico. Michelmore agreed to go for a ‘few days’ and Tim informed Shriver, telling Sarge he would keep in touch. He boarded the plane with Ruth Olson and Marjorie, thinking that once he was on the plane to Puerto Rico, he’ll be okay. Tim was wrong. On the plane, Adams recognized Carl Mydans. At the time Mydans was a famous photojournalist, one of the giants for Life Magazine. Adams thinks: this is not a coincidence. With Mydans was a beautiful young woman reporter, Marjorie Byers. They are in first class. Of course, this is Life Magazine. When they are airbourne, Carl walks back from first class to talk to Tim who is riding in coach. [Of course, he works for the Peace Corps.] “Carl is such a gentlemen,” Tim says, “I finally relented and we were able to . . .

One of the important ways that Bill Moyers helped establish the Peace Corps was in his ability to get Shriver to work the halls of Congress. Shriver wasn’t a Washington type. When he began to sell the Peace Corps idea to Congress he had only been in D.C. for four months. But it was up to him to sell the new agency. Kennedy had told his sister, Shriver’s wife, “Well, Sarge and Lyndon Johnson wanted to have a separate Peace Corps, separate from AID, and so I think they ought to take charge of getting it through Congress. I’ve got plenty of other legislation I’m struggling with.” “When he said that,” Shriver recalled, “I just said, ‘I’m putting this piece of legislation through!’” Shriver’s ace-in-the-hole was Bill Moyers. Peter Grothe, who had come to the Peace Corps from the Hill, having been a speech writer for Senator Hubert Humphrey in 1960, said . . .

If you watch Mad Men you know all about the office atmosphere and the thick layer of smoke that filled the offices. It was no better in the Peace Corps during those early years in 1960s. Flipping though pages of old Peace Corps publications, I see half a dozen people who I knew, all with cigarettes in their hands. Al Meisel in the Training Division; Charlie Peters, head of Evaluation; Jim Gibson, head of Agricultural Affairs. He liked cigars and smoked them in the building! The wonderful Jules Pagano.  Another heavy smoker. Howard Greenberg in Management; Jack Vaughn, the second director, and Frank Mankiewicz; evaluator Dick Elwell, (as I recall, everyone in evaluation smoked and drank and wrote great prose). Doug Kiker and his crew in Public Affairs knew how to light up. And so did Betty Harris. With her cigarette holder. When the Mad Men weren’t smoking, they were drinkings. Warren Wiggins told me that . . .