John Coyne Babbles

Murray Frank In The Middle of the Infamous PostCard Incident, Part 2

A couple of Nigeria I Volunteers hitched a ride from the University College of Ibadan to APCD Murray Frank's home with the news about the postcard. Protests were beginning on campus they told Murray; Volunteers were being ostracized. This was clearly not a training issue, and now Murray Frank was in charge of what to do next.

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Frank had arrived in Ibadan early in October. While Volunteers were settling into dormitories at the University of Ibadan (then part of the University of London and called University College of Ibadan) to continue the training started at Harvard, he was arranging for Volunteer assignments. This meant Murray would visit a potential location, meet the principal and staff, establish that there was a position for the Volunteer to fill, and check out living conditions. By Friday, October 13, he was just getting started with this work, and also learning who the new Volunteers were back on campus at the University College of Ibadan.

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The day after the postcard was found, Volunteers went into their college dormitory dining halls for lunch and found copy--word for word--of that postcard at each place. According to Murray, "Marjorie’s comments described how the average Nigerian lived. While not inaccurate, her comments were not flattering, and to a Nigerian student — especially one concerned about Western imperialism — the comments seemed downright insulting."

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When Frank learned what had happened on campus from the Volunteers who had hitched a ride to his place, he immediately arranged for all the Volunteers to come to my home that night for a meeting. He then went to the USIS library to phone Lagos--Frank did not have a phone in his home--to speak with Brent Ashabranner, Nigeria's first Peace Corps Director. Brent Ashabranner cabled Peace Corps Washington with the news.

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By coincidence, the second-in-command at the American Embassy, the Deputy Chief of Mission, was on his way back to Lagos after a trip up North. Murray and Marjorie met him at a local rest house and they all agreed Marjorie should go with the DCM back to Lagos. It was while at the rest house that Murray spotted an AP stringer staying there and he quickly realized the reporter would be onto what had happened with the Peace Corps Volunteer at the university. Murray knew the postcard incident would be on the AP the next day, and he was right.  By Monday morning, the news of PCV Marjorie Michelmore and the infamous postcard was a headline in every daily newspaper in America.

[Part 2]

The Infamous Peace Corps Postcard, Part 1

[A number of people have emailed me to ask about my mentioning of the "Marjorie Michelmore Peace Corps Postcard." What was that, they asked, having never heard of it. Well, here's the full story, in several blogs.]

Marjorie Michelmore was a twenty-three-year-old magna cum laude graduate of Smith College when she became one of the first people to apply to the new Peace Corps. She was an attractive, funny, and smart woman who was selected to go to Nigeria. After seven weeks of training at Harvard, her group flew to Nigeria. There she was to complete the second phase of teacher training at University College at Ibadan, fifty miles north of the capital of Lagos. By all accounts, she was an outstanding Trainee.

Then on the evening of October 13, 1961, she wrote a postcard to a boyfriend in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here is what she had to say:

Dear Bobbo: Don't be furious at getting a postcard. I promise a letter next time. I wanted you to see the incredible and fascinating city we were in. With all the training we had, we really were not prepared for the squalor and absolutely primitive living conditions rampant both in the city and in the bush. We had no ideas what "underdeveloped" meant. It really is a revelation and after we got over the initial horrified shock, a very rewarding experience. Everyone except us lives on the streets, cooks in the streets, sells in the streets, and even goes to the bathroom in the street. Please writer. Marge.

P.S. We are excessively cut off from the rest of the world.

The postcard never was mailed. It is said that it was found on the grounds of University College at Ibadan near Marjorie's dormitory, Queen Elizabeth Hall. The finder was a Nigerian student at the college. Copies of the postcard were made and distributed. Volunteers were immediately denounced as "agents of imperialism" and "members of America's international spy ring."

The protest made front-page news in Nigeria and it sparked a minor international incident. As the Nigerian Ambassador to the United States put it, "No one likes to be called primitive."

Smack in the middle of this "international incident" was Murray Frank, the thirty-four-year-old Western Regional Director of the Peace Corps in Nigeria, who had arrived in-country only weeks before the Trainees and was busy developing sites for the Volunteers when the infamous postcard was found.

[Part 1]

July Issue of PeaceCorpsWriters

We have been having some problems with our host [a non-profit outfit, wouldn't you know] but we think we are okay and back on line with the July issue [the latest] PeaceCorpsWriters.

In this issue
We have reviews of four new books, a list of 16 new books that have recently been published, news about recent accomplishments of RPCV writers in Literary Type, and an interview with John Bidwell, a water resource manager in the Peace Corps. John started his branding firm, Bidwell ID, in 1999 and now employs five employees. He works with clients nationwide, many of them being cause-driven organizations. Recently John helped his wife, Kris Holloway, brand her Peace Corps book, Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali that just won the Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award. John has a lot to of good suggestions for Peace Corps writers and how they should approach writing their books, and then, publishing and marketing them.

Finally we publish a beautifully written essay by Joseph Monninger, who was in Upper Volta as a Volunteer in 1977-79. Paris 1977 recounts his journey home from Africa when he landed in Paris at twenty-two hopelessly in love with literature.

To to www.peacecorpswriters.org It should be working!

RPCV Makes The HILL'S 'HOT' List, And He Is A Republican!

[Just when you thought my blog was about important issues, I give you this!]

Every summer The Hill publishes a list of the 50 hottest folks on Capitol Hill. Jeff Eisenhauer, who was in Tanzania, as an environmental PCV, made the list. Today, the 26-year-old works for Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.). He's not married, but he's 'involved.' Anyway, what worthy woman would go out with a Republican, RPCV or not! [Maybe, she'll think she can change him over time and with enough love. No, it never works. If they are a Republican at 26, they'll be Dick Cheney at 50!]

Every summer The Hill publishes a list of the 50 hottest folks on Capitol Hill. Jeff Eisenhauer, who was in Tanzania, as an environmental PCV, made the list. Today, the 26-year-old works for Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.). He's not married, but he's 'involved.' Anyway, what worthy woman would go out with a Republican, RPCV or not! [Maybe, she'll think she can change him over time and with enough love. No, it never works. If they are a Republican at 26, they'll be Dick Cheney at 50!]

Transitions Abroad: The Magazine To Read

In the last few days, I received two magazines in the mail. Transitions Abroad: The Guide to Learning, Living, Working, and Volunteering Overseas and Worldview: The Magazine of the National Peace Corps Association. These magazines naturally have two different audiences, but many of us read them both, and they both have value. But reaching for them, I picked up Transitions Abroad first. Why?

Now, I think Worldview is a better designed magazine [certainly it has better covers] and the printer is larger [thank God!] and the articles are thoughtful. But Transitions Abroad have more information, a wider range of topics, more 'hands-on' information of who, what, when and where of traveling and living overseas. It tells me what I want to know.

Now, not to bite the hand that feeds writers [Editor David Arnold reprinted essays I published in my Peace Corps books,] I would say that Worldview is 'deeper' in text, but Transitions Abroad is wider in scope and reaches a much more diverse group of readers, everyone from teenagers to senior citizens.

Publisher & Editor Sherry Schwarz took over the leadership of Transitions Abroad a few years ago and she has done an amazing job. [She also has reprinted interviews Marian Beil, my publishing partner, and I have published on www.peacecorpswriters.org]. Sherry isn't an RPCV, but she knows that RPCVs know the world.

What I am saying is why doesn't the NPCA, with a wealth of RPCVs to draw from, have such a publication for the public? On our website, Marian and I concentrate on Peace Corps writers and their books, and more than twenty RPCVs have written travel books, but there is no magazine that offers the experience and knowledge collected by PCVs and RPCVs who have traveled the world. This could be a worthy project of the National Peace Corps Association.

Meanwhile, Sherry Schwarz, with one senior editor and a handful of others, has Transitions Aboard magazine coming out bimonthly with practical information for 'independent-minded travlers who want to experience the thrills and lifelong rewards of immersion abroad.' Check it out at www.TransitionsAbroad.com or call 866.760.5340.

Peace Corps Director A Big Hit In San Francisco

[This reply to one of my "Peace Corps blogs" came recently from a good RPCV friend in SF who saw Ron recently at a Peace Corps event. I thought I'd send it along as we need a few kind words about Ron, what with my picking on him all the time.]

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Listened to the NPR chit-chat with Tschetter and a couple of recent "mature" RPCVs. It was all pretty bland. The only call-in torpedo was from a woman who told them she had been in the PC in her 50s and it had ruined her life. When she came back she was almost immediately laid off by her previous employer who had given her a leave of absence. She had never been able to re-coup financially etc. - though she loved her PC experience etc. Tschetter missed the mark by not telling her it wasn't PC who ruined her life but her employer.

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That evening's event at the Koret auditorium at the main Public Library in SF was a smashing success, and I mean smashing. A large overflow crowd of several hundred. PC took a risk booking such a large place, but it paid off. Tschetter and the local PC staff put on a great hour and a half presentation.

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I have been to many of these events over the years, and this was by far the best run, and most successful. Afterwards, the event continued at a hotel across the street with recruiter tables - very, very busy. Tschetter is down to earth and so much better than Gaddi at working a crowd.

The Peace Corps Director Isn't Reading His Mail!

Years ago when I was a PCV in Ethiopia Sarge Shriver visited the Empire and spent time with Volunteers in-country. When he returned to D.C. he sent letters to our parents. My mother saved the letter, of course, and when I returned after two years I read it, fully expecting Sarge's letter to be a polite formally note about seeing "your son John in Addis Ababa and he's doing a helluva job!" [We all remember how Sarge spoke.]

What was surprising were the details he had in his letter to my parents about meeting me. Clearly he had taken the time to note one incident down, a comment I made to him in private that couldn't have been drafted by the Ethiopian staff and sent back to D.C. No, this note was from Sarge. And my parents weren't the only ones to receive a letter from Sarge in the fall of '62.

Other government officials in Washington wrote letters and notes to PCVs. Some of you might remember the Margery Michelmore incident, and recall her early termination from Nigeria. What you might not know is that when she arrived in Idlewild Airport--the very first PCV to be terminated early--there was a hand written note for her from John F. Kennedy.

But things were different back then in the early days of the Peace Corps; it was a much more hands-on agency. We were all in "this thing" together, staff and Volunteers, and no one knew how the Peace Corps would work out.

Nevertheless, I have been surprised by how some Peace Corps Directors have had that 'human touch,' as my mother termed it. I was told a story of when in '85 Loret Ruppe visited Volunteers in Lesotho, and on the morning she departed, she stopped off at the Peace Corps office and left small packets of M&Ms in the mail boxes of all the PCVs. Also, Matt Losak (Lesotho 1985-88) was in-country at the time and told Loret about his project to get Lesotho kids to attend high schools in America. It was a project that interested Loret, Matt said, and two years later, when he arrived back in D.C. he ran into Loret in the hallway of the Peace Corps building. Spotting him, she called out, "Hello, Matt, how are your kids?" Now there's was a Director with a 'human touch."

Time change, of course; we get busy, even in the Peace Corps. Still, I remember [when I was working for the agency in the mid-nineties] how Mark Gearan would write notes to Volunteers and staff that he had visited around the country, and around the world. Of course he had better things to do, but to him nothing was more important than writing notes to PCVs.

Now I was [and am] a big believer in having an RPCV running the agency, and I guess I had hoped for more from Ron Tschetter (India 1966-68). Maybe he is mad at me for complaining that he let a political hack take over the division within the Peace Corps that has to do with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. A woman who was part of Karl Rove's dirty tricks outfit, and someone who never served at a PCV. Never mind, that's another story. Besides, Ron had to do with Rove told him to do.

What this blog is all about is that just the other day I got two letters from Ron. I had written him a month ago. A young honors student from our college had applied and her application was red flagged in medical for health issues. I explained to Ron that I understood the situation [having been the Regional Manager of the New York Recruitment Office for five years.] I asked only that he look into the case, that's all. The young woman's mother was a PCV in Latin America and she, too, wrote to Ron to support her daughter's decision to join the Peace Corps. [Okay, I was applying a little pressure.]

I also told Ron about an interview I had done with John Bidwell (Mali 1989-91) and said how John had some interesting ideas about the 'branding' of the agency. I printed out the interview and sent it to Ron with my letter.

So, the other day I get a letter that is dated August 8, 2007, and signed by Ron, or that little machine they use to duplicate his signature. In the letter is a boiler plate paragraph about "The Privacy Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act" and a boiler plate paragraph about "contacting her screeening nurse in the Office of Medical Services."

There is also a single sentence "Thank you for your suggestion that I read John Bidwell's comments concerning the Peace Corps on www.peacecorpswriters.org." No, Ron, you don't have to go to the site. I sent you a hardcopy! Remember? It was in the envelope that I had marked 'personal.' [Ron, I think someone is opening your mail!]

But there's more.

I had a second letter from The Director of the Peace Corps. This letter is addressed to me, but I realize when I opened it that the letter should have been sent to a Peace Corps Volunteer Applicant in Minneapolis. He had written Ron because he had been rejected from the Peace Corps and wanted to know why.

Again, in boiler plate language, he is told by Ron "As is your right, you appealed the inital decision to Mr. Allen Gerber, the Peace Corps' regional manager in Minneapolis." Ron goes onto say that "His [Gerber's] decision was the final agency decision." Again, Ron had signed this letter. Comparing the two signatures, I see they are not auto-signed. [I learned how to compare signatures from watching CSI-Miami!]

What gives down there in D.C.? Are the wheels falling off the agency? Certainly, they are experiencing a few flat tires. Now, the second letter [for Minneapolis] was clearly an envelope mistake, someone in the Director's office had too much to do, or too little time to do it.]

But the letter to me really shows Ron is signing everything that crosses his desk and he's not reading his mail. Perhaps now is the time we should all seek higher readjustment money! He might sign off on that without reading how much money we really want for having been in the Peace Corps!

Peace Corps Writers Find Homes at M.F.A. Programs

The Special Summer Fiction issue for The Atlantic Magazine this year carries a report by Edward J. Delaney entitled, "Where Great Writers Are Made." It is a survey of the creative writing programs at colleges and universities around the country. Delaney teaches at Roger Williams University and has been anthologized, as we use to say, all over the place.

The most famous creative writing program is, of course, the Iowa Writers' Workshop. They have been turning out writers since 1936. We have had a steady stream of RPCVs who have attended this great graduate program at Iowa and gone onto write award winning books, best selling novels, and books about the Peace Corps.

[When I attended college at St. Louis University back in the late fifties, I was a member of the college's Writer's Institute, that university's brief venture into attracting undergraduate writers. Besides myself, that program attracted non-fiction writer Peter McDonough (East Pakistan/Bangladesh 1961-62) and award winning poet Phil Dacey (Nigeria 1964-66.) To the best of my knowledge there were no other writers to join the Peace Corps from the Writer's Institute. The program was shut down, shortly after we graduated, and just before creative writing programs became 'cash cows' on college campuses. That's called Jesuit logic.]

So St. Louis University isn't mentioned in the Atlantic article, but the piece breaks down the "best bets" of the many programs offering MFAs. For example, "Five Top Ph.D. Programs in Creative Writing" lists Florida State Univeristy. Our own Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) is on their faculty.

Also mentioned in "Five Innovative/Unique Programs" is the University of Nevada at Las Vegas which emphasizes global literature and where the program was 'redesigned' a few years back by Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69) and novelist Douglas Unger.

The program, thanks in a large part to Wiley, has a wonderful Sugar-Daddy. Fellowships for students are funded by Glenn Schaeffer, a 1977 Iowa M.F.A. grad "turned casino mogul and literary benefactor," writes Delaney in his article. [The new Iowa Writers' Workshop library is named after him.]

Wiley also attended the Iowa Writers' Workship, graduating in '76, and knew Glenn back then. "He always sat in the back of the room," Wiley recalls, "and never said much."

Years later, after coming home from Africa, Wiley went to UNLV to teach creative writing and published a few articles in the city magazine, by chance Shaeffer recognized the name and called him up. The rest is history.

Or should we say funding for fellows at UNLV is possible because of a "Peace Corps connection." This creative writing program also is developed on the Peace Corps experience. UNLV requires that graduates spend at least a semester in a non-English speaking country. Wiley is firmly convinced, from his Peace Corps tour and having lived in Japan, and being fluent in Japanese, that a non-English experience, and knowing another language, helps a writer mature. So, if you are thinking of going for your M.F.A., think of UNLV.

[P.S. When I was working for the Peace Corps back in the nineties, Richard and I arranged for the Creative Writing Program at UNLV to be part of the Peace Corps Masters International Program, so you could get a masters degree and serve in the Peace Corps. Today, Richard is still at UNLV, but as the Associate Director of The Black Mountain Institute  http://www.blackmountaininstitute.org) a literary think tank. Good friend and "casino mogul" Glenn Schaeffer is helping to fund that, too.]

 

Chris Matthews Writes & Shouts

Chris Matthews (Swaziland 1968-70) is back with another book. It is entitled Life’s A Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success. (Now, that’s a mouthful of a title.) Chris is a good guy and very supportive of the Peace Corps. In fact, if you faithfully watch Hardball, as I do, he mentions the agency about twice a week, slightly less than he mentions movies or movie stars, or compares the war in Iraq to movies like Lawrence of Arabia. [I am not sure if Chris sees himself as T.E. Lawrence or Peter O’Toole.]

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Random House is publishing this thin volume [Chris is the author of 5 other books] in October. The book is dedicated to his 4 brothers: Herb, Jim, Bruce, and Charlie [No wonder he is always shouting…He never got a chance to talk at the dining room table. God, their poor mother!]

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Chris mentions in his book that “While still a Peace Corps volunteer in Swaziland…I had gotten a letter from a college friend telling me about his job as legislative assistant to a U.S. senator. The “LA,” I knew, was the staffer who helped his boss with the big-picture stuff: writing speeches, drafting legislation, thinking. It was the post that the great speechwriter Theodore Sorensen had held in the young John F. Kennedy’s Senate office. (Transfixed, I had read Sorensen’s book, Kennedy, a few months earlier on the overnight train from Mozambique to Rhodesia.) When I arrived in Washington, my strategy for turning myself into a Capitol Hill LA was primitive but direct. I would go door-to-door on the Hill asking for such a job.

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Chris got a job on Capitol Hill as a Capitol Hill cop.

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Chris writes, “I had a college degree, a year behind me spent working on a doctorate in economics, two years of challenging service in Africa, and eighty dollars left in my pocket.” [Readjustment money.] But he had to start somewhere. And he was Irish. It was type casting.

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All the chapters have a “bottom line” piece of advice from Chris, saying what he learned, what he is thinking. [You might call it Matthews’ Self-Help book]. In this first chapter Chris sums up for job seekers: “Whatever your ambition, you can’t win unless you’re in the game. If you want to be a lawyer, go to any law school you can get into. Same with medicine. If you want to make movies, find a way to break in. The people who show up get the chances. Get it? To win the contest, you first have to be a contestant.”

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Chris, does it help if you can shout?

Why Does Coyne Care About a Golf Resort ?

One of the great golf courses in the world took another serious blow in April, with the third major flooding in 22 months. In fact, the Resort has been hit five times by flooding in the last 11 years. The place is the century-old Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort, on an island in the middle of the Delaware River, just west of the Delaware Water Gap. In June of 2006, eight inches flooded the course and the first floor of the Resort itself when the Delaware crested 11 feet about flood stage. This last spring flood water crested half a foot below flood stage, but the course lost a bridge that connecting the fairways with the shore.

Why is this Resort important? Well, for a half dozen reasons.

1) It was here at Shawnee where A.W. Tillinghast would design his first golf course (1907), building it for a family friend, the wealthy industrialist Charles C.Worthington. Tillinghast also designed Baltusrol (1922) and Winged Foot in 1923.

2) The Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort was once called the golf capital of America. It was at its annual Shawnee Open [where great golfers of history: Harry Vardon, Ted Ray, Freddie McLeon, Alex Smith and Johnny McDermott all played] that Worthington first suggested the professionals get together as an organization. [Later Rodman Wanamaker would get credit for establishing the PGA of America, but it was Worthington who first made the suggestion at Shawnee.]

3) Some of us might remember Fred Waring and his orchestra, the Pennsylvanians. Waring bought the resort in 1943 and broadcasted his radio show from there during the summer months, with guests like Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Lucille Ball, Ed Sullivan and Perry Como. Jackie Gleason learned to play golf at Shawnee, and in the pro shop today are dozens of old black-and-white photos of these entertainers from the forties and fifties.

4) It was at Shawnee, in the pro shop, where Arnold Palmer would meet his late wife, Winnie.

5) In 19776, Charlie Kirkwood and his wife Ginny would buy the Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort. Charlie and Ginny both were poor kids from the neighborhood who worked at the wealthy resort--the playground for the rich and famous--when they were teenagers. Charlie worked as a caddie and remembers how, "My parents were so intimided by the place," he said in an article in the August 10, 2007 Golf World Magazine, "that they wouldn't go past the front gate. They'd drop me off at the entrance." 

6) Charlie would go from the caddie ranks to becoming a successful lawyer and businessman in Asia, and Ginny--and here's the Peace Corps connection--would become a PCV (Turkey 1964-66) and on her way home, she stopped off in Thailand and marry Charlie, her teenage sweetheart. Later in life, Ginny would also host Peace Corps events at the Shawnee Inn, and from 1990-93, she returned to Thailand as a beloved Peace Corps CD.

At Shawnee, Ginny also restored and reinvigorated the Shawnee Playhouse; a C.C. Worthington building that had been burned down by an arsonist a few years after they purchased the Resort. Today, Ginny and Charlie live at Shawnee, as do their two sons, Jon and Peter, who are in charge of the future of the Inn and famous golf course, battling the Delaware River, global warming, and the rages of hurricanes that increasing target this island paradise.