A peaceful reunion 

Original Peace Corps volunteers get together after 51 years 

By KATHY ANEY 

East Oregonian 

Looking around at the group of the 70-somethings, adjectives pop to mind — poised, seasoned and comfortable in their own skin. Bursts of laughter punctuate their animated conversation. 

Fifty-two years ago, most were in their early 20s and about to set off on the biggest journey of their young lives as America’s first Peace Corps volunteers. The adjectives in those days included words like adventurous, idealistic and anxious. 

On Monday, about 40 of the original Peace Corps volunteers converged at the Wildhorse Resort & Casino for a week of exploring the area and reminiscing about the worldwide service organization created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. These volunteers traveled to the Philippines while others headed to Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Nigeria, St. Lucia, Tanzania and Pakistan. 

The Philippines group includes Bruce Campbell of Milton-Freewater. Only three weeks after Kennedy signed the executive order creating the Peace Corps, Campbell received a telegram approving him for Peace Corps training. At age 24, he shucked aside a promised spot at Air Force officer training school 

PEACE CORPS: ‘In spite of ill-defined jobs, we demonstrated this could be done and was worth doing’ 

and a budding teaching career with the Pilot Rock School District and headed for the barangays, or rural villages, of the Philippines. He arrived there on the tail of Typhoon Ellen and found his assigned school transformed into a mudhole by waist-high waters. 

While reminiscing about the Peace Corp’s early days, Campbell and his cohorts described a clunky organization that was awkward in its infancy, a flaming ball of idealism that hadn’t yet found its legs. 

Vladimir Velasco was an 18-year-old Filipino who taught one of the native dialects to the first group of Peace Corps recruits to his country. He said the volunteers exuded passion for service. 

“The Kennedy idealism — it ran through the whole group of 128 people,” said Velasco, who now works as an actor in Los Angeles. 

Velasco traveled to Pendleton as an honorary member of this first group to serve in the Philippines. The group includes the first official Peace Corps volunteer, Pera Daniels, whose Peace Corps identification card bears the number 00001. 

Training was an eclectic affair since no one yet knew what volunteers needed to know. Some of the cultural and historical training proved invaluable, but other instruction never came into play. Martha Allhouse Hull described survival training that advised “never eat the liver of a polar bear” and that “fish eyeballs are 90 percent water.” She learned to braid hair into a fishing line. 

Hull, a retired California teacher, took it in stride. She reveled in the opportunity and resonated with Kennedy’s admonition to “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” 

“I was looking for a way to doing good works overseas,” she said. 

She and her cohorts dispersed into rural areas of the country with instructions to teach English as a second language to teachers, who would go on to teach their pupils. The twoyear teaching stint often morphed into other roles. 

Without cell phones and computers, the volunteers got news from home in dribs and drabs. Hull remembers learning about Astronaut John Glenn’s flight into space as she sat on a floor eating dried fish and rice and listening to a transistor radio. News of the Cuban Missile Crisis came from a bus driver who yelled “The U.S. and Russia are at war.” 

The volunteers said the experience allowed them to marinate in another culture and help where they could. Their observations allowed the organization to hone its vision. 

“In spite of ill-defined jobs, we demonstrated this could be done and was worth doing,” said Maureen Carroll, of Washington, D.C. “We were courageous and foolish. We had faith in Kennedy.” 

They praised the Filipino people who accepted them with grace. At least a dozen of the volunteers have Filipino spouses. 

“We learned more than we gave,” Campbell said. 

In Pendleton this week, the group spent their first several days of the reunion visiting Tamastslikt, Walla Walla wineries, Hamley & Co., Pendleton Underground, Pendleton Woolen Mills and other local sites.