Peace Corps Volunteer #1

There's a man in our PC/Philippines Facebook group who was a member of Batch #1 (I'm Batch 271)!  He just posted this interesting write up and I thought I'd share:

East Oregonian 09/26/2013, Page A01

First volunteer finds love at first sight

By KATHY ANEY

East Oregonian

Pera Daniels doesn’t keep his Peace Corps identification card in his wallet anymore — it’s soft and fuzzy around the edges now.

The card identifies him as Peace Corps volunteer 00001. Daniels, in town for a Peace Corps reunion, laughed at how he accidentally became the organization’s first official volunteer. He sat in the Wildhorse hotel lobby and explained.

Shortly after President John F. Kennedy signed the executive order to create the Peace Corps in 1961, Daniels traveled to Washington, D.C., to visit his brother. The 24-year-old Daniels happened to walk down the sidewalk in front of the new Peace Corps offices. A moving van had pulled up and female employees toted boxes into the three-story townhouse on Lafayette Square just north of the White House.

“I volunteered to help with the heavy lifting,” he said.

At the time, Daniels said, “I didn’t have a clue what Peace Corps was all about,” but as he hefted boxes and crates, he learned about it. Before leaving, he filled out an application and added it to a massive stack of them.

“I placed it on top,” he said.

When Daniels got his official invitation, he resisted for a short time. He had secured a job working for a San Francisco stockbroker by then. The job was already losing its luster, though, so he took the plunge. He met fellow volunteer Margo Heineman at his training session at Penn State University and became instantly smitten.

Margo told him she had joined the Peace Corps after hearing JFK’s speech exhorting Americans to join.

“I thought it was the most wonderful thing,” she said. “I loved the whole idea of it.”

Neither anticipated they would spend their time abroad focused on romance more than the job they were sent to do.

“We were oblivious to anything but each other,” Margo said.

The couple worked in separate villages, traveling by jeepney or horse-drawn wagon to reach each other during time off. They married less than a year later in a Filipino cathedral. According to Filipino tradition, their mostly barefoot guests waited outside until the couple entered the church and then followed behind.

They spent the rest of their tour on the hilly, roadless island of Samar, where Pera taught math and science and Margo instructed English. Back in the states, they raised a family. Margo eventually worked as a librarian and Pera as an investment manager. They now live in Reno, Nevada.

Though I was in the same PCV group, 1, my i.d. was 005221