I’m delighted to be sharing this evening with so many individuals who played major roles in making “The Peace Corps”, America’s greatest export!!
I’m grateful to all of you for being here tonight. Each one of you has contributed to the world-wide success of “The Peace Corps”.
I especially want to thank Nick Craw for hosting this event, and Ken Hill and his organizing committee for doing such a marvelous job putting this whole thing together. I am pleased to learn that this event will become a permanent part of the NPCA Annual conferences.
I am genuinely moved to see a number of people who worked with me night and day, seven days a week in the beginning to help create the Peace Corps.
Mary Ann Orlando was an unforgettable contributor. Why? Because she put up with us all, especially me. She kept us in line and forced us to stay focused on our mission. Sally Bowles, Bill Haddad, Pat Kennedy, Don McClure, Mitzi MaIlina Wertheim, and Harris Wofford are among the most important early leaders of “The Peace Corps” who are here! Let’s give them some special and enthusiastic applause.
We are further honored by the presence of Phil Ruppe, Mary Ruppe Nash, and Gail Wray husband, daughter and sister respectively of our longest serving Director, Loret Miller Ruppe, who separated though she is from us by death will always remain in our hearts and minds as an exemplary, imaginative leader of The Peace Corps.” A host of others too numerous to mention, from the original staff to the present day staff, and all the incredible staff members in between deserve recognition.
With so much talent and brains dedicated to “The Peace Corps”, it’s no wonder it’s been a huge success.
But that does not mean the job has been easy. Everyone who worked for “The Peace Corps” has faced many challenges and survived difficult times.
In the beginning, we had to find our way through uncharted U.S. government territory, making up our relationship with it as we went along. We didn’t know many of the questions to ask, let alone the answers.
Making arrangements for Americans to live on foreign soil, we had to consider all kinds of details which your average government agency doesn’t confront.
But, with some good advocacy and collective brainstorming, we managed to establish reasonable policies, and miraculously avoided disasters.
Then, by the end of the first five years, we had some 16,000 Peace Corps Volunteers in service in nearly 50 Host Countries! Yes, 16,000 PCVs in almost 50 Host Countries in five years!
Thanks to the present PCVs and staff, and the 165,000 PCVs or more who have served in 135 Host Countries throughout the world, and the more than 10,000 staff members who have supported them, “The Peace Corps” has achieved forty-one glorious years of success.
“The Peace Corps” staff has played an often unsung role in the life of this wonderful institution. We have always attracted people who have a special commitment to combating poverty overseas and the task of building friendships with different populations around the globe. They are dedicated to their mission: ensuring that the Volunteers succeed, and that foreign peoples and leaders rejoice.
Many competent and successful workers have come back, for several tours of duty on the Peace Corps staff, and they will tell you that it is the most important thing they have done in their lives.
I am thrilled that, thanks to the staff which has so faithfully and diligently supported the PCVs during periods of highs and lows, “The Peace Corps” is alive and well. Now, almost incredibly, it has gained the unqualified enthusiastic support of President Bush.
It’s true that as a result of President Bush’s support, today’s Peace Corps staff is now faced with the exciting challenge of doubling the number of Volunteers over the next 5 years or sooner without diminishing program quality.
But I have no doubt, Gaddi, that you and your team will rise to the challenge, meet that challenge head on, and even go farther to accomplish even greater achievements.
I must confess that “The Peace Corps” still stirs my heart. We dared to show the world, as Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman of Thailand said, in 1964, “The Peace Corps reveals The Secret of Our Greatness": “That this important idea,” he said, “the most powerful idea in recent times, of a Peace Corps should come from this mightiest nation on earth, the United States.” And he also said:
“Many who did not know much about the United States, thought of this great nation as a wealthy nation, a powerful military nation, endowed with great material strength and many powerful weapons. Many did not know that in the United States, ideas and ideals are also powerful.”
I believe it is now our challenge, yours and mine, once again to produce ideas and even actions to expand “The Peace Corps” That expansion could make “The Peace Corps”, God willing, “THE AGENCY FOR PEACE, FOR ALL THE WORLD, IN THE 21ST CENTURY.”
