The Campbell Reporter
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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Still Serving: Dick King, former translator for RotaCare and current committee member, started helping others back in 1966 when he joined the Peace Corps.
Peace Corps affected volunteers' lives
By Alicia Upano
During President Kennedy's inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1961, he challenged young Americans to join a "grand and global alliance" that would work to end tyranny, poverty, disease and war. Months before, on the campaign trail, he had shared his dream of creating the Peace Corps.
Kennedy's words that January day resonated with young men and women across the country: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."
On March 1, 1961, Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the Peace Corps. He appointed his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to head the new organization. Shriver was the father of California's first lady, Maria Shriver.
At the time, Peter Ross was completing his bachelor's degree in math at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By the time the first Peace Corps volunteers set out for Ghana and Tanzania that August, Ross was beginning a master's degree at UC-Berkeley. The Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba that fall sparked the fear of war on the East Bay campus.
"Most of us on campus thought World War III would bring nuclear bombs, and one of the targets could be the San Francisco Bay," says Ross, who lives on the border of San Jose's Rose Garden and Willow Glen neighborhoods.
For Ross, however, the idea of war inspired him to become a soldier for peace. He joined the Peace Corps upon finishing his master's degree in the spring of 1963. The first group of volunteers had yet to return from their two-year service.
"When people asked us why we were going, there wasn't a simple answer," Ross says. While part of the inspiration was the adventure, Kennedy's prompting made many in his generation embrace public service.
"We wanted to give back. In America, we're the most affluent country in the world. We were then, and we are now," he says.
After extensive language and cultural training, Ross was sent to southern India with the first group of volunteers. At the time, India was the poorest country in the world, with a life expectancy of 38 years, he says.
Ross was assigned to teach science and math at a secondary school in the village of Calingapatnam. The school was just beginning to teach courses in English.
The education system was based on rote memorization, but Ross instituted a simple act typical in an American classroom--raising the hand to ask questions--as a way to encourage his students to learn. Many of his students' fathers were fishermen who went to sleep at dusk, and the boys could not study without light at home. He invited the students to his porch, which had electricity, to study in the evenings.
Ross says these small, but important, innovations were supported by his headmaster.
"Our locations were selected because someone wanted to institute change and use us as vehicles," he says.
He once went with the school headmaster and students to the headmaster's village, which remained untouched by modern technology. There was no electricity, and the villagers had never seen a foreigner before. They came up to pinch his pale skin.
"One person had asked if the British had taken over again," says Ross, laughing at the memory.
Yet one memory still saddens him. On Nov. 23, 1963, Ross was walking from his bungalow to school when a student ran up to him, yelling a scrambled message, "Rossgaru, Rossgaru, Mrs. Kennedy shot! Mrs. Kennedy shot!"
At the school, teachers and students gathered around a shortwave radio when Ross heard that it had been President Kennedy, and not the first lady, who had been assassinated the day before.
With time, Ross says he learned that Kennedy was not the saint he imagined, but in 1963 it was the falling of a hero who had created the Peace Corps. The headmaster offered to cancel school in Kennedy's honor, but Ross declined, saying it would be against the Peace Corps' mission.
Compelled to serve
While the threat of war inspired Ross, the reality of the Vietnam War compelled Dick King, who lives on the border of West San Jose and Campbell. In 1966, King graduated from Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. At the time, men 18 to 25 had two choices--risk the military draft or try to avoid it, he says.
Earlham had a strong anti-war orientation, and King talked to his draft board in Rochester, N.Y., about deferring service. He was told he would not be drafted out of the Peace Corps, but would be eligible for service upon his return.
King received language and cultural training in Oklahoma and Mexico to prepare him for his work as a community development volunteer in El Salvador. When a bus drove him and other volunteers from the Mexico City airport to their hotel, King could see shantytowns for miles.
"I had never seen anything like it in my life. Less than a four-hour flight from Dallas, and your world has turned upside down," King says. "I knew I was doing the right thing."
King was sent to live in the 2,500-person town of San Alejo, El Salvador. He helped in the village's public health clinic, which was staffed by a registered nurse and a receptionist. Once a week, a traveling doctor saw patients.
In reality, King says his job was to "help people help themselves." He served as a liaison between the villagers and the Salvadorian government or other assistance organizations. His work included assistance in installing latrines, providing milk for children whose mothers couldn't afford it, and road and schoolhouse improvements.
Like Calingapatnam, San Alejo had an innovative community leader. Unbeknownst to King, San Alejo Mayor Chepe Cuevas had promised voters a Peace Corps volunteer if he was elected. Cuevas was a concert violinist, and King would play his trombone in mariachi bands with the mayor. He also organized a youth soccer league; he had played the sport in college.
Despite his good experiences, King says the hardest things to surmount were the cultural differences. In San Alejo, it was the sense of fatalism that hindered change. King points to a picture of the town tailor, who was active in the community.
"I would say, 'Carlos, if you want to make San Alejo better, you have to do it,' " King says.
After returning from an extended stay in 1969, King realized he needed to heed his own advice.
"If I want to make San Jose a better place," he says, "I've got to do it."
King married his high school sweetheart and went into business with her father in San Jose. In 1989, he began working for the Tech Museum of Innovation as vice president of fund development. He still consults for the museum.
At the museum, King created the Tech Museum Awards, which annually honor five laureates who have used technology to benefit humanity. He also serves on the board of directors of School Health Clinics of Santa Clara County and SCORES, an after-school soccer and literacy program in the Bay Area.
Ross expanded his teaching experience into academia. He is a senior lecturer in math at Santa Clara University.
Others were inspired
Willow Glen resident Leslie Zambo also used her Peace Corps skills in her professional life. The volunteer in Costa Rica now teaches Spanish at Notre Dame High School San Jose.
Zambo entered the Peace Corps after graduating from UC-Berkeley at the age of 20. Although she entered the volunteer service in 1989, her experience was much like that of Ross and King--sharpening her language skills and being a resource for the community. In particular, she was in the Women in Development program, where she helped a Costa Rican town with fewer than 300 residents with a variety of projects, such as bringing potable water to the municipality.
While Zambo liked the adventure of being abroad, she says the Peace Corps was a true test of her character.
"It was really a life-changing, growing-up experience in terms of learning who I am, and what I have in me," Zambo says. "There's something really powerful about the fact that I could go somewhere else, and I could find my place and start from scratch, and help."
The Peace Corps, however, is not for everyone, Zambo says. Many people enter the Peace Corps and leave early out of frustration. Volunteers need to be tough but flexible, she says.
"It's a fabulous experience, but it is what you make of it," King says. "You have to go in with your eyes open, you have to measure success one person at a time, and know you're going to learn more than you teach."
The Peace Corps is hosting an informational session at the Campbell Library, 77 Harrison Ave., on March 21 from 6-8 p.m. For more information on the Peace Corps, visit www.peacecorps.gov or call 510. 637.1520.
