 Thanks to Paul Chattey for more reminiscences of the Hotel Savannah. His comments on the roof reminded me that on our arrival in Fortaleza, state director Fermino Spencer (the first in Ceará) took us all up to the roof that evening for a meeting to discuss plans for in-country training and a general briefing. I suspect only a few of you will remember Fermino -- a charismatic and idealistic Cape Verdean from New Bedford, who taught me a lot about what really matters in life. He and his wife, Alice, and daughters Alice and Nancy were wonderful friends and surrogate family to a lot of us in Ceará when we could get up to Fortaleza. Anyway, it was after that that he took me aside and told me about the "special assignment" he had for me, if I was willing to undertake it.
There were these two women from the Arizona public health group who had arrived in Aurora about 6 months earlier -- Claudia Rogers and Julianne Moore. Fermino said they were great PCV's but were having trouble connecting with the male establishment in the community. My job was to be the link. I was to shmooz with the guys at the local botiquim or whatever and tell them about all the great things we PCVs could do if we could just get their support.
Soon after, I went off to Limoeiro do Norte with two other guys for three weeks of in-country training, which consisted of shadowing the Vandermydes, attending tertulias with Americano-struck teenagers and an occasional "coroa" or old maid, and working seriously on my cachaça and beer skills in preparation for my "special" assignment. I was feeling very macho and paternalistic towards these poor young women I would get "unstuck." I knew that somehow, together, we were really going to shake Aurora up, if only I could hold my own with the guys - something college fraternity life had really given me a leg up on! I think word must have leaked to Fermino from the training staff at Marquette about my exploits along with Patty Olson, Chad Clausen, Greta Green, and others at the Vogue Bar and other blue collar watering holes within a couple of miles of Marquette's Herrity Hall.
I did as I was asked, and maybe Claudia, Julianne and I made a few small things happen, but about a year later, when Fermino moved to Rio as director for Rio and Sao Paulo and was replaced in Ceará by Ron Wertheim, he invited me to help him start up the new YMCA project in Sao Paulo city, an assignment I jumped at, having lived in SP as a boy in the 50's.
Fermino and I remained friends for years. While I was in graduate school in New York, he was first in Westport, CT, as vice principal of the high school, and then he joined the Agency for International Development. He was responsible in part for convincing me to take a job with AID after grad school and he and his family hosted me and my ex-wife for a month when I was working in DC prior to heading back to NE Brazil with the "joint review" team organized by Warren Wiggins.
Anyway, to move this along, Fermino died a few years ago of cancer. In 1992 he had been best man in my second wedding-- he had also been there for me at the beginning of the courtship that led to my first marriage in Rio right after I completed my service in 1967. For the wedding I gave him and my two brothers, who participated as groomsmen, matching ties I had bought for them to wear at the wedding. I hadn't known he had been ill, so it came as a terrible shock when he died and I deeply regretted that several years had passed since we had last seen each other. After the memorial service his wife invited us all to his home in Montgomery Village outside Washington to share food and memories with other friends and family. Imagine my feelings when I saw there on the table near the entrance a framed memorial picture of this man I met for the first time at the Savannah-- wearing the gift of my tie. Seeing him in it was the last gift to me of this incredibly generous and thoughtful man.
Peter Boynton (CE and SP 65-67)
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