"I went to Ron's (Wertheims) swearing in when he got the judgeship, but haven't seen him since-- that was about 15 years ago or more. Twig Johnson was there as well. Twig was one of the first volunteers in the state who did a lot of the site surveys for the first PCV's who arrived in 1964.  We ended up in graduate school at the same university and stay loosely in touch--he's here in Washington as VP for Latin America for the World Wildlife Fund.

I'll be forever in Ron Wertheims's debt, because he referred me to my first job after graduate school in education and Latin American studies at Columbia Univ. I was visiting him in his law office in Washington in late fall 1969 and he asked me what I planned to do next.  At the time I had been accepted to USAID's International Development Intern program starting in April 1970, but had four months with nothing to do.  As it happened, Ron was close to Chick Nelson, one of the drafters of the task force report that led to the founding of Peace Corps, and who, with Warren Wiggins and Dick Irish (author of Go Hire Yourself an Employer), had founded TransCentury Corporation to put returned PCV's to work on domestic social programs like Model Cities.  They had talked  Peace Corps into contracting them to conduct a "joint review" of programs in the Nordeste, leading to a five year plan for the region.  To make a long story short, they needed a junior team member who spoke fluent Portuguese and knew something about rural development and education and/or agriculture. Chick hired me and off we went to Recife, where we worked out of the regional office, then headed by Chuck Bosley.

If I remember correctly, by that time Dana ______ (?) was the Ceara director. John Burns was leading Pernambuco, but I'm drawing a blank on the other state directors I met-- I think most were ex PCV's who had spent some time working for the Food for Peace program before moving into the PC slots, although it seems to me that at least one of them had been part of USAID-funded UCLA/Asimov Project team, working on rural enterprise development in the region.  Maybe someone else out there can fill in the other names.  Anyway, it was a great bunch of guys and we had a great time cooking up a rationale and strategy for PCV's to work in the region and even surveyed some new placement sites that looked to have special potential for rural development.

I worked in Aurora from September 1965 to January 1967 with Claudia Rogers and Julianne (Moore?-- another senior moment) and I don't think I knew that another volunteer followed us.  If so, it would really be interesting to connect with her. My only contact with Aurora since I left was several Christmas cards exchanged with the Prefeito, who had helped me start a LIONS service club, which the international office tells me lasted until about 1979, when it went out of business.  My posting to Aurora was very "strategic."  I remember the director who preceded Ron, Fermino Spencer, taking me aside and asking me how I would feel about being assigned with Claudia and Julianne. They were from the Arizona team that arrived a few months before my group in 1965.  He said they had some really good ideas about what they could do as volunteers, but had been having difficulty relating to the male establishment, including the Prefeito.  Fermino thought it would be helpful to have a man there who could hang out with the good ole boys and serve as a liaison.  Some might say that the success of my service was the number of hours I hung out with them at various corner bars, listening to songs like Maria Helena, and accepting one glass of beer after another.

Hey, rather than ramble on dredging up old memories, let me stop here and ask if there are any others out there who remember any of this.  I know Tom Belsky can relate to some of it, since I think he was part of that Arizona crowd.  Are there any others from this era?"

Peter L. Boynton CE 65-67