50 years after Kennedy proposed the Peace Corps, some of the earliest volunteers look back with pride
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| Nomenee Robinson, 73, now a recruiter for the Peace Corps, served in India’s Punjab state in the early 1960s. (Chris Walker, Chicago Tribune) |
Oct 9, 2010: It was well after midnight at the University of Michigan when presidential candidate John F. Kennedy gave a short speech that would, in thousands of small ways, reshape the world.
"How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana?" he asked a crowd of students 50 years ago this week. "Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?
"On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete."
Thus was born the idea of the Peace Corps, and when Kennedy took office the next year, he swiftly made it a reality. He called for volunteers to spend two years improving the health, education and economic prospects of some of the poorest people on earth — and, not coincidentally in those Cold War years, to burnish America's global reputation.
Thousands of Americans stepped forward. One was Nomenee Robinson, then a young architect and city planner working in Chicago's Water Department.
He had an itch for adventure and a desire to help others. And by the autumn of 1961, he was in India's Punjab state, assisting with building projects in a country struggling to gain its footing after centuries of colonial rule.
Life there was hard. Robinson had to use bricks made of sand and straw and just a dab of cement. He was on constant guard not to offend his hosts with an easygoing joke. And once, while he was building trekking huts in the Himalayas, his pack horses were killed by wild animals.
Yet through every difficulty, his enthusiasm never flagged.
"There was a challenge in understanding how to work with another culture," he said. "That excited me."
Robinson, who is Michelle Obama's uncle, is one of five Chicago-area residents who shared their memories of the early days of the Peace Corps with the Tribune. Volunteering in the glow of Camelot, their optimism was tested by rough conditions and occasional doubts about whether they were really making a difference.
There was no doubt, though, about the enormous difference the Peace Corps made in their own lives. It forged a global consciousness and a service-minded attitude that stayed with them for decades.
Robinson, now 73, a retired businessman turned Peace Corps recruiter, was reminded of that just the other day. Walking through downtown, he spotted a turbaned Sikh and greeted the man in Punjabi.
"The guy flipped," he recalled. "He said, 'Wow, you talk just like a villager!' I don't have enough of the language left, but when I see a Sikh, I can say enough to warm his heart. I can take that to the grave with me."