From the Hill to the World
Five decades of Hamiltonians in the Peace Corps
By Cheryl Sternman Rule
Between May and October, Meg Jones '96 learned to take a break at noon and stop working. She wasn't lazy or tired or burnt out. She didn't have errands to run. But when the mercury in Bolama, Guinea-Bissau, neared 120 degrees, she followed the lead of her friends and colleagues, sat in the shade and lay low. Soon they would all continue teaching, but not until the sweltering heat had passed.
Five years later and halfway around the world, Pete Shelton '01 also observed those around him. He spent his first six months in the tiny hillside village of Cruz Alta, Honduras, absorbing details and forging relationships, following the daily travails of the subsistence farmers in his community, helping them plant maize and beans. Only after getting to know them, and they him, did he begin demonstrating the soil conservation techniques he'd come to impart.
Jones and Shelton are but two in a long line of Hamilton alumni who left families and preconceptions behind. They leapt across continents with little more than a swollen duffle bag and a gnawing hunger for service and adventure.
Since its inception in 1961, 206 Hamiltonians have served in the Peace Corps. They've worked in 72 countries — from the island of Djerba off the southern coast of Tunisia (Garry Brinton '72) to the industrial city of Kirovograd in the agricultural heart of Ukraine (Ken Sommers '97). Some joined as an alternative to military service, some to test and expand personal boundaries, and some to see the world from a wholly different vantage point. While their reasons for serving varied and their directions spanned the compass, they had all stopped at a common crossroads: four formative years on the Hill, curiosity blooming.
According to Molly Jennings, a Peace Corps public affairs specialist, Hamilton alumni have volunteered in categories as diverse as agriculture, business advising, fisheries, forestry and apiculture (beekeeping). The largest number, though, have been educators, specializing in everything from environmental education, hygiene education and special education to primary, secondary and university teaching. The breadth of placements — in both geography and job focus — cuts a remarkably wide swath.
Even today, seven alumni will read this article from their Peace Corps posts overseas — two from South Africa and one each from Morocco, Albania, Ghana, Guatemala and Moldova.
President Kennedy launched the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961, during a period of great hope and optimism. According to Doug Raybeck, professor of anthropology emeritus who began teaching at Kirkland College in 1970, the bright-eyed idealism of those early years was soon replaced by a burgeoning social consciousness, brought on largely by the disillusionment wrought by Vietnam and Watergate. Still, young Americans across the nation, and across campuses like Kirkland and Hamilton, continued to believe they could shape the world and lead it in a more positive direction.
"There were a number of Kirkland graduates who joined the Peace Corps" during the 1970s, Raybeck recalls. "The attitude on the part of their friends, the faculty and the institution was that this was a good endeavor and a splendid way to enter the world."
Even during the "Me Generation" of the 1980s, when, according to Raybeck, there was less interest on campus in voluntarism and service, some newly minted alumni continued to pursue Peace Corps service. And by the early '90s, the tide was turning again, with students' overall focus broadening once more. "People became more expansive, more outwardly interested," Raybeck says, adding, "There was more interest in traveling abroad."
Leslie Bell, associate director of Hamilton's Maurice Horowitch Career Center, has seen this latest trend intensify since she arrived on campus in 1990. When the Peace Corps holds on-campus information sessions, she says, the turnout is "huge."
"Even when students have so many other things on their schedules, the sessions can draw 25 to 30 students over all the class years." It's not uncommon for first-year students to seek out Bell in the Career Center and inquire about the Peace Corps years before they actually apply.Bell has noticed other trends as well. Hurricane Katrina sparked an upsurge in domestic voluntary service. Groups of students mobilize themselves and travel overseas and to national areas of need during college breaks. And those who may once have studied abroad in countries like France or Spain are heading instead to Latin America or Francophone Africa. Today's students "don't perceive the world to be closed or scary," she says. Globalization has swept through Clinton, and it has taken more than a few students along for the ride.
But not all follow through on their initial expressions of interest. For one thing, they learn the work is tough and the conditions bare-bones. They find that volunteers can't choose their countries of service and must commit to two full years away from home.
Those who do pursue this path, however, find their lives enriched in ways both measurable and immeasurable, and their service often becomes a hallmark event for decades to come. As Bell puts it, "Most students' first jobs won't have that kind of lasting effect on their lives."
"Of course," she adds, "the Peace Corps isn't for everyone."
It was, however, for 206 Hamiltonians, eight of whom are profiled in the following pages. They were chosen for generational and geographical balance on the basis of suggestions from the Hamilton community. In truth, however, their experiences mirror those of scores of their Hamilton contemporaries who have served. The individuals matter deeply — that, in fact, is one of the great shared lessons of Peace Corps service. But their accounts are in many ways histories held in common, stories of the hopes they have pursued, the principles they have forged, and the small victories they have won.
