Nation: Peace Corpsmen

When, during his 1960 campaign, Presidential Candidate John Kennedy proposed the U.S. Peace Corps, it seemed as if it might become the biggest thing since the draft. But after Kennedy’s election and the appointment of his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver, to head the organization, there were only about 20,000 persons interested enough to request the corps’ entrance questionnaire. Of those only 8,000 returned the forms, and only 3,694 last month underwent the Peace Corps’ first multiple-question examination.*

Last week Peace Corps headquarters in Washington named the first 27 selected Peace Corpsmen, some to go to South America’s Colombia and others to Africa’s Tanganyika. On their records and aspirations, it appeared that they might do the U.S. more good than harm in their efforts to aid the world’s underdeveloped countries. Among them:

Harrison Pendleton Bresee Jr., 30, whose father raises Herefords near tiny Orange, Va. Bresee is an ex-G.I. who got his forestry degree from the University of the South in 1956, then “just took off” to thumb and hike his way through much of Africa, Asia and Europe for four years. He used a beard, a bit of French and a cast-iron stomach to impress African tribesmen, figures he already knows the secret of getting along in Tanganyika (which he visited): “They accept you if you sit down and eat with them.” Fond of Africans and their wildlife, he would like to make the corps a career.

Vaino Antero Hoffren, 20, son of a Finnish watchmaker who moved his family to the U.S. when Vaino was ten. A political science student at San Diego State with only average grades, Hoffren had to work 25 hours a week as a drapery salesman to stay in school. But his two years’ experience in U.S. poultry farming will be helpful in Colombia, and so will his dedication to a cause: “I was only a child, but I clearly remember my first impression of Communism—the horribly emaciated Finnish prisoners returning from the Russian prison camps.”

Stephen LeRoy Honore, 23, a bright, energetic Urbana, Ohio, Negro who sings calypso and has long been torn between his scientific talents and a burgeoning humanitarian impulse. Son of a semiskilled truck-plant laborer. Honore was the first Negro to be elected student-body president at Capital University, a Lutheran school in a suburb of Columbus, where he got his B.S. in physics and math. A 1959 trip to Castro’s Cuba in a National Students Association delegation was an eye-opener: “I saw these people in the rural areas living under the most adverse conditions while the rich in the cities lived in luxury.” He will suspend his Ph.D. work at Ohio State to join the corps, but he is no Cloud Nine idealist about it: “The corps can do tremendous good, but it can be very detrimental, too, can’t it, if it’s not watched carefully?”

Don Roger Preston, 23, a quiet, personable forestry graduate who typifies many of those chosen primarily because they can do a specific job. His grades were only fair at Michigan College of Mining and Technology, where he got his degree last week. But he spent a summer helping lay water and gas lines in the Michigan backwoods, used to try to grow dwarf pines and spruces in his’ college dorm room, and approaches his possible Tanganyika assignment with awe: “It could be the most important single thing that I’ll do in my life.”

Bruce D. Richardson, 20, son of a University of Washington zoology professor. To join the corps, he is passing up a summer with his family in Spain, and his planned studies next year at London School of Economics and Political Science.

In Seattle he is an economics major at the university, a member of the varsity gymnastics team and a motorcycle fan who once won a race in Canada by getting 95 m.p.h. out of his Italian Ducati on rain-slicked roads. But he has also raised chickens and pigs, and his attitude toward the corps, far from gung-ho, is a healthy questioning: “I ask myself what I can do in Colombia and if the Colombians even want anything done for them—and to tell the truth, I’m not so sure of the answers.”

* Sample question: Which of the following would be the most satisfactory nutritional substitute for fresh orange juice? (A) Fresh apple juice. (B) Fresh carrot juice. (C) Bottled prune juice. (D) Canned pineapple juice. (E) Canned grapefruit juice. Answer: (E).