Countywide : Peace Corps Alumni Try to Renew Ties

A group of former Peace Corps volunteers has launched a campaign to round up as many former colleagues as possible in Ventura County to renew some international ties dating back to the 1960s.

The goal is to establish a large and active county group of ex-Peace Corps members comparable to groups already formed in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.

Members plan to speak in schools, raise funds for the countries where they volunteered and socialize.

The organizational drive began at a recent gathering at the Ventura home of Muriel Steiger, who volunteered in Belize in 1988-89.

“These are kindred spirits. So we’re trying to find the returned volunteers,” said Franceen Fallette, a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s.

While discussing their plans for the future, the former Peace Corps members recalled how they had spent previous holiday seasons in foreign countries.

Fallette told how she spent one Christmas in Niger, a Muslim nation in West Africa. The American Embassy provided her and her friends with a small plastic tree, and they trimmed it with cutout ornaments: a camel, a mortar and pestle and local landmarks.

“After a week, the desert dust settled and we said, ‘Look, Sahara snow!’ ” Fallette said, laughing.

Stuart Larman, who was in Western Malaysia in 1977-78, said he feels immediately at ease with former volunteers. “There’s a lack of pretense with Peace Corps volunteers. We’ve seen how the less fortunate people of the world live, and it’s a humbling experience,” he said.

A civil engineer, Larman later worked abroad for other organizations in Trinidad and in Egypt and hopes to again.

The group represented a spectrum of volunteers. Joan Landfield was one of the first assigned to the Philippines in 1960-61. “We were treated as celebrities and wined and dined,” she remembered.

Dave Bailey, who worked to develop leadership among rural youth in Brazil in 1967-68, met and married his Brazilian wife during his stint.

All the memories were not happy. Steiger, a health professional, criticized American manufacturers. “In the hospitals they had only outdated drugs. I thought at first they were donated, but I found out they were buying them,” she said. She also told of a shoe company donating 1,000 shoes--all left feet.