50th-Anniversary Party Sparks Memories of Coro Interns

Recently, I went to a Coro dinner at the Beverly Wilshire. It was the 50th anniversary of the association and the room was packed with outstanding men and women who have gone through a Coro program.

Coro is not an acronym. The letters stand alone, and hundreds of Coro graduates have worked hard to make them stand tall.

The capstone of the Coro program is the Fellows Program in Public Affairs. Every year, from about 400 applicants, 48 fellows are chosen from around the country and 12 are assigned to Coro regional centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, St. Louis and Orange County.

The aim is to steer young men and women toward public service. Those chosen are given six four-week field assignments. They work in government offices, political parties and campaigns, labor headquarters and community, corporate and media offices. The Coro fellows are taught to lead, organize, recognize problems and work with people to find solutions.

At least 10 of the young people worked with me years ago when I was communications director for the Republican Central Committee.

The fellows helped with media care--cursing and coddling.

One was a young man who was rigid with self-assurance. I don’t know how he slipped through the selection process.

The ego-laden youth asked: “What are you going to have me do?” I told him he would be making the midnight run to the Terminal Annex Post Office downtown to mail a press release. He did not leap for joy. He wanted to write the releases. I told him he could try a couple and we would see. He did and I saw. He never used one word when 10 would do.

One evening, we were stuffing a statewide release into envelopes. They were folded by hand because the ancient folding machine had died, and then put into labeled envelopes and through the postage meter.

The young man, who was a university senior, turned to me and said, “You are not taking advantage of my intelligence. Look what I am doing. Stuffing envelopes. You haven’t begun to tap my potential.”

I pointed out that some of his fellow stuffers were very lofty indeed--the county party chairman, a surgeon and a couple of state assemblymen who happened to be in the building.

One young man from Claremont McKenna told me that he was absent from my office once in a while because his mother was an alcoholic who would beat his little sister if he were not there.

He was wonderful, gentle and bright. We had long conversations about philosophy and the political process as we drove around California. I encouraged him to register to vote but he didn’t because his opinion of government was at the bottom of the barrel.

One day after he left his assignment with me, I came back from lunch and there was a voter’s registration slip with his name on it on my desk. There was a note that said, “Zan this really belongs to you.”

That’s hard to write without having my eyes fill. It’s been a privilege to work for Coro, speak to Coro classes and have these bright kids as friends.

At the 50th-anniversary dinner there was special recognition of W. Donald Fletcher who was the co-founder of Coro in 1942. The film telling of Coro’s history was narrated by Gene Siskel, a movie critic who was a Coro fellow. They really are everywhere.

Coro graduates are in legislatures, law firms, the media, the corporate and public service world. There are successful neighborhood groups working on problems with the logic and reasoning that they learned with Coro.

I wonder what happened to the arrogant young man? Do you suppose his potential was ever tapped?