Passages From India : 12 UCLA Alumni Reunite 40 Years After a Trip That Changed Lives

Twelve UCLA alumni reunited this weekend, observing a bond forged four decades ago on another continent.

They include a former U.S. ambassador, a congressman, a rabbi, a college professor, a museum docent, a concert promoter, a retired probation officer, a waste-water consultant, a bank official, a housewife and two lawyers.

They are a mix of races and religions: African American, Asian American and white; Jewish and Catholic.

Yet, for all their differences, they share the affinity of a single experience.

During the summer of 1955, these eight men and four women spent nine weeks barnstorming the colleges and coffeehouses of India. They answered questions, engaged in debates and even taught college fight songs--all in hopes of contrasting the image of America being presented in India by Communist leaders.

Their mission was, in the words of the Look magazine writer who accompanied them, “to reassure the friendly, to befriend the unfriendly and to leave behind a first-hand impression of what they as Americans were really like.”

Project India, a precursor to the Peace Corps, was created by a staff member of a UCLA-based religious coalition in 1952 as a way of overcoming what was seen as a negative image of Americans in India. Each student paid $200 to participate in the project, and the Ford Foundation spent more than $20,000 for each annual trip.

The 12 alumni who met this weekend were chosen from more than a hundred UCLA students. They were the fourth delegation, and they’ve stayed in touch over the last 40 years. But Saturday and Sunday were the first time that all 12--Everett Brandon, Mary Ann (Buford) Greene, Jerry Lewis, Joe Michels, Ron Pengilly, Ed Peck, Patti (Price) Amstutz, Sanford Ragins, Bob Stein, Ruth (Taketaya) Hirano, George Wakiji and Rosemary (Wooldridge) Plue--gathered for a reunion.

They met Saturday at Stein’s home in Studio City and toured the UCLA campus Sunday. Their conversations sounded as if days, rather than years, had passed.

“All the things we trained to do 40 years ago--we were supposed to walk into a room and extend a hand and say ‘Hi, I’m from America’--it’s still working,” said Stein, the concert promoter, noting the easy banter.

They were quick to tease each other--Pengilly for his receded hairline, Lewis for his status as a politician and Wakiji for his meticulous organizational skills. But they were even quicker to share an embrace as each arrived.

“There were some very special ingredients to this group,” said Greene. “We bonded as kin would bond. When we were traveling across India, we were all we had.”

“Doing your laundry together, banging your underpants on rocks in the Ganges [River]--you get close,” Pengilly said.

Greene is a retired Los Angeles County probation officer and lives in Culver City, where she is a community activist. Pengilly is an attorney and lives in Piedmont.

While it’s unknown what impact these visitors had upon the estimated 50,000 Indian students they encountered, the Project India program definitely influenced its participants.

Several changed career paths, while others became more determined to follow the ones they had chosen. At least one emerged with new political views. And some saw for the first time their American identity as more prominent than their racial ones.

“We had a very mind-bending experience,” said Peck, 66. “I went to Project India and ended up in the diplomatic services for the next 35 years.”

Peck worked for the State Department until 1989, serving as a U. S. ambassador in North Africa and the Middle East. He traveled to Studio City from his home in Washington, D. C., and on Saturday wore a shirt purchased during his Project India days 40 years ago--white, short-sleeved and dotted with reddish-brown bulls.

For Michels, at 18 the youngest to ever participate in Project India, the trip was one of “intense self-discovery.”

His exposure to the country convinced him to pursue careers in anthropology and archeology, topics he now teaches as a professor at Pennsylvania State University.

“I think it gave you a vivid definition of yourself,” said Michels, 58. “You were in a fishbowl. You found that the daily, routine things you do--from how you brush your teeth to how you walk--took on a significance.”

“Not all of those reflections were comfortable,” he added.

Lewis, a congressman from Redlands, was similarly affected.

“When I left [the United States], I thought I might run for public office some day, probably as a Democrat,” Lewis said. “I came back and I was convinced I’d run, and as a Republican.”

Brandon, who now lives in San Franciso, describes it as a “critical mass” experience.

“We became Americans rather than my being black or George being Asian or Ed being white,” he said. “We transcended those barriers we had grown up with.”

But not all of the group’s Project India memories are pleasant. For many, the trip was a jarring exposure to impoverished conditions.

“It is incredible the extent to which people could exist in shattering poverty and still go on--without the things we think are essential to living,” Peck said.

He told of beggars who would flock to the train they rode. Some of the youngest beggars had been mutilated by their parents, their eyes plucked out or their legs deformed, in order to garner more sympathy--and money--from visitors, he said.

Whenever possible, Peck would eat only when the train was moving across the countryside--out of the view of hungry residents.

Some felt even more awkward when those same residents treated Project India visitors as celebrities, crowding around and giving them slips of paper.

“We signed autographs like movie stars,” Wakiji said. “I felt stupid.”

During the trip, they had to carefully choose which restaurants to visit and not just because of health concerns. Some eateries refused to serve African Americans.

Ragins, now a rabbi for Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, also struggles with a lingering suspicion that their trip may have been funded in part by the Central Intelligence Agency as a method of gathering information.

In retrospect, members say their Project India visit was fueled by equal parts of good intentions, naivete and arrogance.

“We were going to make friends for democracy,” said Hirano, now a Concord resident. “It sounds a little embarrassing now.”

“We were convinced that by being friendly and singing our little songs, we would show them,” said Peck. “We thought we could convert them in 10 minutes.”

“Did it make a big impression on India?” Peck asked, rhetorically. “No. Did it make a big impression on us? Yeah.”

So big that most members’ Project India ties are still clearly visible.

Lewis and Stein both led later Project India groups and Wakiji became a staff member of the Peace Corps in 1986.

Over the weekend, they discussed creating a scholarship or memorial at UCLA for Adaline (Gram) Guenther, the program’s originator, and their intentions to keep in touch with each other.

“George is already working on the 80th reunion,” Peck said.