Peace Corps Call Has Resonated in California

California colleges have produced more Peace Corps volunteers--in excess of 20,000--than schools in any other state, with UC Berkeley the top contributor by far and UCLA and Stanford University anchoring the top 10, according to figures to be released today in Washington.

In a letter of congratulations to the 50 “Top Volunteering Universities,” Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan said much of the corps’ success can be traced to the energy and idealism of American students. College graduates make up 97% of the more than 150,000 Peace Corps volunteers who have served in 132 countries since President John F. Kennedy created the corps in 1961.

“These colleges and universities are to be commended for producing students committed to making a difference, with a thirst for adventure and a desire to experience a new culture in an ever-changing world,” Gearan wrote in the letter.

Nowhere, according to the tally, did Kennedy’s call to service resonate more than in the Golden State. New York, with its 12,000 Peace Corps volunteers, was a distant second.

Eleven California schools rank in the Top 50, including two other UC campuses--Santa Barbara and Davis--and six California State University branches--Humboldt, Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and San Luis Obispo.

“Maybe there’s a pioneering spirit in California. Maybe [its residents] are the risk takers. But it seems right from the inception that Californians just got it. We just immediately identified with it,” said Patricia Garamendi, an associate director at the Peace Corps, who volunteered with her husband, John, the day after they graduated from UC Berkeley in 1966.

The couple spent two years teaching English and digging wells in the jungles of Ethiopia--a period that John Garamendi, the first California insurance commissioner and now deputy secretary of the Interior Department, has called “the pivotal point in our lives.”

Other volunteers speak equally glowingly, though many endured discomfort in the Corps.

“You have to leave your blow dryer at home,” said Raymond Prado, who lived in a small Honduras village in 1979 with no hot water and no electricity. Nevertheless, Prado--who earned a master’s degree in Latin American area studies from UCLA--said his participation in a nutritional project to teach villagers to grow vegetables was one of the best times of his life.

Now the director of outreach at UCLA’s School of Medicine, Prado particularly valued “the experience of living with people from another background, being accepted by them, learning from them. Although these people did not have a lot, they were very giving. This is the human experience--regardless of what people have, they’ll give to make you feel comfortable.”

Alan Axworthy built bridges in Nepal after graduating from Stanford in 1975. The food was awful, he remembers--he had amoebic dysentery and other intestinal bugs more than once. And during the monsoon season, the leeches came out. But Axworthy thrived as he sought to solve technical problems while working 40 miles from the nearest road.

“All our materials had to be carried in. For each 150-yard length of cable we had 100 people who would hoist it up and head off down the trail like a giant centipede,” said Axworthy, who now is an engineer in San Jose. “But it was the right thing to do, after having led a very comfortable, privileged existence in this country and having recognized that. . . . And it introduced me to--and emphasized for me--the pleasure in building things.”

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The idea of a Peace Corps had been proposed by U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey as early as 1957, but it was Kennedy who made it a reality. Historians trace the birth of the Corps to Oct. 14, 1960, when presidential candidate Kennedy--fresh from a televised debate with Richard Nixon--arrived at the University of Michigan at 2 a.m. and delivered a hastily written speech. “How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana?” Kennedy asked the 10,000 students who had gathered around the steps of the Student Union. “Technicians and engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that . . . your willingness to contribute your life to this country, I think will depend the answer to whether a free society can compete.”

Six days before the presidential election, Kennedy formally unveiled his concept of a volunteer corps that would help the poor meet their everyday needs, promote world peace and increase understanding between Americans and the people of other nations. On March 1, 1961, less than five months after taking office, he signed the Peace Corps into being. Nine months later, 750 volunteers were working in nine countries.

Today, nearly 6,500 volunteers are serving in 87 countries, working to help fight hunger, bring clean water to communities, educate children, start new small businesses and stop the spread of AIDS.

If Peace Corps recruiters ever decide to name a poster family, the Garamendi clan will be a prime contender. In addition to both parents, two of the six Garamendi children have served in the Corps, and the youngest, 11-year-old Ashley, is in a Peace Corps Club at school.

The second oldest child, John Jr., 26, is now volunteering in Paraguay with his wife, Colleen Denny. Both attended UC Berkeley. Christina, the Garamendis’ third oldest, served in Ecuador, where she contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, a nerve disorder. The UC Davis graduate could not walk for more than a year. But the illness didn’t dampen her enthusiasm.

“She was totally paralyzed. We almost lost her,” Patti Garamendi said. “But now she’s headed to nursing school because she wants to go back.”

Clearly, the kids have absorbed some of what the Corps taught their parents. John Garamendi--who has served as state senator and insurance commissioner and who ran for governor in 1994--remembers learning in Ethiopia how to respond to problems one step at a time, using small successes to motivate the community--and himself--to solve more complex problems. He and his wife worked with villagers first to develop a water well, then a bridge across a stream to the village school and, later, plumbing and electricity. Today, he says he uses the same method to tackle thorny issues such as California water policy.

The Peace Corps “set the values that we’ve used throughout our life and the way we approach our work,” he said. According to his wife, it also gave them another enduring gift: their own language.

“We both still speak Amharic fluently, because we had six children and it was handy to be able to talk in private,” she said, laughing. “It’s great for car phone conversations because nobody knows what you’re saying.”

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Supporting the Peace Corps

Of the 25 colleges that have produced the most Peace Corps volunteers, eight are in California. Here is a tally of the number of graduates from each school who have joined the Corps since its formation in 1961:

1. UC Berkeley: 2,960

2. University of Wisconsin, Madison: 2,237

3. University of Washington: 1,990

4. Harvard University: 1,966

5. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: 1,821

6. Michigan State University: 1,756

7. University of Colorado, Boulder: 1,633

8. University of Illinois, Urbana: 1,550

9. UCLA: 1,445

10. Stanford University: 1,240

11. Cornell University: 1,207

12. Ohio State University: 1,196

13. University of Oregon: 1,187

14. UC Santa Barbara: 1,153

15. Indiana University, Bloomington: 1,123

16. University of Texas, Austin: 1,091

17. San Francisco State University: 1,044

18. UC Davis: 981

19. San Jose State University: 970

20. University of Massachusetts, Amherst: 953

21. Oregon State University: 946

22. University of Arizona: 931

23. San Diego State University: 882

24. Boston University: 842

25. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul: 838

Note: Three other California universities were in the top 50: Cal State Long Beach and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo tied at 42nd with 568 volunteers each, and Humboldt State University was 45th with 557.

Source: Los Angeles Times