No Greater Service is a quote from President John F. Kennedy to describe the Peace Corps. In 1962, he pitched the Peace Corps idea on TV and asked his audience to join. Why JFK’s quote? You see when I was 16 my Liberty High School band played at JFK’s rally at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania eight days before he won the presidential election in 1960. I played the flute and piccolo in the band. I was seated in front of the podium I could almost touch JFK. He inspired me. So when he asked folks to join the Peace Corps, I did. It changed my life in ways I could never have imagined.
May 1959 - The band member in uniform inside the living room of our century old farmhouse on the corner of Route 512 and Hanoverville Road, Bethlehem, PA.
May 1969 - With leis around our necks, tears in our eyes, and enthusiasm in our hearts, we left Hilo, Hawaii for the Philippines after completing our two-month Peace Corps training.
NO GREATER SERVICE - The Memoir: How it began…
On March 11, 2019, I celebrated my fiftieth anniversary of joining the Peace Corps. A few months earlier, my wife unearthed two boxes in the basement filled with Peace Corps memorabilia. One night, I listened as Prima read aloud my journal written on a 35 cents Stenographers Note Book and a few choice letters (that she had never read before). Awash in nostalgia, I organized a 50th reunion for my Group 31. Basking in the afterglow of the reunion, and inspired by the shared memories of those who attended, Prima and I put together a book based on our collective recollections and supported by the journal, newsletters, photos, newspaper clippings, etc. and copious letters to my Dad, siblings, relatives, and friends, written half a century ago from 10,000 miles away. Four of my Peace Corps friends shared their own heartwarming experiences in the book.
I took more than 2000 photographs (slides, b&w, colored pictures) for my collection and over 3000 for Santa Cruz Mission’s promotional projects. On May 14, 1969, while I was still in training in Hilo, Hawaii I wrote in my journal: “Peace Corps so far has been a truly exciting adventure and marvelous experience. Many of these experiences are recorded on film and will do an excellent job in jogging my memory.” These photos defeat their purpose and lose their meaning if they are not shared. As a bonus, we included 237 of my photos in the memoir.
LIFE WITH THE TBOLI PEOPLE
After my Social Worker stint, I extended for another year and moved to the hinterlands of Lake Sebu, Surallah, to work at a Catholic Mission called Santa Cruz. The Mission served the indigenous people of South Cotabato province, particularly the Tboli whose sad plight was featured in the August 1971 issue of National Geographic Magazine. Until 1964, the average Tboli had not "seen a truck, a safety pin was a wonder to them, they ate once a day and less than 5 lbs. of meat a year", as quoted in my memoir.
A Tboli grandmother and her granddaughter making their way to the spring to fetch water. They used "kubong" or bamboo tubes to carry the water.
The Peace Corps Volunteer drank from the same spring that served over 100 residents of Tacunil village.
The Mission also served other indigenous people – the Blaan, Ubo, Maguindanao, Manobo, Tasaday, and Kalagan. I wrote project proposals (feasibility studies) to procure funding for the community development projects of the Mission to improve health, literacy, and poverty (i.e. building a hospital, schools, etc) and became the photographer for the Promotions Office managed by Prima.
