The Making of a Peace Corps Volunteer: From Maine to Thailand

Growing up in the small Acadian French-speaking village of Lille, Maine, learning English as a second language, being in a strong family, training in carpentry with his father, attending the internationally minded St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia – all helped to prepare the author for Peace Corps service. Along with other pioneer volunteers, the author helped to shape the Peace Corps into a vibrant organization.

Selected Chapter Titles:

“Wild Ride in a Helicopter with Sargent Shriver”. “Cussing Sister Simeon in French”; “Spirituality in a Hammock”; “Peace Corps? Christian Brothers? Soldier?”; “What’s a Peace Corps Volunteer?”; “Fried Bananas”; “China Says Peace Corps Volunteers are Spies”; “Becoming the Peace Corps Volunteer I wanted to Be”; “Too Drunk to Ride My Bike”;

These stories are suggestive of the author’s growth and development from a nascent sense of self and consciousness embedded at birth to the end of his service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand 1, 1961 to 1963.