Forty-Five years on the making: my first peace corps story.

AuthorWentling, Mark Gregory

It will be 45 years on February 27, 2012, since I joined the Peace Corps and changed my life forever. All those many years ago I did not know much. The one thing I did know in those youthful days was that I was restless and wanted to go far away. I felt deeply that the moon, wind and stars were calling me to foreign lands. I also wanted to respond to the call President Kennedy made when he created the Peace Corps in 1962. Thus, it took me less than a heart beat to respond affirmatively to an invitation I received in late 1966 to serve for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras. I was thinking at the time that Honduras was in Africa and that was where I wanted to go. Yes, I did not know much back then.

I shocked many by dropping out of college less than one semester before graduation, quitting my job as night manager of the student union at Wichita State University, and leaving everything on a late night Braniff jet flight (my first) out of Wichita. I said goodbye to family and friends, and the people (Marshall Williams' family) who had so generously provided me with a place to stay in those last days in Wichita. My good friend, Margaret Roberts, gave me a ride to the airport. A very excited young man, born and raised in Kansas, broke away from his roots and headed for unknown adventures.

I also did not have much. I boarded the plane with only small carry-on bag. The first stop was Chicago and, after a couple of hours in the airport there, I was supposed to go on to Philadelphia for three days of orientation before continuing to Puerto Rico (PR) for three months of training. Things did not go as smoothly as planned because Chicago had had

its worst snowstorm in a century and the airport was closed. I spent 24 hours camped out in O'Hare Airport before going on to chilly Philly.

I met and bonded with other Peace Corps trainees bound for Honduras at Hotel Sylvania in Philly. We were vaccinated, briefed and ticketed for our onward leg to San Juan. Adrenaline was running high and I don't think any of us slept during our three days in Philly. Many of us hung out in our spare time at a nearby pub called McGilligan's. I met for the first time Dick Feutz (from Paris, Illinois) at this pub. Dick and I remain in touch to this day and we still talk about all of our adventures, especially about what we did after our two-year stint in Honduras (e.g., three months roaming around Europe and running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain in July 1969). This year we explored Kruger Park in South Africa together.

I'll never forget how warm and nice it felt getting off the plane in San Juan. I took off my winter coat and tossed it into the first trashcan I saw and shouted: "I'll never need a coat again!" Spirits were running high as we boarded the bus for the Peace Corps training center at Camp Crozier (this camp and another one, Camp Radley nearby, were named after the first two Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) to die in service in Columbia).

Camp Crozier was located south of Arecibo, near Utuado, in something of a rain forest.

There were 96 of us (I was the only Kansan) who got off the bus when we arrived at Camp Crozier but only 62 (only six girls) of us remained when it came time three months later to swear-in and board the bus for our onward assignment to Honduras. Yes, many did not survive the day and night onslaught of classes in everything from learning Spanish to castrating pigs. Also, the constant...

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