As a former volunteer, I found myself pausing for a moment to reflect on my past, when I heard that Sargent Shriver, the founding director of the Peace Corps, had died last week. He was no longer head of the Peace Corps when I graduated from Yale in 1968 and went overseas to Togo as a volunteer, but he had set the tone and inspired many of us with his passionate, always good-spirited dedication to the mission of the Peace Corps. Indeed, as a public servant, working with such programs as the War On Poverty and Legal Services, he set an example for all of us throughout his life. (Yes, he was a Yale graduate, too, even chairman of the Yale Daily News -- additional reasons to admire him, as if there was any need.) And I was particularly moved by Bill Clinton's eulogy for Sargent Shriver, because the former president touched upon how “tough” and “cynical” the late sixties and early seventies were in this country, torn apart by assassinations and the bitter division of the Vietnam war, and how, in spite of all this, Sargent Shriver’s unshakeable idealism and his indomitable commitment to helping others to a better life still guided so many of us, disaffected as we were. I was going to say more about this disaffection and alienation during the Vietnam war, about the inequities of the draft, about the death of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and about Richard Milhous Nixon, who granted me a presidential deferment as a Peace Corps volunteer, but I would rather smile and think about Sargent Shriver. Excerpts from President Clinton’s remarks can be found at the following link:
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