Students paint Peace Corps Mural
North Quincy student's art centerpiece of Peace Corps mural
Jul 22, 2004
Patriot Ledger Quincy, Ma
by Sara Perkins
The Patriot Ledger
In September, visitors to the New England Regional Office of the Peace Corps in Boston will be greeted by none other the late President John F. Kennedy.
An image of a black-robed, grinning Kennedy bearing a flaming torch is the centerpiece of a new world map mural painted for the corps by North Quincy High School sophomore Jimmy Tran.
Tran, 14, encouraged by North Quincy art teacher Angela Miller, responded to the corps' call for adolescent artists and impressed them with his preliminary drawings.
"He was the one that really sat down and put something together," said James Arena-DeRosa, director of the regional office. "We chose him on the strength of that."
Making a first foray into acrylic paint, Tran, who was born in Vietnam and moved to Quincy at the age of 2 with his family, worked after school for weeks to complete the mural.
"He had not experienced a lot of painting before he started the 4- by-6-foot canvas and had never worked that large before," Miller said. "By the end of this mural, Jimmy seems to paint with as much ease as he uses colored pencils and other art materials."
He researched the history and mission of the Peace Corps to complete the mural.
Kennedy earned central placement in the painting because in 1961 he conceived and championed the Peace Corps program. Forty-two years later, the corps has more than 7,000 volunteers serving 27-month stints in about 70 countries.
"We thought we'd like to have a world map that would incorporate the history of the Peace Corps and the cultures around the world where we serve," Arena-DeRosa said. The project was inspired by "this big blank wall spot" left after office renovations, he said.
The map has vignettes representing the five areas in which corps volunteers work: health, education, environment, business and agriculture. Tran also researched regions to find ways to illustrate each continent.
"One of the things that we're trying to do in this ... is get more young people to the point where they have a better understanding of what Peace Corps is," Arena-DeRosa said. "He learned a lot."
"We tried not to change too much so that it would be through the eyes of a young person," he said.
The mural will be unveiled and hung in September in a celebration of the first generation of Peace Corps volunteers, some of whom live in the area. The first group of 51 shipped out in September 1961, only six months after Kennedy signed an executive order creating the program.
Tran is in Florida and could not be reached for comment.
Sara Perkins may be reached at sperkins@ledger.com.
