August 31, 1994: Headlines: Staff: Project Tools: Jack Crandall's message to members of SUNY Brockport's Peace Corps/College Degree Program
Peace Corps Online:
Peace Corps News:
Peace Corps Library:
Photography:
Archive:
Hugh Pickens' Photos of Peace Corps Training in Brockport, 1969:
August 10, 2005: Headlines: Staff: Hisotry: World War II: Greatest Generation: Legacy: Project Tools: Jack Crandall writes "Golden Anniversaries Relished in Wake of WWII Generation" :
August 31, 1994: Headlines: Staff: Project Tools: Jack Crandall's message to members of SUNY Brockport's Peace Corps/College Degree Program
Jack Crandall's message to members of SUNY Brockport's Peace Corps/College Degree Program
"The PC/CDP was a true partnership not only between Peace Corps Washington and Brockport but you and the staff and you and the persons of the host countries. It was not a multi-national corporation operating on political and economic power but a multi-national partnership operating on the power of love and good will. We have been bound together and bonded by the Peace Corps spirit and ideal. Your outpouring of support for yours truly in the present situation is striking evidence that those bonds still persist and exist!"
Jack Crandall's message to members of SUNY Brockport's Peace Corps/College Degree Program
Dear PC/CDP Partners,
I've changed my salutation to you because it is as accurate a description of "aluminaries" and because it reiterates and reemphasizes a relationship I recognized early on in my message to you in the training syllabus entitled "no silent partners." The PC/CDP was a true partnership not only between Peace Corps Washington and Brockport but you and the staff and you and the persons of the host countries. It was not a multi-national corporation operating on political and economic power but a multi-national partnership operating on the power of love and good will. We have been bound together and bonded by the Peace Corps spirit and ideal. Your outpouring of support for yours truly in the present situation is striking evidence that those bonds still persist and exist!
It would be a real understatement to say that I missed being with you at the Silver Anniversary Reunion. Yet, in a profound spiritual sense, I really didn't miss it because you wouldn't let me. Your phone call, the collective card, the many individual cards and letters, the visits in the hospital of Hugh Pickens and Dick Turner made me feel that I was still with you and you with me. Marge Brown, President Brown's wife, covered the Banquet with her camcorder and we have a video tape of that wonderful occasion. It confirmed all of the individual reports that the Reunion was a resounding success.
As I watched the festivities on our VCR my most vivid impression was that the Peace Corps spirit still prevailed and I felt enveloped, lifted up, buoyed up (or is that a sexist expression?) in the camaraderie and the outpouring of affection. Another visual impression: you all looked so young! I guess I forgot the difference in our ages. But still you looked remarkably good after all of the challenges you have faced and met including the rigors of the fifteen month PC/CDP which undeniably was the most rigorous and rough.
It was easy for me to write and talk about bringing together a number of disparate elements - language training, the academic major program, psychological testing, cross-cultural studies, professional preparation, etc. into an integrated program but you had to do it! You had to perform the herculean task of integrating those different ingredients and to emerge as competent degree-bearing, bilingual professionals ready for a challenging overseas assignment which you performed with distinction.
You proved to be sturdy exponents of flexibility and persistent practitioners of perseverance. You have continued to exemplify those virtues in your various post-Peace Corps careers. I am so proud of you!
In at least one respect I was lucky in not being able to attend the banquet because I was scheduled to "speechify" still suffering from the dubious reputation of being an addict of an ancient aberration in articulation known as alliteration. However, I had tried to deal with the problem and herewith is an excerpt from my proposed opening remarks.
"I hereby avow and affirm that I will assiduously avoid any arrangement, audible, or alphabetical, of adjectives or adverbs, which might a-liminate me from an assignment I have so avidly and avariously anticipated."
But I probably wouldn't have been able to have lived up to that pledge and my polysyllabic phrases and sesequipedalian sentences would have had a pathetic bloated quality alongside the straightforward eloquence of those who did speak - Herb, President Brown, Lorenzo, Juana, Jaime, and Kathy.
Now I'm able to report that after twelve days in the hospital with transfusions, surgery and numerous medication, followed by a rather extended period of convalescence, I am "on the mend." I believe that your communications of good wishes and prayerful support have been a positive factor in that process.
So I wind up this communique where it began with a salute to my peerless PC/CDP partners and the Peace Corps spirit plus an expression of profound gratitude for your continuing support and a fervent wish that there will be another reunion in the future.
Peace and God Bless,
Jack Crandall
Overlook Terrace, Bemus Point, NY
August 31, 1994
When this story was posted in August 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
| The Peace Corps Library Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related stories in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can find hundreds of stories about what RPCVs with your same interests or from your Country of Service are doing today. If you have a web site, support the "Peace Corps Library" and link to it today. |
| Military Option sparks concerns The U.S. military, struggling to fill its voluntary ranks, is allowing recruits to meet part of their military obligations by serving in the Peace Corps. Read why there is rising opposition to the program among RPCVs. Director Vasquez says the agency has a long history of accepting qualified applicants who are in inactive military status. John Coyne says "Not only no, but hell no!" Latest: RPCV Chris Matthews to discuss the issue on Hardball tonight. |
| Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong 170,000 is a very special number for the RPCV community - it's the number of Volunteers who have served in the Peace Corps since 1961. It's also a number that is very special to us because March is the first month since our founding in January, 2001 that our readership has exceeded 170,000. And while we know that not everyone who comes to this site is an RPCV, they are all "Friends of the Peace Corps." Thanks everybody for making PCOL your source of news for the Returned Volunteer community. |
Read the stories and leave your comments.
Some postings on Peace Corps Online are provided to the individual members of this group without permission of the copyright owner for the non-profit purposes of criticism, comment, education, scholarship, and research under the "Fair Use" provisions of U.S. Government copyright laws and they may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner. Peace Corps Online does not vouch for the accuracy of the content of the postings, which is the sole responsibility of the copyright holder.
Story Source: Project Tools
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Staff
PCOL21586
46