Med Bennett was the first, and only, country director in Cyprus,
Legendary Peace Corps writer dies
We have just learned that Meridan Bennett (Peace Corps staff: 1962–66) died last March in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Med Bennett was the first, and only, country director in Cyprus, and then an evaluator for the Peace Corps. He did evaluations of the programs in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Nepal and Pakistan. Bennett was one of the early “thinkers” of the agency and, with David Hapgood, published one of the first critical books on the Peace Corps, Agents of Change: A Close Look at the Peace Corps, published in 1968. PeaceCorpsWriter.org published an article written by Bennett in 1965 entitled “The Real Job of the Peace Corps — One Man’s View” in our “To Preserve and to Learn” column.
Like many of the great men and women who were part of the early days of Peace Corps, Med passed through the agency, gave his ideas and vision, left a lasting contribution on how the Volunteers should work overseas, and then moved on with his life. He was 73.
