February 27, 2005: Headlines: PCOL Exclusive: RPCV Marilyn (Brandt) Smith reunites with friend and Country Director Andres Hernandez after 40 years
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February 23, 2005: San Antonio Express-News : When Marilyn Brandt inquired about joining the Peace Corps in the early 1960's, Andres Hernandez was skeptical:
February 27, 2005: Headlines: PCOL Exclusive: RPCV Marilyn (Brandt) Smith reunites with friend and Country Director Andres Hernandez after 40 years
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- Archive Monday, March 14, 2005 - 9:46 am [3]
When Marilyn Brandt inquired about joining the Peace Corps in the early 1960's, Andres Hernandez was skeptical because she was blind. But once she got to the Dominican Republic and began working at the government school for the blind, he witnessed her immediate impact on the students as she exposed them to new experiences. With amazement, Hernandez watched as Brandt taught these children that their horizons didn't have to be limited by their lack of sight.
When Marilyn Brandt inquired about joining the Peace Corps in the early 1960's, Andres Hernandez was skeptical because she was blind. But once she got to the Dominican Republic and began working at the government school for the blind, he witnessed her immediate impact on the students as she exposed them to new experiences. With amazement, Hernandez watched as Brandt taught these children that their horizons didn't have to be limited by their lack of sight.
Peace Corps vet seeks blind American who made a difference
By Cary Clack
February 23, 2005
Caption: The photo above is for illustrative purposes only and is *not* from the School for the Blind in the Dominican Republic.
He saw sardine juice dripping from a young Fidel Castro's beard in the hills of Guatemala, took over an office that Che Guevara used to work out of, knew the Kennedys and gently scolded a little girl named Maria Shriver.
But of all the famous figures who populate the stories of Andres Hernandez, it's a blind woman from South Texas who's on his mind most these days.
A woman he hasn't seen for more than 40 years, for whom he has no contact information, but who made the kind of difference in the lives of blind children in the Dominican Republic that JFK envisioned when he gave his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, the charge to organize the Peace Corps.
"Marilyn Brandt," said the 92-year-old Hernandez, who passed through San Antonio last week. "B-R-A-N-D-T."
Launched in 1961, the Peace Corps was arguably the embodiment of the idealism that defined Kennedy's Inaugural Address.
Hernandez, a New Mexico native, became the first director of the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. After serving in the Army in World War II, where he was hurt in the Battle of the Bulge, he went to work for the Veteran's Administration and the Agency for International Development.
Before then, while working for a development agency during the 1950s, he was stationed in Guatemala and met Fidel Castro. He remembers the revolutionary, "Eating sardines, with juice dripping down his beard."
He wasn't impressed.
"He was a dummy," he says.
Hernandez was interviewed for the Peace Corps job at Shriver's house in December 1961. While sitting near a table filled with Christmas cards, he saw two of the Shriver children, including Maria, come in and mess up the cards. "Don't do that!" he told them.
When Marilyn Brandt, a graduate of Southwest Texas State, inquired about joining the Peace Corps, Hernandez was skeptical because she was blind. But once she got to the Dominican Republic and began working at the government school for the blind, he witnessed her immediate impact on the students as she exposed them to new experiences.
"First thing in the morning, she'd turn the radio on to the news, have them do exercises and then, over meals, ask them about what was in the news," Hernandez remembers.
For the first time, the children did things like go swimming.
With amazement, Hernandez watched as Brandt taught these children that their horizons didn't have to be limited by their lack of sight.
At the end of 1963, Hernandez was moved to Guatemala to run that country's Peace Corps.
"I never got a chance to say goodbye to her (Brandt)," he says.
Today, the Dominican Republic's National School for the Blind, now known as the Educational Resource Center, is an award-winning facility.
A few years ago, Hernandez tracked down an address for Brandt but got a response saying she'd married and moved. He's had no luck tracking her down.
To Hernandez, Brandt is symbolic of the Peace Corps, and America, at its best.
"How nice it would be for her to go back," says Hernandez who, every Thursday, in Santa Rosa, N.M., teaches schoolchildren the origins of their Spanish names. "She needs to know that her efforts have blossomed terrifically."
RPCV Marilyn (Brandt) Smith reunites with friend and Country Director Andres Hernandez after 40 years
RPCV Marilyn (Brandt) Smith reunites with friend and Country Director Andres Hernandez after 40 years
Forty-three years ago I was in graduate school in San Marcos, Texas. I was called to the hall phone to receive a call from a man in Washington D.C. who was heading the Peace Corps program in the Dominican Republic. Andres Hernandez, Andy to those of us who love him so much, had reviewed my application. He knew the school for the blind was looking for a teacher. I was reluctant to travel to that part of the world because it was during the Cuban missile crisis. Better judgment prevailed. I knew this was a chance to pioneer a new opportunity for blind people, and I was ready to teach.
Once or twice during my working years after the Peace Corps I tried to find Andy because I knew he would give me a good job reference. Apparently he tried to find me too. Without our knowledge, between 1972 and 1983 we lived only a few hours apart, I in West Texas, he in eastern New Mexico. Thanks to Hugh Pickens, a newspaper in San Antonio, and Andy's persistence we have finally been reunited.
Andy is planning a reunion of his D.R. people in September and hopes to be able to arrange some help for me to return to the D.R. He wants me to see how much the program we helped to build at the school for the blind has advanced in the last four decades. The government apparently is honoring assistance from Americans, like Peace Corps volunteers, for their part of the progress. It was a struggling nation when we arrived. After overthrowing their dictator their next effort at government was also overthrown, and we never knew what lay around the corner politically.
When Andy and his wife were reassigned to Guatemala during my service I went out to the airport to say Goodbye but there wasn't time for real expressions of feelings. I gave them a doily which I had crocheted. His wife Amelia later wrote me a "Thank you" note and said that she had used it on a cocktail tray at a special function in their new home. That made my day.
At 92, Andy is still the gracious service oriented man I knew forty years ago. I am looking forward to more phone calls and letters and face-to-face visits soon.
Marilyn (Brandt) Smith
RPCV Dominican Republic
When this story was posted in March 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: San Antonio Express-News
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Dominican Republic; Disabilities; Blindness; Country Directors - Guatemala; Country Directors - Dominican Republic
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