Garvin and his wife chose the Peace Corps before they began their family. Now the couple has three children: 13, 11 and 7. After their offspring complete college, he dreams of returning to the Peace Corps. "I would love to go in and bookend my Peace Corps experience from 30 to 65," he said. "The Peace Corps absolutely succeeds. It brings the world closer and makes all people recognize the value of other people. The host country sees America represented by an individual and that country sees it in a different light. And the volunteers leave their preconceived ideas behind and see beauty and dignity wherever they go." Garvin's life changed because of his experience in the Peace Corps. "It created a patina - a richness to who you are as a person," he said. "I made a human connection. It changed me. It made me realize how incredibly much we have in the United States and how happy and resourceful people can be with less."
Theresa and Tim Garvin sereved as members of the Peace Corps in Jamaica in the 1990s
Helping the poor, at any age
peace corps
By Kathy Uek/Daily News staff
GHS
Mon Sep 10, 2007, 04:57 PM EDT
Caption: Sudbury residents Theresa and Tim Garvin were members of the Peace Corps in the 1990s. Photo by Milton Amador/Daily News staff
SUDBURY - They were called "Market Children."
Outside Montego Bay, Jamaica, in a place called Bogue, the children lived in the open-air markets where they sold everything from tomatoes to used tires.
Adept at commerce, every day the youngsters bartered and traded in the stalls they inherited from their parents and would one day pass on to their children. They understood addition and subtraction.
In 1991, 15 market children attended "street school," where Tim Garvin of Sudbury served with the Peace Corps as a youth development officer.
In the school held at the YMCA, the children enjoyed the physical recreation of soccer and Frisbee. They ate chicken and rice and were taught rudimentary literacy and numbers. They learned to write the numbers they dealt with daily.
Garvin and his wife, Theresa, served for about two years in the Peace Corps and hope to some day return.
They may not be alone. Peace Corps Director Ron Tschetter arrived in Boston last weekend to launch his 50+ Peace Corps recruitment in conjunction with the AARP Life@50+ National Convention in Boston.
"Tschetter is opening this initiative up to get people to serve at any age," said Joanna Shea O'Brien, regional spokeswoman for the Peace Corps. "It's not too late to serve in the Peace Corps, which many people think."
The idea of the 50-year-old at the prime of his life in experience and in physical ability serving in the Peace Corps is brilliant, said Garvin.
Volunteers over age 50 - what the Peace Corps refers to as "50+" - serve in 66 of the 73 Peace Corps countries.
President John F. Kennedy officially established the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961. By that fall, the first group of volunteers was on the ground in Ghana, according to Shea O'Brien. To date, 187,000 volunteers from the United States have served in the Peace Corps in 139 countries. Currently, more than 7,000 volunteers serve in 73 countries.
"Older volunteers are a very rich American resource," Tschetter said in a press release. "(They are) mature, highly skilled, educated, and willing to give back to society."
The three goals of the Peace Corps are to provide technical assistance to other countries, promote a better understanding on the part of the countries served, and for volunteers to return to America and promote cultural awareness, said Shea O'Brien. "The combination of those three goals help promote world peace, sustainable development, and friendship."
At the Montego Bay Boys & Girls Club, Garvin also organized basketball leagues and built a basketball court. The children, ages 6 to 22, played dominoes, chess, and baseball with a bat held up unlike the more familiar cricket held downward.
"Not a day goes by that I don't fondly remember those days and what I was doing," said Garvin. "We had some wonderful times."
Some of his best memories include organizing a Halloween party with the older children and other Peace Corps volunteers in the area.
"We served fried vegetables and used food as a connection point," said Garvin.
He also remembers hiking to the Blue Mountains, the highest peak in Jamaica, to see the sun come up. He also thinks about baseball games played in a cow pasture. "We had to occasionally stop when the cows and bulls came walking through the field," he said.
Garvin also remembers traveling on a bus with about 150 people, two dogs, and about 150 pounds of rice. The bus, built to accommodate 45, transported them across the island to set up camp in a school.
For Garvin the Peace Corps represented a legacy of the past. "Growing up in the '60s, it was a visceral connection to JFK, one of my first heroes who made the Peace Corps come true," he said. "Thirty years later I served in something he started. It created an emotional feeling for me."
The memories for Garvin's wife were different. She did not play basketball or baseball.
Serving as a medical social worker at Cornwell Regional Hospital, she established a sexual abuse clinic where she helped children and saved lives.
"I loved it," said Theresa Garvin."I had different reactions than Tim. I worked with rape and child abuse cases. My experience was different and more overwhelming, but there were aspects of it that I loved so much and probably have not experienced in any job since. My experience was very valuable from a very different perspective."
With a background of working with children and families, it was right up her alley, but stressful.
Theresa Garvin remembers the resourceful people and how grateful they were.
"I've worked as a social worker for 25 years and worked with lots of different cultural backgrounds," she said. "But because of my experience, I am more in tuned to diversity - both economic and cultural - and how much they influence people's behavior. It was humbling. I found it refreshing to be a student again."
Garvin and his wife chose the Peace Corps before they began their family. Now the couple has three children: 13, 11 and 7. After their offspring complete college, he dreams of returning to the Peace Corps.
"I would love to go in and bookend my Peace Corps experience from 30 to 65," he said. "The Peace Corps absolutely succeeds. It brings the world closer and makes all people recognize the value of other people. The host country sees America represented by an individual and that country sees it in a different light. And the volunteers leave their preconceived ideas behind and see beauty and dignity wherever they go."
Garvin's life changed because of his experience in the Peace Corps.
"It created a patina - a richness to who you are as a person," he said. "I made a human connection. It changed me. It made me realize how incredibly much we have in the United States and how happy and resourceful people can be with less."
(Kathy Uek can be reached at 508-626-4419 or kuek@cnc.com.)
