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Close-knit group of Peace Corps Volunteers gathers 30 years after returning from Marshall Islands
Close-knit group of Peace Corps Volunteers gathers 30 years after returning from Marshall Islands
Peace Corps workers meet again
Close-knit group gathers 30 years after returning from Marshall Islands
By Nick Sargent
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: June 24, 2000
Greendale - If you can remember 1969, you probably remember exactly what you were doing when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. But 20 people gathered at Whitnall Park on Saturday had an interesting perspective on that historic day.
Diane Kavalauskas of Shorewood organized the 30th anniversary of the return of the Micro-8s, a Peace Corps mission group that served two years in what is now the Republic of the Marshall Islands, in the western Pacific Ocean.
From Hawaii to New York, the Micro-8s gathered Saturday and remembered how they spent July 20, 1969, and the two years surrounding it.
"We were all sitting on the beach listening to Armed Forces radio," said Ken Robbins, a Waterford native now living in Houston. The entire crew was amazed. "How could we get on the moon when we couldn't even communicate with another island?"
The 45 people who made up the Micro-8s - named because they were the eighth group to go to Micronesia, which the Marshall Islands were part of at the time - formed a strong bond during their training and have kept in contact in the 30 years since their return.
The members each had special assignments on the islands. Some taught English; others helped with the islands' main cash crop: coconuts.
They celebrated their 10-year reunion in California and the 20th anniversary in Washington D.C. So for the 30th, they found middle ground in the Midwest, and Micro-8ers Steve and Diane Kavalauskas were happy to organize the event.
The couple got married just a few weeks before leaving on their Peace Corps mission, one of five married couples among the Micro-8s.
The Kavalauskas' daughter, Tasha, is serving an internship at a hospital on the Marshall Islands this summer. The first-year student at the Medical College of Wisconsin has met one of the islanders Steve and Diane taught while they were there. She'll soon fly to the one-square-mile island where her parents spent the better part of two years.
And a lot has changed. There are paved roads, telephones and running water in the islands' capital, Majuro. Yet, the outlying areas remain the same, Micro-8er Skip Polson of Hawaii said.
Eventually, talk turned Saturday to where the 40th reunion should be held.
"We could go back to the Marshall Islands," Diane suggested. "Then we would have something to talk about at the 50th reunion."