Divorce lawyer Martin Coonen traded his briefcase for a backpack and is heading to a village in Paraguay where he will not spend any time arguing over who gets custody of Junior on Memorial Day
Peace Corps calling for area attorney
By Kevin Lyons
The Northwest Herald
Woodstock, Ill.
May 12, 2005
WOODSTOCK - Divorce lawyer Martin Coonen traded his briefcase for a backpack and is heading to a village in Paraguay where he will not spend any time arguing over who gets custody of Junior on Memorial Day.
Joining the ranks of Peace Corps volunteers that weekend, Coonen will spend the next two years and three months with little more than a guitar and whatever he can stuff into two suitcases.
"I knew when I started a civilian-law practice that I didn't want to die with a suit on," said Coonen, 45, of Woodstock.
Coonen said he always planned to retire early and devote himself to volunteering. He has volunteered regularly with Public Action to Deliver Shelter and taught English as a second language.
But Coonen stepped up his commitment to helping others many weeks ago by shutting down his 15-year-old legal practice and committing himself to teaching business skills to farmers in Paraguay.
Although he still considers himself an idealist, despite making a living standing between embittered spouses, Coonen is fully aware that he will be different from the majority of freshly scrubbed college students with whom he will be volunteering.
"People aren't like cars," Coonen said. "You put miles on us, and we get better. We don't get worse."
Peace Corps officials are inclined to agree, even though 82 percent of their volunteers are in their 20s.
"That's still our bread and butter," Peace Corps spokesman Nathan Arnold said. "But we're finding that the older Americans have a lot to offer. They have all of these life skills already."
Coonen said he expected to live in a small village without running water, and possibly without electricity. He will eat a simple diet of rice, beans, vegetables and occasionally meat.
"Because you're supposed to be part of the community you're serving," he said of the relative hardships that come with being a Peace Corps volunteer. "And being part of it means living with them, living like them."
Coonen agrees with that aspect of the Peace Corps philosophy and recently traveled to Nicaragua, touring the country by bus and staying in cheap hotels. In the past few years, he also has been to Costa Rica and Mexico's interior.
"I've always liked seeing the way people look at how they live and how the world works that's different from the way Americans look at how they live and how the world works," he said.
"When you do that, you get good perspective on life because you realize there's a lot of commonality in spite of these layers of huge cultural differences that go on top of these commonalities."
Coonen said he appreciated many things about life in the United States, including the freedom of expression, generally honest police, safe drinking water, and the freedom to travel.
He'll miss his girlfriend and friends, some of whom think he is crazy.
"Yes. Most of them," Coonen confessed.
But, he said, he believes he will enjoy the slower pace of life and the importance people in Latin American countries place on spending time with each other and their families.
"One thing that sometimes gets lost in our life in the U.S. is a focus on the simple things that make us happy, and sometimes that gets lost in consumerism," he said.
McHenry County Presiding Judge Sharon Prather said the county was losing one of its outstanding lawyers, and she was sorry to see Coonen go.
"It is unusual, but Marty is a unique individual," she said. "He's burned out on the practice of law. He just wanted to try something different.
"Whatever makes him happy. He's paid his dues."
Coonen said he got his travel bug and the volunteer spirit from his parents, Bernice and Norbert, both now deceased.
"I think they did a pretty good job of teaching their kids that a sense of adventure in life is good," he said, "and that going beyond what you can do for yourself is a good thing."
