Name

Potosi: (July 1967-July 1968)  English teacher at the USIS Center. John Griffith and I dug our own latrine with the help of several mineros who knew how to remove solid rock from the mountain.  The entire compound where we lived used the latrine extensively, according to John.   I remember that it had no roof. At night we could view the stars and incredible astrological formations of the southern hemisphere.

I worked in a migrant farm workers program for a summer and served as a counselor in a juvenile detention facility in Washington State for the first year after Peace Corps.

After marriage to Mary Kingdon in 1969 (Canadian volunteer assigned to Oruro) and graduate school at IU, where I received a Master’s degree in Social Work in 1972, I worked for several years in the fields of public welfare and developmental disabilities.  After fourteen years of marriage, Mary and I divorced in 1983 and remained good friends until her death in 2002. 

For over twenty years I worked in Human Resources in hospitals in Indiana, including Mishawaka, Gary, East Chicago, Hobart, and Kendallville. While working as the Director of HR at Mishawaka, I received a Master’s degree in Administration from the University of Notre Dame in 1990, when I was fifty years old.

I retired from Parkview Health in 2006.  While employed, I served as President of the Indiana Society for Health Care Human Resources Administration. I gave presentations at two National Human Resources conferences.

I have three children: David, an attorney; Kristine, a teacher; and Eileen, who is in her second year of law school at that great university in South Bend, Notre Dame, where they are learning how to play football again.  I have seven grandchildren – Aiden, Matthew, Nora, Mary Cate, Keira, Brendan, and Dylan. 

For the past eleven years, I have lived at Pretty Lake in LaGrange County, Indiana.

I don’t have any hobbies because I don’t do many things the same way every time.

I prefer people to animals, animals to machines, and machines to most politicians.

PC In Your Life

• Even though the achievements seem small, the Peace Corps experience taught me, as did my service in the Marine Corps, that a group of people who are dedicated to a common mission can do just about anything if they work together and support each other.

• But here we are again, forty years later, in another unnecessary war.  What have we learned?  When possible, isn’t it preferable to promote a policy of peace which makes friends in other countries, one person at a time, rather than making enemies one country after another through misguided military interventions?

Best things I remember were:
• a hot shower at the Hotel Sucre in La Paz
• trout at Max Biebers
• the PC medical kit
• the camaraderie of fellow volunteers
• warm beer at Mac’s Place
• discussing the Pues situation with Gino

Worst things were:
• typhus
• whipworm
• amoebas
• getting stitched up after falling out of a truck In La Paz
• warm beer at Mac’s Place
• discussing the Pues situation with Gino

Also, I remember having recurring nightmares that the "pachoogie" bug would find Its way from Cochabamba to the altiplano and bite me.

I am a member of Amigos de Bolivia y Peru. I get the “retired rate.

I still work an occasional shift at area hospitals in Northern Indiana, and serve as President of the Pretty Lake Conservation Club.  I spend most weekends in South Bend with my family.