Fifty-nine years ago, inspired by John F. Kennedy to do what I could do for my country, I enlisted in the Peace Corps. Presently, I found myself living in the highlands of Puerto Rico, at a training camp named in honor of Lawrence Radley, a Peace Corps volunteer who had perished in a plane crash while serving in Colombia.
At Camp Radley, we were preparing to serve as “community development specialists,” tasked with doing whatever we could to improve the living conditions of rural Colombians. None of us knew exactly what that would entail, nor was it ever made clear to us. My guess was that I would be making friends and spreading good will among humble farmers–as opposed to, say, dropping napalm bombs on hapless villagers. Pretty much all of my fellow trainees were similarly inclined.
Sadly, I never got the chance, after I became one of several trainees to be rejected–“de-selected,” in the parlance of the day. Only three of my bunkmates made the cut, one of them Salvador Vazquez, who would later die in a bus crash. Turns out, public transportation in Central America was just as dangerous as the battlefields of Vietnam.
My friend David Virello returned to California, where his father immediately drove him to Canada. I decided to hang out awhile in San Juan along with fellow de-selectees Charlie Boss and Michael Parsons, both of whom were now classified 1-A and were thus eligible for the draft. I was not, having been reclassified 1-Y by an army psychiatrist the previous year due to PTSD. Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Just the thought of undergoing basic training made me ill.
In San Juan, Mike, Charlie and I hung out with a ragtag crew of fellow PC discards, all of whom were doing their best to remain expats. After we could no longer afford lodging, the three of us became vagabonds, hitching rides from one village to the next and cadging handouts from humble campesinos whose generosity never failed to amaze me.
Eventually, we ended up foraging for nuts and berries and sleeping on the ground. We were no longer helping to develop communities; if anything, we were raising local poverty levels.
Finally, Mike and Charlie opted to exchange their tickets home for airfare to South America, where they would resume their vagabond journey. Me? I flew home to Utah, where I took up residence in a one-room cabin in the mountains and bought a fast motorbike. A couple of years later, while meandering across Texas, I bumped into a fellow Peace Corps reject to whom I’ve been married since. One might say that she and I met through a process of de-selection.
I don’t know whatever became of Mike and Charlie, but I hope you’re well and I’d sure like to hear from you. Especially Charlie!
