A group of former Peace Corps volunteers held a 60th anniversary reunion in Hilo last week, celebrating training on the Big Island in 1964. The cohort of about 100 completed its training here before deploying to Malaysia, some as teachers, others as nurses — and all with a mindset to make the world a better place, one community at a time. A dozen or so of those individuals, now in their 80s, returned to the island with family members to reminisce.
The Tribune-Herald talked to four of them Tuesday at the Grand Naniloa Hotel Hilo. “The Peace Corps, I would say, was at the height of its popularity, a couple of years after (President John F.) Kennedy got it started,” said John Knopp of Milwaukee, who volunteered as a secondary school biology and chemistry teacher.
“We were part of a massive positive response to that idea. I think most of us were freshly graduated from college as undergrads. We had a sense of adventure and a sense of idealism.
We were willing to go anywhere.” “Kennedy, for me was the inspiration,” added Dan Hallgrimson of Corvallis, Ore. “‘Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.’” The group trained a month on the Big Island before shipping out to Malaysia. “The idea was to get acclimatized to being in the tropics,” said Karen Schwartz Phillips of New York City.
“That was why this place was chosen for us to train.” Surveying her surroundings, including a panoramic view of Hilo Bay, Phillips said,.