I have moved to my new village and family. I live in a true Samoan hut with no sides. The only real pain is changing clothes which must be done with a lava lava(printed cloth) wrapped around me. The food is good so I won’t be starving. Each night a different family feeds me. I had many visitors today coming to see the new person in their village. I’m living directly opposite a school and there is a gargantuan church which I have to attend on Sundays (grins).
January 1968 – Fasito’outa, Western Samoa
Art and I have embarked on an unusual project this spring – that of reading and transcribing his Peace Corps letters that are now 50 years old. In 1967 after graduating from college, he joined the Peace Corps in part to avoid the draft but he also had a genuine interest in international affairs and foreign cultures. He wrote home each week from his thatched hut in Western Samoa to his parents, Ceil and Herm, to his brother, Norm, and sister and brother-in -law, Saralee and Peter.
For years (since we married in 1975), we have been storing and moving folders of blue air letters with exotic stamps, addressed to New Haven, Connecticut, written in tiny, cramped longhand . Blue air letters were often difficult to squeeze very much news onto. Art wrote in one of his first letters, “I haven’t yet figured out these envelopes as to where I’m supposed to write…”(Oct. 1967)
Art in his Samoan dwelling where he wrote his letter home.
I moved into my new hut and like it better than the other one though is a bit crowded with all the furniture. I removed a couple of pieces including the huge bed and now I sleep on a mattress on the floor which is more comfortable because the bed was too short.
Every week, Art wrote to his family faithfully recording details of his daily life in a small, remote, Samoan village. The surprising result is that his mother kept every letter and must have given them to Art when he returned home before we ever met. These letters have been with us through 11 moves we’ve made over the years along with many other “saved” letters of my mother’s life in South America and mine. We have filing cabinets full of adventurous accounts of lives lived in faraway places. All have been waiting for a future moment when there might be time to read and do something with them.
Recently, while moving the contents of some filing cabinets to prepare for new carpeting, I came across the “Samoa letters” which we had not thought about for years. This time, instead putting them away to be read another time, I set them out and decided now is the “future” we have been saving them for. Handing them to Art, I suggested he reread them. I knew he would be captivated by his own account of the first international adventure of his life. I was right. I volunteered to type them with Art dictating at my side . (I need him to interpret his own hard-to-decipher handwriting). “Project Peace Corps Letters” is now launched and is becoming an enjoyable part of our evening’s entertainment when we aren’t busy with other things.
Art with his Samoan father...
Art's Samoan parents...
Beyond the enjoyment of reading these I have loved listening to Art’s “voice” expressed through writing about his daily life. For me, it’s an insight into Art as a young man, before we ever met. I like how he strives to keep up a positive voice reassuring his parents on the other side of the world that he is content.
Life in the village is just fine. Everybody is still being very nice to me which makes life here good.
When he writes so positively about where he is I realize he has not changed over the years. This confirms for me that he was born with a positive attitude . Each day he sees the positive first – always.
Despite never having traveled nor experienced life without modern amenities he writes
I finally had one of the kids in the family take some antenna wire up a coconut tree and now the radio pulls in all the stations from Honolulu. I was really surprised at the difference. I originally had the wire going to our clothes line which was worthless. Now the trouble is that anybody in the fale(hut) who hears it, says “turn to the Samoan stations”. It doesn’t occur to them I might enjoy an American radio station to Samoan music. Oh well!
Bathing daily in the public bathing pool....
I have learned that his was not a “busy” life as we know it today for living in a small village not much happened. His life was not structured in any way and he had to find his own projects to do such as helping the District nurse, building water seal toilets, and eventually teaching middle school. Families were close, people friendly, and hosting an American for two years was an honor.
Living in the midst of an extended Samoan family
Interspersed in the letters are comments such as “ two of the volunteers left this week to go home”, or “10 volunteers have already left since we started last fall”. There seemed to be constant dropouts and yet Art’s letters never express any such wish to want to be anywhere else except where he was. He was no quitter and never has been.
We have no deadline for completing this project but now that we've begun we will continue until all the letters are typed. Then we'll include some photos and clippings and put them into a bound book. Copies have already been requested by people in the family. One copy along with the original letters will be sent to the archives at American University in Washington D.C. where they are already gathering and saving such documents for future research. We have also learned recently that there is a committee working hard to fund raise and find a building in Washington D.C. to start a Peace Corps Museum which will house memorabilia of return volunteers since the Peace Corps was started in March 1961.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled
by and that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Awesome. Can’t wait to read the final copy. So glad you guys are doing this.
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