What Do Peace Corps Volunteers Do When They Return? - A Few Alaskan RPCVs

 The Byers Lake outing the end of June was a chance for a few Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV's) from Anchorage and Fairbanks to meet half-way (more for Fairbanks, less for Anchorage) and spend time together.  I've posted about the flowers and bugs and the trail around Byers Lake, and now I'm finally getting around to post on some of the former Peace Corps volunteers living in Alaska who were there.  These are pretty brief bios.  These people are doing lots more things than I've captured.




Linda Pearson (Cline) was a volunteer in Malaysia Group 14 1966-68.  She was a teacher trainer in Simangang, Sarawak.  I know another former volunteer who was also in Sarawak (Scott Goldsmith at ISER) so I asked Linda if she'd been in a village with long houses.  She had.  These were probably some of the more primitive sites that Peace Corps volunteers served in, among people who had been headhunters not too much earlier.

Linda's a UAF graduate and has spent a good part of her career as a School Counselor in the Fairbanks area. 





Tony Gasbarro was a volunteer the first time in the Dominican Republic where he was a forestry adviser in one of the first Peace Corps groups from 1962-64.

Then he returned to the US and had a career that included the US Forestry Services for five years, the Food and Agriculture Association (FAO)  of the United Nations in Rome.  Then he taught at UAF for 24 years.  When he retired, he rejoined the Peace Corps and spent 1996-98 as a forestry manager in El Salvador.  As a Professor Emeritus at UAF he's keeping active helping out at the university. 

Currently Tony is teaching one graduate course related to natural resources and international development.   He is also campus coordinator of the Peace Corps Masters International  Program at UAF.




Andrew Cyr worked in environmental education and outreach in Morocco from 2006-2008, particularly working on environmental income generation.

Now he works for the Alaska Department of Natural Resources as a resource specialist doing environmental assessment of gravel sales and land leasing. 






Denise Ramp taught English from 1991-93 in  Gabon. 

She got a degree in Nursing and Midwifery and made her way to Alaska.  She worked at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC) in Bethel from 2004-9 and now works at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) in Anchorage.  







Larry Flemming was also in Gabon from 1996-98 where he worked in school construction.  (No, he didn't meet Denise until they were back in the US.)

In Alaska he works as a project manager for the Rockford Corporation. 






Kelly Malahy worked in Agro Forestry and Environmental Education in El Salvador from 2003-2005.


While she lives in Anchorage, she's temporarily in Fairbanks where she's at UAF getting a teacher certificate. 














Joe Sullivan is the catalyst who organized the weekend get-together.  He wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer when he was younger, but thought he needed a higher degree before joining.  So he got his PhD in Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures.  But he also got married and they had a child and the Peace Corps wouldn't take him.

So after a couple of years of college teaching he came to Alaska and worked for the Department of Fish and Game as a fish pathologist.  He also managed a damage assessment project and restoration projects after the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

When he retired from the state, he finally joined the Peace Corps and served in Zambia from 1999-2001 as a fisheries agent.  In 2005 he volunteered in the Peace Corps crisis corps and helped out after Hurricane Katrina.

He recently returned from several months in Zimbabwe where he was working on several volunteer projects. 

   
Carolyn Burgin Gray worked in Panama from 1965-67 as a community  development volunteer in the Azuero Peninsula near Las Tablas where  she  assisted doctors from the University of Panama testing her villagers for goiter. A self help project to build a USAID school was completed at the same time. A credit and savings coop was established for women of the area. She returned to work as a Peace  Corps recruiter 1968-69.  



Don Gray  worked near Calcutta, India, 1966-68, "Block Development Officer" in rice cultivation in West Bengal, and in well  construction during a drought in Bihar.

Carolyn and Don met at Stanford, obtained fellowships which were reserved for RPCVs going into education and they both obtained MAs in Secondary Education in the Social Studies.  On completion, they married and joined the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District in 1970 where they both taught social studies.  Carolyn, who also taught Spanish, retired in 1996 after which, among other things, she has been secretary to Northern Alaska Peace Corps Friends for many years.  Don retired in 1993 and then became a stock broker/financial advisor for Morgan Stanley and Wedbush Morgan Securities until retiring completely in 2005.


Don and Carolyn returned to India in 2002 where they noticed many crop changes and improvements in communication, (cell phones &  Internet), transportation and educational attainment since Don's service.  In 2008, Carolyn returned to Panama where she visited with old friends, and saw the village’s new community center, aqueduct, and water purification plant.

Some of the country links here go to a site with Peace Corps Journals online.  You can check it out at the link.

[UPDATE, March 10, 2011: There's a new post with video of Juneau Returned Peace Corps Volunteers relating where they served and what they did.]