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Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2020-059
Sally Herman Poland served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey from 1964 to 1966 in an urban community development project. Poland attended training at Portland State College. In Turkey she was stationed in Ankara and worked in Gulveren, a low-income neighborhood. In her interview she describes how she involved residents in starting a community center, library, and nursery school. She also describes Peace Corps' publicizing her as the 10,000th volunteer to complete service since the program's start in 1961. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan Browning, February 25, 2020. 3 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-2007-025
Paul Kinsley served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey from 1965 to 1967 in a rural community development project. He gives an account of his time, discussing what made him interested in the Peace Corps. He talks about his application and acceptance for the project, spending some time on the training process. Much of the interview describes his life in Turkey: a year in one location where he and another volunteer worked on gardening and small animal raising, and his subsequent move to another village where he worked alone. Interviewed and recorded by Peter Lee, February 15, 2007. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2017-040
Robert L. "Bob" Staab served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkey from 1965 to 1967. He applied and was accepted to the Peace Corps before finishing his bachelor's degree. His training began in Oregon at Portland State University, and continued in Ankara, Turkey, at the Middle East Technical University. Staab was assigned to work on a rural community development project in a village near Edirne, in western Turkey. His work focused on building and developing a community center. Three months into his service, Bob and his fiancee, Sylva, married in a traditional Turkish wedding ceremony. The couple spent their final five months of Peace Corps service teaching English to adults in Ankara. The Staabs returned to Turkey to visit the village in 2001 and again in 2014. Interviewed and recorded by Phyllis Noble, 7 March 2017. 2 digital files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2017-039
Sylva Telford Staab served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkey from 1965 to 1967. She was motivated by a visit from Sargent Shriver to her college campus, and applied to the Peace Corps during her senior year. Her training began in Oregon at Portland State University, and continued in Ankara, Turkey. Staab was assigned to work on a rural community development project in western Turkey in a village near Edirne. After her marriage to a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, Sylva moved to her husband’s village, where she worked with women in health care, began a preschool, and helped develop a library with funding from CARE. The couple spent their final five months of Peace Corps service teaching English to adults in Ankara. The Staabs returned to Turkey to visit the village in 2001 and again in 2014. Interviewed and recorded by Phyllis Noble, 7 March 2017. 2 digital files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2017-011
Allan Gall was as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey from 1962 to 1964. He served as an English teacher. Gall later joined the Peace Corps administrative staff as the Country Director in Yemen (1975-1978), the Chief of Operations for the NANEAP [North Africa, Near East, Asia and the Pacific] region (1978-1980), and Deputy Inspector General (1999-2006). He discusses what he believes were shortcomings in the Peace Corps program. He argues that Peace Corps sent too many unqualified young people to do rural development, and that rural development assignments usually lacked concrete tasks and a structure that allowed volunteers to succeed. Nevertheless, he remembers his volunteer experience fondly and recognizes the tremendous impact it had on his life. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, November 14, 2016. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2016-034
Patricia Lowther served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkey from 1963 to 1965. She worked as an English language instructor first in Bursa, in northern Turkey, and then in Adapazari. During the summer, she worked in an orphanage with Kurdish children in Sivas in a much smaller and poorer area. She recalls that her counterpart Turkish teachers, primarily in Bursa (a highly desirable teaching assignment), felt that the Peace Corps teachers reduced their workload and pay. Lowther also talks about her experience as an African American in the Peace Corps training at Georgetown University, where she first attended classes with white students, and in Turkey, where she first felt that she was not being judged for her color. Once Lowther returned to the United States, she became an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher for adults from many countries. She has remained in close touch with the people she met in Turkey, and later worked on other projects in Eastern Turkey with the Kurds. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file). Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, May 14, 2016.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-149
Susan Goodman (nee Teller) served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Turkey from 1964 to 1966 as a teacher. Part of the Turkey IV group, she taught intermediate and advanced English in the Middle East Technical University in Ankara before being transferred to a primary school in Polatli, a village near Ankara. There, she taught English to 7th graders for about 5 months. Although Goodman loved Turkey and learned a lot through her experiences, she recounts two situations in which she believes Peace Corps treated her unfairly. Goodman was involuntarily transferred from the university because she failed students for plagiarism on exams, spoke up at faculty meetings, and allowed students to discuss religion in class. She believes that Peace Corps was trying to appease Turkish officials after the Peace Corps director had claimed diplomatic immunity when he killed a Turkish woman in an auto accident. Later, after she was strangled by her former Turkish boyfriend, she was denied visitors in the hospital and then summarily shipped back to the U.S. without the opportunity say good-bye to friends and colleagues. Goodman also discusses carrying papers on the Palestinian situation into Turkey and meeting with what turned out to be Turkish Maoists on a return trip to Turkey after the Peace Corps. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, September 17, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).