Yuba woman answered call of Peace Corps 50 years ago

At his presidential inauguration in 1961, President John F. Kennedy uttered the famous words: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

A new teacher in upstate New York took those words to heart and — 50 years ago today — made good on them, when Susan Luccini, now of Oregon House, was one of the first volunteers for the Peace Corps.

"There are points in your life when you're confronted with a big decision. And the one you make ... everything just comes together and makes sense," said Luccini, 72. "There was something in the wind, and we were just being carried along with it."

What the "new" was, though, wasn't clear at first.

Early in his administration, Kennedy raised the idea of a Peace Corps in which U.S. citizens would travel to developing countries and help them, but it wasn't until the federal government received a flood of letters from young people interested in taking part that the idea moved ahead.

Luccini, who was an English teacher, said she sent one of those letters, but didn't hear much more until a telegram arrived saying she'd be sent to a country called "Chana," then the FBI began questioning her friends, neighbors and relatives in her hometown of Schenectady, N.Y.

She learned she'd be headed to the West African nation of Ghana, though first came seven weeks of training at the University of California, Berkeley. Luccini said she got a crash course in Ghana politics, culture, languages, and, in a frightening 8 a.m. class, diseases she could get while there.

"That stayed with me for a lifetime," she said.

Meeting the president

Before she and the other 57 people in training left, they met Kennedy at the White House. A framed picture in Luccini's home shows her shaking hands with the president, while Secret Service agents glower in the background.

Kennedy was cordial, curious and seemed honestly interested in every volunteer, she recalled. And he wasn't as tall as she thought he was, she added.

The volunteers left on Aug. 28, 1961, but when they arrived in Ghana a day later — another group went to Tanganyika, now Tanzania — they had to wait in the plane until local dignitaries arrived to greet them.

In Ghana, she lived with two other female volunteers, teaching at a school in a city called Suedru. Her bedroom was half the size of her dining room now.

Though she was only trained to teach English — to students who were as old as 25 — the school's headmaster felt an educated person could teach many subjects. So she also taught math, domestic arts and even the Book of Matthew from the Bible.

Muslim students in her class delighted in questioning her when they'd come across a Bible passage difficult to explain. And people living in a warm, equatorial country couldn't understand a passage in British literature when a woman's bare arm aroused excitement.

"Wherever we went, we were asked why we didn't dance on tables," she said. "In the movies from Hollywood, that's what everyone did."

Ghanaians were warm and friendly, but also far more casual about time than Americans, she said. And it wasn't uncommon to see people waiting by the side of the road, at no formal bus stop and not even in a village, for a ride to inevitably stop and pick them up.

They were trying to help

If she and other volunteers were there as Cold War-era public relations for the U.S., they didn't see it that way.

"We saw ourselves as individuals going out to fill a need," she said. "We resisted the idea we were going to be agents of the government."

After two years, Luccini's stint was over, and she returned to the U.S. in June 1963. A few months later, she said, she recalls thinking the world was changing after Kennedy was assassinated.

As the 1960s became a turbulent decade, Luccini finished her master's degree, then taught English in Malaysia. When she returned to the U.S. to teach, her students in Schenectady were delighted when new history books showed a picture from Time magazine of the first Peace Corps volunteers, including her, leaving for their missions.

Luccini lived in Italy for much of the 1980s after she got married, and moved to Yuba County in 1998. Now interviewing people and writing their personal histories, Luccini said she thinks of the Peace Corps as a life-changing event.

"It opens your whole world up," said Luccini, who keeps in touch with her fellow Ghana volunteers. "Now, it must be a whole different experience with email and cell phones."

Camille Hogan, a Chico resident who completed a two-year Peace Corps stint this summer in Senegal, said she felt her experience was more about cultural exchanges.

"You do it to get a feel for being in an impoverished place," said Hogan, 24. "It's not about saving the world."

Luccini said she is sad to hear the Peace Corps isn't as popular as it once was, and worries the government isn't doing enough to promote it.

But she has a quick answer for anyone considering it.

"Go. Definitely," she said. "No hesitation."