Letter to the Editor: Sargent Shriver

American and international newspapers announced with fanfare the death, at the ripe age of 95, of former U.S. Ambassador to France and first Peace Corps Director R. Sargent Shriver. Among foreign societies prompted to mourn the sad loss of this great statesman are many African nations.

The reason is that Africans benefited unlimitedly from the Peace Corps that Shriver founded and ably headed from its inception as the first director under the leadership of his brother-in-law, the late President John F. Kennedy.     
                      
In his moving 1961 inaugural address, President Kennedy asked Americans not to ask what their country could do for them but, instead, what they could do for their country.
Shriver epitomized that axiomatic historic statement. Selflessly, he served America and the Third World very well through the founding and his directorship of the Peace Corps.

On Oct. 14, 1960, Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, spoke to students of the University of Michigan and touched on the idea of establishing the Peace Corps. In essence, he challenged young Americans to be willing to serve Asian, African and Latin American countries.

The response was overwhelmingly positive. Upon his election, President Kennedy lost no time in actualizing his dream of a Peace Corps for American youth. After issuing an executive order calling for the formation of the Peace Corps in September 1961, the 87th Congress passed Public Law 87-293 to give congressional backing to the establishment of the Peace Corps.    

As the Corps’ new director, Shriver began to court Third World leaders. Consequently, he traveled to Ghana, West Africa, which was barely 4 years old as an independent nation, where he met with Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah to sell the idea of the Peace Corps. Nkrumah’s elation and acceptance of the new Corps convinced other African nations to accept the Corps’ volunteers as teachers, agriculturalists and health experts, among other professions.

Mr. Shriver and other Peace Corps officials made sure that Africa and many other developing societies benefited unlimitedly from President Kennedy’s goodwill toward the world’s poor and downtrodden. It was, therefore, not surprising that Ghana became the first country in the world to receive the early Peace Corps volunteers.

Therefore, throughout Africa, Mr. Shriver has been deeply respected; hence, he is being mourned as a true statesman. Due to his hard work and early guidance, Peace Corps volunteers served in every nook and corner of Africa and other Third World nations, often bringing succor and much-needed assistance to areas in desperate need of what the Corps’ volunteers provided. May Mr. Shriver rest in perfect peace!

— Professors A.B. Assensoh & Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh of Indiana University, co-authors of the published book “African Military History & Politics, 1900-Present.”