Peace Corps

Eugenia A. "Genie" Kennedy, a former Peace Corps volunteer and teacher, died Jan. 7 of multiple organ failure at her Bel Air home. She was 82. A daughter of a businessman and a homemaker, Sarah Eugenia Asbury, who did not use her first name, was born and raised in Delta, Pa. After graduating from Delta High School in 1947, she earned a bachelor's degree in business education in 1951 from Russell Sage College in upstate New York....

ON TUESDAY, thousands of former Peace Corps volunteers will go into the nation's classrooms to share their dream of changing the world through service rather than economic or military power.The Peace Corps was formed in 1961, and since then some 150,000 of its members, who can be aptly described as altruists and idealists, have served in 132 near and far-flung nations.The Peace Corps Act of 1961 contains a requirement that former members, on returning home, create a "better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people."

WASHINGTON -- The members of the former Soviet Union have a pressing need for technicians and engineers.And U.S. soldiers are facing joblessness because the Defense Department is cutting its personnel by 25 percent due to the vanishing communist threat.Maryland Rep. Beverly B. Byron wants to help solve both problems by sending 1,000 ex-GIs to work in Eastern Europe, the Baltic nations and the Commonwealth of Independent States.Mrs. Byron, D-6th, chairs the House military personnel and compensation subcommittee.

BARBARA PASTINE was approaching her 62nd birthday when she found herself without a job. The Highland resident was declared redundant by her employer of more than 11 years. "On the trail of a new job at my age and interviewing with people half my age was not pleasant," Pastine said in a conversation by e-mail. Pastine, who has lived in Howard County since 1966, knew she was not interested in starting another 9-to-5 desk job. She soon came to realize that she had the freedom to be more creative with her next career move.

Robert W. "Bob" Roche, a former Peace Corps volunteer who later worked in Africa with Catholic Relief Services, died Jan. 12 of undetermined causes at Sanctuary at Holy Cross, a Burtonsville senior living community. The Columbia resident was 61. "We are awaiting the results of an autopsy as to the cause of death," said his son, Robert L. Roche, who lives in Washington. Robert Winslow "Bob" Roche was born and raised in Monroeville, Pa., where he graduated in 1968 from Gateway Senior High School.

Michael Anthony D'Adamo, deputy director of Catholic Relief Services, whose work took him to Angola, Somalia, Rwanda and Ghana, died Oct. 5 of AIDS at his Charles Village residence. He was 38.Mr. D'Adamo, who joined the Baltimore-based relief organization 1987, was considered an expert on famine and disaster relief.Earlier this year, Mr. D'Adamo completed an agreement, which was signed in Baltimore, between the Rome-based World Food Program, an emergency aid agency of the United Nations, and CRS, the international humanitarian organization of the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops.

Tonga will be Peace Corps volunteer Lauren Drexel's home for the next 27 months, while she works on a project to teach schoolchildren about the environment. A 2000 graduate of Bel Air High School, Drexel, 21, is one of several young Harford County residents postponing traditional careers or graduate school for service in the Peace Corps. Five other volunteers from the county are serving in destinations from Malawi to Bulgaria, according to the Peace Corps. By the fall, five other area volunteers will be serving on Peace Corps missions.

Brenda Brown Schoonover was a senior at Morgan State College when John F. Kennedy challenged America with the blunt passage in his 1961 inaugural speech: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." The words grabbed the new generation entering the 1960s. "We took it seriously," says Schoonover, diplomat in residence at the University of North Carolina and former U.S. ambassador to Togo. The buoyant young president promised a "new frontier," inspiring many with new energy, excitement and idealism.

Some older people never lose their thirst for adventure. Even with pensions in hand, grandchildren to spoil and the freedom to pursue personal interests, they crave the challenge of meaningful work in foreign lands -- often under primitive living conditions. Sally and John Mincks sold their Fresno, Calif., home so they could spend two years in a Panamanian mountain house without electricity or running water. Winifred Huff of Clovis, Calif., traded her apartment for a house without walls in Samoa.

Dr. Melvyn C. Thorne, a semiretired professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health who was interested in maternal child care and family planning in developing countries, died Aug. 16 of a heart attack at his Roland Park home. He was 77. The son of a mechanic and a homemaker, Dr. Thorne was born and raised in San Francisco. After graduation in 1950 from Lowell High School, he worked his way to Europe aboard a freighter. "He had decided not to go to college and spent time bicycling and traveling throughout Europe," said his wife of 52 years, the former Dorothy Richardson, an educator he met when both were students at the University of California at Berkeley.