From the Guest Book:
Robert Steele Davis June 5, 2017
Because James Redmann of Minot, ND, drowned in the rough surf of Grand Anse beach on the windward side of St. Lucia in July 1966, I was granted a reprieve by the Peace Corps and assigned to replace him in a teacher training program. (I’d been evacuated from eastern Nigeria in August that year, debriefed extensively in Washington DC, sent home and then summoned in September to replace “Jim” in Babonneau, St. Lucia. For the next 10 months I bunked with Steve Frederickson of Coeur d’Alene, ID, until he and his group completed their two-year assignment. In the heat of the Vietnam War, with Selective Service hanging over every man’s shoulder, my appeal to stay on as a community development volunteer for another year was turned down. (I had in mind teaching villagers how to build rainwater cisterns to capture a dependable supply of potable water.) While I never knew Jim Redmann, I became friends with Steve, Tom Anderson, Jerry Chambers and a few of the next (community development) group of PCVs who arrived in Castries in spring 1967. Tom, who is a retired math teach and school administrator, lives in Lewistown, MT. I’ve lost contact with all of the others as well as most of those I trained with at UCLA with Nigeria XX. I was able to attend the 50th reunion of the Peace Corps in Washington in 2011 and bump into a few of my old mates. Today when I search for my overseas stations on Google Earth, I’m unable to recognize any of it. To quote Don Ameche, “Things change.”