Peace Corps throws a party

Three local veterans celebrate anniversary and each other

By Ellison G. Weist

The Portland Tribune, Feb 28, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

This year marks a milestone for a patriotic challenge and a beloved presidential quote.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy summoned America’s youth to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

The Peace Corps was born.

Three decades later, three women took up the summons and devoted two years to serving in Guatemala. Sunday in Portland, they’ll participate in a regional celebration to mark the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Corps.

In private, for the last 15 years, the women Ñ all Portland residents Ñ have honored what they feel has had a huge impact on their lives: the solid and lasting friendships they have formed.

As Ellen Urbani Hiltebrand puts it, “At this point in my life, the most lingering impact (of my years in the Peace Corps) is the friends.”

Growing up in a sheltered, tight-knit family from Philadelphia, Hiltebrand moved to Virginia at age 12 and later attended a large Southern university. When she joined the Peace Corps in 1991 and

arrived in Guatemala at age 22, “I was totally unprepared for some of the things I saw.”

These things, along with the experiences of several of the indigenous women Hiltebrand met during her two years, are described in her new memoir, “When I Was Elena.” Challenged to teach local children to read and write in one of the country’s poorest villages, “Elena” came away with a desire to describe her experiences.

Some of them were “totally different” from what her friend, Erin Marquiss, encountered. Says Marquiss: “I’ve read most of Ellen’s book, and my reaction was ‘What country were you in?’ ”

Marquiss, a native of Portland, joined the Peace Corps a year before Hiltebrand, the result of a lifelong fascination. “My best friend’s parents were in the Peace Corps, in Iran in the early ’60s. Plus my parents instilled a love of traveling.”

While Hiltebrand fought off bandits, intestinal parasites and mountain guerillas, Marquiss served in a fairly modern town of 25,000. Thanks to the fact that she had married her college sweetheart (“It was the only way they’d let us join up together É not a terrific reason to get married.”), Marquiss found she was protected from most of the sexual advances other women had to deal with.

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