Peace Corps museum in works

• Ex-volunteer works toward showcasing people, places agency has supported

By Ben Jacklet

The Portland Tribune, Sep 14, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

The last time Martin Kaplan visited Somalia, he was impressed to learn that “the words ‘Peace Corps’ were still like magic.”

Never mind that the Peace Corps was thrown out of the country more than 30 years ago, by a military dictator.

To Kaplan, the lasting enthusiasm shows the power of the Peace Corps experience. Kaplan was one of the nation’s original Peace Corps volunteers, serving in Somalia from 1962 to 1964. Now he is trying to establish the first Peace Corps museum, in Portland.

Kaplan was a 24-year-old chemist working for Richfield Oil Corp. in Southern California when he decided to heed the call of President John F. Kennedy and become one of the newly formed agency’s “good will ambassadors.”

When he learned he was to be sent to Somalia, he wondered, “Where in South America is that?”

The East African nation had just gained its independence from Italian and British colonial rule. The majority of its people were nomads. There was exactly one academic in the United States who had researched Somalia, and he lived in New York City.

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