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Time Traveling to the Tropics

Joe Looby ‘59

Companion Slide show (copy and paste this link to your Internt browser)

http://picasaweb.google.com/jtlooby/Phttp://picasaweb.google.com/jtlooby/PanamaJuneJuly2008?authkey=HkOoITPc1sk#

To this day, I am not certain what prompted me to take the examination for those interested in becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer back in 1964. My uncle, Joe Kelley WC ’26, had a highly successful career as one of the first, if not THE first pilot in the Army Air Corps to fly the Air Mail for the US Post Office. Following military service he went on to become the most senior captain of Eastern Airlines.

At the time, I had imagined that I would join the Air force, go to OCS and fly jets. Watching test pilot Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier at an Air Show at the Philadelphia International Airport in the 50s seemed to have had the intended effect on this young mind. Fellow hoagie shop regular Jim Crosson, WC ’57 was airborne after completing the AFROTC program at St. Joe’s. My senior thesis at Wharton was an analysis of the airline union dispute over whether the flight engineer occupying the third seat in the cockpit of the new commercial jet liners should be pilot certified.

Vietnam had not yet loomed large on the horizon as an inevitable destination.

Following the Peace Corps exam I had inexplicably taken, a letter of invitation from Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps’ founding Director, arrived in May. I had been invited to enter a training program aimed at providing business consulting services to the Republic of Panama. I set the invitation aside and forgot about it. A month later, a staffer from Washington called to inquire whether I planned to report for training at the University of Arizona on July 1^st.

Something else, likewise unknown to me, drew me to accept the invitation. That acceptance put me on a path that would change my life and outlook forever. Could it have been the Christian Brothers’ subtle suggestions of service to others that were planted somewhere in the sub-conscious of all who

them.