JOHN ROBERTS

Committee Chair, Peace Corps Museum Project

Presentation: Visioning for a New Peace Corps Museum

Born and raised in Fort Collins, John Roberts attended the University of Colorado in Boulder where he was selected as a People to People Student Ambassador and spent much of 1962 in Europe. In 1964, John served as Student Chairman of CU’s World Affairs Week, and received an undergraduate degree in International Affairs. Shortly after John F. Kennedy’s death in 1963, John applied to the Peace Corps and served as a secondary teacher to the sons of camel-herding nomads in northern Somalia from 1964 to 1966. Returning to the U.S., John attended Law School at American University in Washington, D.C. before joining the U.S. Foreign Service with an initial posting in Viet Nam working in war refugee resettlement for five years during the war. Subsequent service ensued in Nicaragua, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Malawi and Kenya. While serving in Egypt, John received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award and was promoted into the U.S. Senior Foreign Service with an appointment by President Ronald Reagan.

After service in the Dominican Republic, John went to Botswana, Liberia, Madagascar, and Ukraine as Senior Economic and Development Assistance Counselor. Finally returning to Washington in 1992, John served as Senior Officer for Southern Africa at the Department of State before retiring in 1993, having learned nine languages. Retirement is a ‘sometimes thing,’ however, as John then rejoined the Peace Corps and served as Regional/Country Director in Tunisia and Malta, and as Country Director in the Solomon Islands (South Pacific) until 1998 when he re-retired and returned to Fort Collins. Colorado State University asked him to teach a course in International Studies for one semester, which then turned into ten years, teaching several sections of “Approaches to International Studies,” and Capstone Seminars in International Studies for Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Middle East/North Africa. In May 2008, John re-re-retired to devote himself to his real unofficial passion, the Peace Corps. He also hopes to spend more time with his extended family and his four grandchildren.

John believes the Peace Corps to be the greatest single triumph of international cultural understanding, grass-roots development, and American foreign policy that the U.S. has ever created. As a model, both externally and internally, it has been adapted by more than 100 nations. Nearly 187,000 Americans, young and old, have served in 140 nations over the past 47 years. Millions around the world really know America from the Peace Corps Volunteers with whom they worked or studied. The Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) possess an in-depth and unique perspective of the globe, far different from the average American. As America approaches the 50th Anniversary of this growing contribution to Peace, John believes that it is time to recognize all RPCVs and the organization which contributes so much to world peace and cooperative understanding…and what better place to honor the Peace Corps but in Fort Collins, the home of CSU, which played a pivotal role in the planning and development of the Peace Corps. Hence, the concept for a living tribute, an educational museum…“The Peace Corps Experience, Our Lives – Your World.”