© 2026 WUKY
background_fid.jpg
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Saving Stories

Saving Stories: First director of Peace Corps reflects on legacy, impact of international effort

By Alan Lytle
Published March 31, 2026 at 7:05 AM EDT
Ways To Subscribe
FILE - Sargent Shriver, head of the Peace Corps, addresses some of the volunteers destined for Colombia, as they started their training at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., on June 25, 1961. RosettaBooks announced Tuesday, July 7, 2020, that it had acquired Shriver’s memoir “We Called It a War,” which he worked on in the late 1960s and was only recently rediscovered. Shriver’s friend and law partner David Birenbaum edited the manuscript, in which Shriver tells of his efforts to fulfill Johnson’s vow in 1964 to end poverty. The 348-page book, pared down from a “very raw” 500 pages, is scheduled for January. Shriver died Jan. 18, 2011 at age 95. (AP Photo, File)
AP
/
AP
FILE - Sargent Shriver, head of the Peace Corps, addresses some of the volunteers destined for Colombia, as they started their training at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., on June 25, 1961. RosettaBooks announced Tuesday, July 7, 2020, that it had acquired Shriver’s memoir “We Called It a War,” which he worked on in the late 1960s and was only recently rediscovered. Shriver’s friend and law partner David Birenbaum edited the manuscript, in which Shriver tells of his efforts to fulfill Johnson’s vow in 1964 to end poverty. The 348-page book, pared down from a “very raw” 500 pages, is scheduled for January. Shriver died Jan. 18, 2011 at age 95. (AP Photo, File)

March 2026 marks the 65th anniversary of the start of the Peace Corps and in this latest edition of WUKY's Saving Stories, Doug Boyd with the Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries shares audio from an interview with Sargent Shriver, the diplomat tabbed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to lead the independent government agency that sends American volunteers to partner countries for two-year terms to work on grassroots projects in education, health, agriculture, and other sectors. Shriver told the interviewer why he thought they only had one chance to make it work.

To commemorate the 65th anniversary of the United States Peace Corps, the Kentucky Peace Corps Association is highlighting the service of Kentucky's returned Peace Corps volunteers in a new traveling exhibit that opened at the William T. Young Library on March 1, 2026.

https://libraries.uky.edu/news/new-exhibit-celebrates-65-years-united-states-peace-corps

Access the Nunn Center’s Peace Corps: The Returned Peace Corps Volunteers Oral History Project online: https://kentuckyoralhistory.org/ark:/16417/xt7bdw2tkjfs9

Access the Nunn Center’s Peace Corps: Covid-19 Evacuated Peace Corps Volunteers Oral History Project online: https://kentuckyoralhistory.org/ark:/16417/xt71d42445pn2

Saving Stories
Alan Lytle
See stories by Alan Lytle