Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-006
Judith Madden-Sturges served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Urcos and Cusco, Peru, from 1963 to 1965 in a community development program. As a student at the University of Michigan, she attended the presidential campaign speech in which John F. Kennedy announced his plans to create what would later become the Peace Corps program. She discusses the research she did for working papers that were used at the Shriver Summit, which she attended, where many aspects of the Peace Corps program were debated. She mentions Sargent Shriver's interest in involving women in the Peace Corps. She also discusses her connection with the Kennedy family through her disabled sister, who attended the Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Memorial School, and how experience with her sister's nonverbal communication helped to prepare her for communication with Peruvians when she lacked adequate language capacity. Madden-Sturges also served as an interpreter for Robert Kennedy when he visited Peru in 1965. Finally, she talks about the problem of imposing an American view of development on other peoples and the negative impact of the Peace Corps' de-selection process. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, August 25, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).