When the World Calls by Stanley Meisler

Author:Stanley Meisler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2010-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen. The Rich Lady in Her First Job for Pay

The announcement from the White House in 1981 made many admirers of the Peace Corps cringe. Ronald Reagan, the new president, had nominated Loret Miller Ruppe, a wealthy brewery heiress who had never held a full-time job for pay in her life, as the new director of the Peace Corps. Her achievements and connections were all political. As the wife of Philip Ruppe, a former U.S. congressman from Michigan, she was close to Vice President George H. W. Bush and his wife, Barbara. She had chaired Bush’s campaign in Michigan for the Republican presidential nomination. When Bush lost but accepted the vice-presidential nomination, she then chaired the Reagan-Bush campaign in Michigan.

The White House tried hard to stretch the credentials of the forty-five-year-old nominee. The announcement said that Ruppe “has spent most of her life in volunteer efforts.” That, of course, evoked the unfortunate image for the Peace Corps of a rich society woman setting aside a portion of her time for charity fundraisers and visits to orphanages. Ruppe, the White House went on, “has traveled extensively and shared ideals with past Peace Corps Volunteers in many countries.” It did not make clear what this sharing of ideals meant or how it took place.

Ruppe, of course, had a strong Republican allegiance. Philip Ruppe, a Republican, was elected to Congress in 1966, the same year that George H. W. Bush was elected to the House of Representatives. Barbara Bush organized an informal group of the wives of eleven new members of the House and Senate that year, and the Ruppes and Bushes became close friends. Bush served in the House for only two terms, but Ruppe was reelected five times before retiring in 1978. After Loret’s work in the 1980 presidential campaign, Bush persuaded Reagan to name her Peace Corps director.

Loret Ruppe’s resume, which did not seem to qualify her for the job at all, reinforced the fears of many in the Peace Corps family about the new Republican president, who they saw as even more conservative than Richard Nixon, the Republican president who had buried the Peace Corps ten years earlier. But the fears would prove exaggerated. Many conservatives in the Reagan entourage were suspicious of the Peace Corps, but Reagan himself did not share the contempt for the Kennedy-bred organization that had seethed in Nixon. And neither did his nominee.

Loret Ruppe, in fact, would prove an exciting surprise. It did not take her long to change the mood—and the minds—of the Peace Corps staff. A bureaucratic infighter, she protected the Peace Corps with determination and love. She looked on the idea of the Peace Corps with so much understanding and clear-minded insight that she worked doggedly to keep it out of partisan politics. She would ascend in the eyes of present and former Volunteers and staff until they acclaimed her as the most beloved and inspiring of all Peace Corps directors since Sargent Shriver.

Her associates still talk about her with glowing respect.

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