Glen Ridge native recalls his Peace Corps days

The Glen Ridge Public Library hosted a talk Tuesday, July 25, by Donald Yates, a former borough resident who spoke of his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer, from 1962-64, in the Philippines.

He has written about his experiences in a book titled, “A Journey for Peace; A Journey of Peace.”

Yates, who was a teacher for $16 a month in the Philippines, said it was a profound culture shock living without electricity or running water, speaking pidgin English and trying bat and monkey cuisine.

Although the country is largely Catholic, he was sent to a southernmost area which was predominantly Muslim and lived on a tiny South Sea island called Jolo.

“Little kids would pet my arm because they had never seen anyone with hair on their arms,” he said.

When he arrived at Jolo, his house had not been built, but a good Samaritan gave Yates his own bed while he slept on a couch and his wife slept with the farm animals.

The house Yates would occupy was quickly built and entirely of mahogany. After his departure, it became a school.

All volunteers were given a shortwave radio, he said, and that was how he learned of the Kennedy assassination. The next morning a small boy came to him to offer his condolences. Then the boy remarked that the president was killed in Dallas which is in Texas, the home of the vice-president.

“That’s Philippine politics,” the boy concluded.

Yates was stupefied. He eventually sent the boy to school, paying his tuition.

Of the things he missed most, Yates said milk, intelligent conversation and romance.

Several days before his library talk, Yates, 83, was interviewed by The Independent Press.

“We lived at 238 Ridgewood Ave., but my father couldn’t get out of the driveway and we moved two houses north, to 240 Ridgewood,” he said.

He attended Central School, Glen Ridge Junior High and from the ninth grade, the Choate School, in Wallingford, Conn. He attended the University of Notre Dame, majoring in English.

“At Choate, you had to play sports,” he said. “I played soccer, basketball and baseball as a utility infielder.”

He was not starting for the baseball team, but when the entire outfield graduated, he asked the coach to move him to the outfield.

“He said, no, I was too valuable as a utility player,” Yates said. “So I quit. It worked out well. I went out for track and got a letter for the high jump and long jump.”
He graduated from college in 1962. The previous year Kennedy had started the Peace Corps.

“I didn’t have any home-sickness pangs,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t make it through the Peace Corps. My senior year at Notre Dame, my good friend, Jack Green, a classmate, said he was going to listen to a Peace Corps recruiter and he didn’t want to go alone. I went with him and was more taken by the recruiter than Jack. It was interesting hearing the kind of service you can do for your country without taking up arms.”

Yates said he had to convince Jack to volunteer with him.

“There was a lot of paperwork and they sent FBI people into Glen Ridge to find out what kind of guy I was. My mother, God bless her, wanted me to do it. My father was against it. He wanted me in the corporate world. For the first year I was overseas, he never communicated with me. But my mother kept working on him and he started to communicate the second year. When I returned, he embraced me and we were never closer. It was that way to the end of his life.”

Yates and his friend were flown to San Jose, Ca. for six weeks of training. From there they went to Manila, Zamboanga City and then Jolo.

“Women were in the training,” he said, “But a lot of them washed out. Without electricity and running water, they didn’t want to go.”

But two women who did go taught him a lesson in American ingenuity.

“Each of us received $850 to get our house in order once we got there,” he said. “These two girls used all their money to buy beer in wooden crates. They used the wood to make their furniture and drank the profits! And they stayed for the two years. They toughed it out.”

Ninety percent of his students were girls because the boys were working in the fields.

“One boy, Bindo Alpa, a sixth-grader, showed great promise. I took him under my wing. I got to know the priests who ran the high school and got them to accept Bindo.

He ended up going to college in Manila. I’m so proud of that fact. It wasn’t until last month that we reconnected after 60 years. And coming back to America was a reverse culture shock. I didn’t even know about the Beatles.”

  Glen Ridge, Peace Corps