Lee Grant, MS ’67 (journalism)

Peace Corps location: Vanuatu

Current location: San Diego, CA

Current position: Volunteer reader

If I hadn’t been a journalist, I would have been a teacher. The Peace Corps gave me the opportunity to explore the path I hadn’t chosen. However, I didn’t do it because of that. I did it for Daniella and Maybelin and all of the other people that I met through the Corps. Let me explain.

I joined the Peace Corps much later in life than the typical volunteer, but I feel that I was always driven towards it. After graduating from the UO in 1969, I served for a year in the Poverty Program as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) volunteer in Houston, Texas. Then I began my long career as a journalist at three major California newspapers: Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury-News and San Diego Union-Tribune.

But I decided to leave my family and my comfy retirement to serve a small village called Pango on the South Pacific Island of Vanuatu. I was this gray-haired white man from a strange country halfway across the world touching the lives of kids who didn’t have much, but who were aching for attention and affection and someone to believe in them. I taught them English and in turn, they taught me about human connection.

There were magical moments when a kid suddenly realized that they were beginning to understand the subject matter being taught, but there were also sorrowful moments that I shared with my students, like when one student was told during class that his grandmother had suddenly passed away. Throughout it all, I tried to show support for my students and they were grateful for it.

Daniella was a third-grade girl whom I taught. In a hand-written card she gave to me she wrote, “Mr. Lee, I am very happy because you teach me so well in my reading. Thank you very much that you teach me well and I wish you a good trip home and I hope you will not forget Vanuatu. I will miss you very much." And I miss you, too, Daniella. And everyone else in Pango. It was a privilege to teach your children and to be so welcomed by the community.

Today, I volunteer at a San Diego school for youngsters “impacted by homelessness”. To that challenge, I bring the skills I learned in the Corps and fulfill one of their core goals, which is to bring our experiences back home and share them. I'm teaching again. I'm being called "Mr. Lee" again. I'm volunteering again.