The Peace Corps Sir: I was impressed by your article [July 5] which enunciated the tributes and the discrepancies of Shriver's Peace Corps.
Your very excellent rendition of the obstacles imposed on the not-so-glory-ridden Peace Corpsmen surely helped to straighten out many thwarted images held by many reposing onlookers on many "front porches of the U.S." WALLY PARHAM Stillwater, Okla.
Sir: According to some returning Peace Corps volunteers flying with me from Manila the other day, they look back with great satisfaction on their last two years.
Among the matters they were most critical of were press stories about them, which were "Madison Avenue-like, full of goodies. Trying to sell someone the moon."
Your sober but positive evaluation of their work seems to be just the right kind of graduation present.
AVIK GILBOA Hong Kong Sir: Missing in your otherwise excellent story on the Peace Corps' success was adequate coverage of the universities that trained corpsmen in the languages and customs of the host countries. Georgetown is particularly proud to have conducted the largest Peace Corps training program at an American university, our "alumni" being those 276 schoolteachers in Ethiopia.
WILLIAM J. RARENTE Department of Government Georgetown University Washington, D.C.
Sir: I accompanied the first Peace Corps team to Ghana. I spent a month in Ghana last year while the second team was "settling in," and was able to observe them. The people received them with warmth and the government with dignified "correctness."
ST. CLAIR DRAKE Professor of Sociology Roosevelt University Chicago
Sir: I gasped when I read in the July 5 issue of TIME a quotation allegedly coming from me that my family is nicer than the Kennedys. That quotation not only misrepresents me, but it does great harm to a distinguished family and to my son, whom I admire and love. I don't think that way.
It is contrary to my life and to my convictions. My sincere appreciation of each of them is of the highest quality. They are intelligent, with sound convictions, a great desire to help their fellow man, and they are way ahead of most American families I know or know about. Certainly they have many admirable qualities that most of us lack.
HILDA SHRIVER New York City > TIME'S reporter understood Mrs. Shriver, the justifiably proud mother of Robert Sargent Shriver Jr., to say: "We're nicer than the Kennedys. We've been here since the 1600s. We're rooted in the land in Maryland. The Kennedys like to be around people who are in the news. They are flamboyant."—ED.