It all started in December, 1961. We were part of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, pioneers in this new idea called the Peace Corps and we had been invited to serve in the Philippines. But few of us knew what to expect when we stumbled off a Pan Am flight from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico and were trucked off to a rustic jungle wilderness camp near Arecibo.
I WATCHED AS ONE BY ONE the members of my Peace Corps training group attempted to swim 50 meters underwater without surfacing or taking a breath.
It was a personal challenge we had known about for 24 hours preceding this moment.
The idea was to jump off the edge of the pool and rotate in the air so we were facing backward when we hit the water. Then we were to turn around in the water, swim the length of the pool and back, keeping our head under water at all times. One slip, that’s it, you failed this test
My job was to pull my fellow trainees out of the water once they had lost consciousness, a job I was given because I had been a competitive swimmer in college.
I was assigned this job by Freddie LaNue, our bombastic “drownproofing” instructor, and a former swimming coach at Georgia Tech. One leg deformed and withered due to childhood polio, Freddie referred to himself as “The Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech.”
He took the words right out of our mouths.
It was Freddie’s idea in this the final week of our Outward Bound Peace Corps training in Puerto Rico, to escalate the challenges placed before us, the better to achieve character-building objectives.
Freddie was completely in character in the Outward Bound camp. He had invented something called drownproofing – a simple method of staying afloat in the water without the usual thrashing of arms and legs, conserving energy and avoiding panic while awaiting rescue.
Drownproofing was easy enough for me to master after a lifetime of swimming and four years of intercollegiate swimming competition. But for those with a lifelong fear of water, learning drownproofing was the kind of self-achievement that Outward Bound was designed to impart. Along with rock-climbing, camping, trekking and the infamous obstacle course, the idea was to leave each of us with a heightened sense of self-confidence, prepared to take on any challenge that lay before us, just as the British U-boat crews felt in 1941 when they went through the very first Outward Bound training.
To prepare you for unknown challenges. That was the idea.
Water was one of these. By the end of our drownproofing session, Freddie the tied legs and arms of each trainee, then pushed them into the water to see if they could stay afloat using the techniques he taught us.
They did.
So he simply escalated the challenge several notches.
Taking it up a few notches
Freddie talked to all of us the day before about this fearsome challenge. He taught the group something he called the keyhole stroke for effective underwater swimming. Then he said we could practice, but were not to swim the length of the pool, just across the width and back.
You made it when you touched the end you started on. He reinforced the simple rule, come up for a breath for any reason and that’s it. The big thing was . . . no second chance. If any of us failed this test, there will not be another chance, period.
The challenge was clear — make your first shot your best.
Freddie then did some serious confidence building. He explained to us exactly what to do as we swam — look for the lane lines on the bottom of the pool, come in low at the other end so we would not mistakenly push our heads out of the water, graze the bottom of the pool as we pushed off the other end.
Moreover, he told us how we would feel at critical points: “Your stomach would start to throb,” and so on. He said he had a lot of experience with watching people in this situation and when we got close to fainting he could tell and people would be right there to pull us out. So, not to worry about drowning.
Then he told us about hyperventilating and how to use it, pointing out that when your fingers start to tingle you are ready.
One of my friends was skeptical. He recalls, “I knew this was going to be near impossible. I was sure there was no way I could possibly make the length. I couldn’t even do the width. Others were of the same mind. Freddie had us snookered.”
And we were still reeling from the drownproofing lesson conducted in heavy surf on an isolated beach several days earlier. As waves broke, we had been thrust violently into underwater currents that left us with sand burns and bruises and frightened from the disorienting effect of tumbling over and over underwater.
This morning we sat on the edge of the pool, our legs dangling in the water, as we listened disbelievingly at what Freddie wanted us to do.
My friend recalls, “I remember us all being quiet, up tight and concerned, but determined too.”
Throughout our training, there was always individual pressure to go further, do more, push the envelope. Each of us was acutely aware that the Damocles sword of “deselection” constantly hung over us. If any one of us was judged to be somehow unfit, inept, unworthy of Peace Corps’ high standards, the staff could simply wash us out and send us home on the next plane. It was that simple. No reasons, just here one day and gone the next. And along with it, one’s dreams of serving overseas as Peace Corps Volunteers.
So we were all under tremendous self-imposed pressure to excel in anything we did, proving our worthiness, digging deep within ourselves to exhibit impressive levels of motivation attesting to our commitment to be part of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier.
It was a test. None of us wanted to fail.
And now it was a test of endurance, swimming without breathing until — what? Until you drowned? Passed out? Came up and got a breath and then ended up hustled out on the next flight to the mainland?
It had finally come down to this one test of individual resolve and commitment. The group couldn’t help you anymore. It was self-conflict in its purest form, battling instinct for survival against the will to go beyond endurance, to venture into the unknown.
It was symbolic of all we’d volunteered for.
The advantage of experience
To me, it was déjà vu. I’d done this often before, swimming as far as I could without taking a breath. During my freshman year at Iowa State I’d managed to earn my way onto the swimming team as a “walk-on” and the coach assigned me to specialize in breaststroke. It was 1956, and the rules for breaststroke were still in transition. At that time, competitive swimmers were not limited to a single underwater stroke at the start and on each turn as they are now. Back then you could swim underwater for as far as you wished before surfacing for breath.
I recall being appalled when I learned this. Swimming breaststroke underwater is faster than swimming breaststroke on the surface, so competitive swimmers pushed themselves to incredible lengths to get as many underwater strokes in before finally surfacing. When they did finally surface, they were gasping and red-faced. The oxygen deprivation was dangerous and foolhardy, competitors were passing out in the lanes and by the next season the rules were modified to allow only a single underwater stroke at each turn.
But Freddie liked the old rules and thought it would be a perfectly suitable and appropriate culminating test in this Outward Bound setting for aspirant Peace Corps Volunteers like us.
To build the self-confidence of the group, Freddie planned it so the stronger swimmers, those most likely to succeed, went first.
My friend recalls, “Finally, the last big boost — he picked you as the starting swimmer.”
I dove in without the slightest feeling of anxiety. And when my group saw me go the required two lengths of the pool underwater before I surfaced, it did serve as a confidence-builder for the others: Look how easy it seems!
My friend recalls, “I remember you underwater. Grace itself. I believe you completed the down and back in 37 seconds! Unbelievable, and you were not even breathing hard!”
The rest of the group
Four more took the test. All of us completed the course in under a minute.
Then it was my skeptical friend’s turn.
“I found Freddie’s predictions exactly on and very comforting, so those disconcerting stomach throbs were OK. I made it! I was delighted!”
Then others went, with us all cheering each other on. The trouble with the underwater swim was, the people needing encouragement and strength from the others couldn’t hear underwater. It was silent down there.
Finally it came to some people who might have a much harder time. Freddie recruited me to be ready to jump in and help anyone who appeared to be in distress.
“Watch their head and the back of their neck very carefully,” he instructed me in a whisper, so the others wouldn’t overhear, as I walked up and down the deck ready to spring to their aid. “Just before they pass out, you’ll see this involuntary twitch. For a moment you’ll see them raise their head slightly in a jerky way. That’s the moment when they lose consciousness. That’s your sign to jump in and get them.”
I watched. Sure enough, for those who didn’t decide to finally surface on their own, there was a slight involuntary twitch just as Freddie said there would be. Then they would go limp, arms floating by their sides, head down in the water.
When I saw the twitch, I jumped in and grabbed their jaw and led their face to the surface. They emerged sputtering, blinking and choking, but conscious. And breathing.
And still alive.
What went through the minds of each of the underwater swimmers that morning as they fought instinct to surface and gasp to inhale air? I watched as their arm movements got slower and slower, as they meandered off-course while making their way underwater, becoming disoriented, slowing to impossible speeds, strokes becoming feeble and uncoordinated, then recumbent and finally that little twitch of the head indicating they’d passed out.
My friend recalls, “Charlie Terry was especially interesting. He was determined, but the last 10 feet were agony to watch. He was flailing, just barely moving forward. Freddie told you to watch and be ready but do nothing. Charlie finally luckily grazed the end with his hand. Freddie told you to grab him. You pulled him out. Charlie was not pleased. Why did you do that? He was just about ready to turn around and go back. He had no idea how much trouble he was in! Very interesting. Don went off on some unknown tangent and you had to grab him. A couple of others ended up flailing the water and going nowhere. You had to grab them as well. M.L. Corwin took 90 seconds, bobbing up and down on the surface. But she, too, made it!
“As a group, as I remember it, we almost all made it,” he recalls. “We did well as a group, and no one disgraced themselves. Everyone tried hard.”
And that, after all, was the whole idea — to muster the courage and wherewithal to try, to reach deep within and haul up heroic levels of performance.
It was a moment of accomplishment, a new sense of pride and capability, the very thing Outward Bound attempted to impart in each of us.
Still, for each of those who passed out underwater, it must have felt like experiencing a little death that day. Later there was grumbling that Freddie had gone too far, taken the challenge thing over the top. Some who had passed out, inhaling water into their lungs, developed, congestion, pulmonary infections and in one case pneumonia. That Volunteer was deselected.
It’s a good thing more Volunteers like me didn’t chronicle these tests and send accounts off to our Congressmen or the media. One older female trainee did several months later and the camp was permanently closed.
Other challenges we’d faced
I felt sorry for them. I was having fun.
I craved stuff like this. This was a lot like adventures and physical challenges I’d already managed to surmount in recent years: wilderness canoe camping, Colorado mountain climbing, pathfinding, water sports.
But it was still challenging stuff, more for some than for others in those 28 days in Puerto Rico.
For some, it was the shaky instability of the Burma Bridge, a three-rope arrangement on the obstacle course that bridged two trees forty feet above the ground. The Burma Bridge never delivered on the promised stability it seemed to visually offer, one large rope for your feet and two smaller ropes on either side as hand-holds. The smaller ropes, positioned hip-high, were lashed at intervals to the larger base rope. But somehow as you stepped aboard and moved forward, the whole arrangement began to swing and steadily became looser with each advancing move. By the time you advanced to its midpoint, it transformed into a sort of ugly death swing, assuming lateral looping motions exacerbated by your legs that were now shaking uncontrollably. This in turn froze you in your tracks, certain you’d plunge to your death below, once again fighting instinct: I can stay here motionless and not fall, but not make it to safety. Or I can risk everything on the slim hope I can make it to the other end. Which will it be? Confident steps became timid mincing, pathetic motions toward the other end where the lines were anchored high on another tree.
The Burma Bridge did to each of us exactly what the underwater swim was now doing: it challenged us to move beyond self-preservation instinct and comfort, to seek something of unknown dimensions even more challenging.
And if the Burma Bridge failed to impart this, it was the rock climb on rocky ridges bordering Rio Abajo. We climbed straight up sheer vertical surfaces, a safety belay rope secured around us. Scrambling for handholds and footholds, we individually clawed our way up. Two footholds and one handhold was security, the remaining hand groping for the next fissure or surface. Then it was a choice: leave this known level of security and advance further, higher, leaving safety and security behind for something surely more perilous. And what then? Slowly we made our way up, sweating profusely, occasionally looking down to see how far we’d advanced, how little the people had become, then a darting glance upward to see how much further we had to go
Before long we forgot the belay rope. The whole ascent was a trial beyond the point of no return. By remaining focused and treating it as a challenge, one could scale the rock with a minimum of terror and psychic damage. But others froze midway, paralyzed with conflict and fear, unable to make the death-defying choice of leaving what was tenuous security for the unknown. Then we’d sense it, just as I was looking for involuntary head twitches through the clear water of the pool, and we’d shout encouragement from below.
We knew that once we got to our assignments, Peace Corps was an individual thing, not a matter of squadrons or platoons. But for now we were together, caught up as a group, each of us wanting desperately to Make A Difference, do something meaningful with our lives. And now it had become possible. This was our shot, thanks to a new, enlightened national policy.
Personal challenges
We were all humbled, not so much by malevolent do-or-die boot-camp schemes and challenges to test us, conjured up by demented Outward Bound staff members like Freddie LaNue, Davey Borden or Al Ferraro. We were humbled instead by coming face-to-face with self-imposed limitations we had unwittingly placed upon ourselves — the result of years of comfortable living and predictable lives. Now, faced with adversity in what seemed to be authentic life-or-death situations, we suddenly became acquainted with our flabby self-resolve and unflattering timidity.
We didn’t like what we saw.
And sometimes when we looked around, we didn’t like what we saw in others. Their inability to cope embarrassed and shamed the rest of us.
Like the initial day of a four-day trek we took in small, six-person teams. This was our culminating event, the penultimate challenge. Do this successfully and you could move on the stage two of the training.
The idea was simple:
- Carry everything you need on your back.
- Use the geological contour map provided.
- Stay off roadways and stick to trails, following the route marked on the map.
- Sleep wherever you can.
- Eat sparingly, as only half-rations are provided.
- On the fourth and final day, be at the finish line.
We were on our own to read and interpret the maps, follow the trails, stop and sleep when we needed to, and make our final destination on time. We were warned not to solicit nor accept local hospitality of Puerto Rican farmers and others we might come across, though we were to seek their permission if for instance we wanted to sleep in their tobacco barn or use water from their well. As one last touch the staff provided us enough food (Army rations) for normal meals for two and a half days, even though we were to be gone four or more days. The idea, they explained, is that since most of the world goes hungry most of the time, we should know from firsthand experience what it’s like to really be hungry.
Nobody said anything about drinking water, although we each carried a canteen we’d filled at camp strapped to our canvas utility belt.
The tropical heat and humidity was terrible that first day, and our course was strenuous: up one hill, down another. Soon we were all tired and sweaty, drinking greedily from our canteens.
One of our group members seemed more frightened and panicky than the others. Slightly overweight and woefully out of shape, he complained loudly, expressing doubts about this whole journey. These quickly turned to self-doubts about his own ability to survive four days of this.
Soon he began panicking about having enough water.
Sweat-soaked with manic, darting eyes, he begged water from each of us, greedily drinking from our canteens until he’d emptied them all. We shook our heads in despair as he sank deeper and deeper into a panicky funk. Clearly, he wanted out — right now.
Before our eyes he began to lose rationality. He was weeping and babbling uncontrollably. Now we were concerned for him. He was incoherent, quickly going out of control
There was no way to communicate with the camp staff. The only checkpoints were certain unnamed intercept points, one each day along our route at which members of the staff would secrete themselves and, unobserved, wait for us to pass. We wouldn’t see them, but they’d see us.
It was at the first of these points that we stopped and shouted to our hidden observers that we had a problem on our hands. In no time at all our panicky and terminally thirsty group member was quietly plucked from our group by a concerned staff member. One moment he was with us, the next moment he wasn’t.
The rest of us continued on, conserving our rations, quickly learning how to track elevations indicated on the map and relate them to the hilly terrain we trekked. Always looking for navigational confirmation and aware that other teams were stumbling through the Puerto Rican backwoods like us, we quickly learned a few Spanish phrases to try out on farmers we’d come across:
“¿Donde es los otros Americanos?” Where are the other Americans? Occasionally they would point and chatter in rapid Spanish, and instantly we knew we were on the right track.
We managed to survive. The only “cheating” occurred when, sleeping on a meadow near a farmhouse one night, the local farmer sent his small daughter out to us with a Thermos of hot Puerto Rican coffee, which is really a mostly-milk mix. He urged us to at least move into his barn under shelter. We refused, but we thought we’d create an international incident by refusing the simple act of kindness and hospitality represented by the coffee, so we accepted the coffee and shared it among ourselves, savoring it ceremoniously almost like taking the sacrament at communion service in church.
The farmer is still probably still shaking his head, wondering why these five strange Americans ended up sleeping on the meadow on his farm.
At the end of the fourth day we crossed the finish line, joyous and proud, dirty and sweaty, hungry and thirsty. The staff was there to cheer and greet us.
But not our terminally thirsty teammate.
He was gone, back to the mainland, his dream of Peace Corps dashed forever.
Some leadership
The director of our camp was a person named Bill Delano. He arrived at the same time we did. He was Counsel General of the Peace Corps, a direct descendent of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an elite member of the charmed, gifted and wealthy enclave of lifelong Democrats chosen by the Kennedys and Shriver to lead us to the New Frontier.
A big-city lawyer and Washington policymaker, Bill was hopelessly out of place in this rustic paramilitary setting where emphasis was on physical achievements. He was obviously ill at ease in an environment clearly alien to the boardrooms and courtrooms he had come from. Just how or why he ended up as director of this remote outpost was beyond any of us.
Yet somehow we clicked. Bill’s ineptness became our ineptness. We identified with him. Bill was game to try anything thrown at him. He was with us on rock climbing and rappelling. He struggled with basic Spanish as we did. He learned alongside us. He laughed at himself, finding humor in his own predicament, unafraid to lose all pretense and artificial dignity to come down to our level and identify with us.
We were in this together. It was at that moment a quiet bonding occurred between Bill and us and through Bill, with the entire Kennedy government.
This is what it was all about!
It was all about self-challenging moments of truth, about being self-effacing enough to admit fear and overcome it, about digging deeper into yourself to come up with the solution in a way that provided growth for you and everyone else around you.
And it was being unafraid of personal challenges, willingness to leave the comfort of the known for the challenge of the unknown. We were all restless people unhappy with the status quo, seeking something better, striving to achieve our manifest destiny. Outward Bound was the perfect metaphor for what was surely to follow when we left for our assignments in the Philippines. Who knew what lay in store for us there?
Bill embodied the very spirit of adventure, self-discovery and humility that the Peace Corps was all about. Bill proved to all of us that nobody among us was too gifted, too proud, too privileged to be immune. It was a fresh start for everyone. Even Bill.
In our minds, Bill began as a misplaced, privileged despot and before our very eyes transformed into the sort of soldier for peace that we saw ourselves becoming.
He became one of us!
And he knew it and enjoyed every minute of his gloriously transforming journey.
Before long Bill found himself transferred back to Washington to do what he was supposed to be doing in the first place.
Clearly, his Outward Bound experience had the same transforming effect on him as it did on us.
Months later, when we visited Washington as a group one weekend, Bill insisted that two buddies and I be his houseguests at his fashionable Georgetown townhouse. It was only a few doors down from Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s Georgetown townhouse they still maintained after moving to the White House months before.
Bill had a special bond with our group. For our departure to the Philippines, he flew to Seattle to see us off, gathering us in a special lounge at SeaTac airport for some final words.
He wished he were going with us.
He was genuinely regretful that somehow he missed the opportunity now being provided us to make a difference in the world as Peace Corps Volunteers, that he would be chained to matters of legality and policy and litigation while we were in the barrios building schools, teaching kids, doing what really counted.
It was an expression of envy, sadness and longing. He made us feel special and gifted. Not bad, coming from a guy who was special and gifted.
The test completed
Saying good-bye was difficult when our 28 days of Outward Bound training came to an end and it was time to board a flight back to New York, off to Penn State for seven weeks of intensive classroom training.
Suddenly the camp staff — Davey, Freddie, Big Al, Bill and the others — turned into a bunch of sentimental softies. Something special and rare had happened, and we were all a part of it. All too soon it had ended.
We had the very clear sense that they envied us. We, after all, were going on to something bigger and infinitely more significant. All that had happened so far was mere prelude to the main act. They would stay behind while we forged a New Frontier in the Philippines.
Steve Wells served as a Volunteer for 15 months in public elementary education in Dulag, Leyte. He served another year as a Volunteer Leader, then returned to the Philippines as Associate Peace Corps Director, a total of eight years with the Peace Corps. He later married another Philippines Volunteer, Kathryn Kerze Wells. They have resided for the last 25 years in Detroit, where they raised their two now-grown children. Steve is Vice President of a large automotive consulting-training-communicating firm.