One of the First Peace Corps Volunteers Dies on the 60th Anniversary Year of the Peace Corps : William Dennis Grubb : 1941-2021
Content Warning
This repository may contain outdated, harmful, or triggering terms and/or content
Description:
Mr. W. Dennis Grubb peacefully entered into eternal rest on October 25, 2021 at home in Washington, D.C., SW after a courageous, multi-year battle with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a rare form of Parkinson’s. He was 80. The Peace Corps, global development, education, and the church have propelled his lifelong service to help others in nations on five continents. An Eagle Scout, Mr. Grubb joined the-then new Peace Corps at the age of 19 as one of its first and youngest volunteers, and served in Colombia One (1961-1963). He worked in Zipacon, a village 8,700 feet high in the Andes, a place with no running water or sewers, little electricity and few paved roads. Illiteracy, malnutrition, dysentery and tuberculosis were rampant. To address them, Mr. Grubb, Mr. Thomas Whalen, a fellow Volunteer, and the Colombian counterpart (referred to as promotor) assigned to their team by the Office of Community Development in Bogota, formed a liaison between Zipacon and government officials and secured assistance to build the first cooperative food store, a small medical center, three schools, roads, and a water supply pipeline. When the government offered a day of free chest X-rays and vaccinations, he and fellow Volunteers plastered the village with announcements, producing a record turnout upon the doctors arrival. He worked with Colombians of all levels, from rural farmers to national officials, to achieve his overall goal, which was to convince the community that they could control their lives. Mr. Grubb later said that his idealistic view of a peaceful and humane world was formed by his experience in Colombia.
