Dear Eliot,

For the five years ending in April 1978, I was the Peace Corps Country Director in two African countries: Malawi and Sierra Leone. During that time, I supervised some 800 Peace Corp Volunteers, including you during your 2-1/2 year service in Sierra Leone that you completed in mid-1977. Based on your outstanding record of accomplishment, I would rank you in the top half-dozen of those 800 Volunteers.

As a Peace Corps-trained agricultural extensions agent, you used your excellent organizational and natural leadership skills to convince skeptical farmers to convert their undeveloped swamps into paddies able to produce more and better rice, Sierra Leone’s staple food. Increased yields permitted farmers both to feed their families and to sell the surplus principally through a farmers’ cooperative that you were instrumental in setting up. Despite your work being extremely demanding and the fact that it was carried out in one of the most isolated and undeveloped regions of the country, your achievements set the standard that other agriculture Volunteers sought to match.

Recognizing that your village, Alikalia, needed a source of year-round potable water, you extended your two-year service for an additional six months in order to fulfill a promise to build a gravity-fed water system for the village. You did so under extremely challenging conditions that would have defeated most individuals. The water system improved greatly the quality of life for the people of Alikalia.

In sum, you were an outstanding Peace Corps Volunteer for whom, after over 30 years of knowing you, I continue to have the highest regard.

Sincerely,

Howard K. Gray