Waiting for the Snow: The Peace Corps Papers of a Charter Volunteer - Softcover

Thomas J. Scanlon is the founder and president of Benchmarks, Inc., an international development and social service consulting firm in Washington, DC. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of the Public Welfare Foundation, which funds domestic and international social service projects. A native of Scranton, PA, Scanlon graduated from the University of Notre Dame and earned master's degrees at the University of Toronto and Columbia University. He and his family live in Bethesda, MD.

...Scanlon composed letters to family members and friends about the struggles and triumphs of his sojourn, one that changed my life forever, he says....More than thirty years later, these letters are living testament to the power of human service. -- Shillelagh, Newsletter of the Notre Dame Club of Washington, DC, June 1997

In 1961, Tom Scanlon of Scranton, PA was quick to enlist and join the first group of volunteers to go abroad after Congress passed the Peace Corps Act at the behest of charismatic president, John F. Kennedy. Now, three decades later, Scanlon's letters home provide a vivid memoir of those very different days when Communism was winning the ideological war for the midst of people in the developing world. Tom and 44 others lived as Chile's campesinos lived, ate what they ate, sang what they sang, and realized dreams such as helping farmers organize to sell their goods cooperatively. Tom and his group invented something vital as they made one small piece of the world a slightly better place -- as 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers around the world continue to do today. Perhaps things were not so different then, but as these letters relate, the early volunteers lived in times of gritty challenge, drama, romance and danger amidst the spectacular landscapes of southern Chile. Waiting For The Snow is fascinating and enlightening as the reader shares the idealism and the realities of Peace Corps life. -- Midwest Book Review

In describing his Peace Corps experience working on community development projects, he is frank in describing the hazards and frustrations of making real progress. His "lessons learned" are useful to those interested in development work. Scanlon captures a signal moment in America's history: With Camelot in the White House, Americans had a marvelous faith in their ability to change the world. With their poignant innocence and promise, Peace Corps volunteers embody those highest aspirations to make a difference in the world. -- Foreign Service Journal, June-July 1997

Just as Emily Dickinson's hidden poems - "letters to the world" - enriched the world with their elegant New England charm over a century ago, Thomas Scanlon has similarly released his eloquent letters describing his pioneering Peace Corps experiences in Chile, approximately 35 years after his service (1961-63). Be prepared for a fascinating literary sojourn in a seemingly more clearly defined political world, where President John F. Kennedy's heralded grassroot volunteers labored in poverty abroad as a possible alternative to the alleged evils of rampant Communism in the developing countries.... Bravo! -- WorldView magazine,The National Peace Corps Association, Winter 1996-97

Scanlon the letter-writer had reportorial skills. He was a peace, not a war, correspondent, sending back dispatches from places in southern Chile that few outsiders had ever penetrated.... Hundreds of books have been written by former [Peace Corps] volunteers.... Tom Scanlon's is among the finest. -- Book World, The Washington Post,, March 23, 1997

Scanlon wrote long and detailed letters home to his parents and one to President Kennedy, also long and detailed. Now, 35 years later, those letters have been collected and published. Besides being important documents for anyone undertaking a history of the Peace Corps, they provide a glimpse of a more innocent time when it seemed possible that the world could be made a better place with just good will and good works....The sense of personal innocence, now long lost by America and Americans, is disarming. -- Book Review, The Boston Globe, June 21, 1997