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Honduras A Step Back In Time

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 12, 2008

Updated: 01/10/2008 05:34 pm

SOUTH TAMPA - At age 22, Joe and Beverly Hanlon were married and heading for the Peace Corps in Honduras.

It was summer 1966.

Classified as generalists, the Hanlons worked with nongovernmental agencies to start credit unions to give people access to small-business loans, helped locals find money for building schools and taught horticulture.

The school system began at age 7, so Beverly Hanlon started a preschool. She also assisted at an infant feeding station.

After their service ended in August 1968, the Hanlons returned to the United States. Joe Hanlon earned his law degree and began practicing as a lawyer, which he still does today. Beverly Hanlon was a stay-at-home mom for 18 years, eventually earning a master's in early childhood education. In 1986, she started teaching in Hillsborough County public schools and now is a kindergarten teacher at Grady Elementary School.

Why did you join the Peace Corps?

Beverly: We were do-gooder radicals. Everybody was up in arms at that time.

Joe: The hippie, bohemian, anti-American consumerism - we bought into that. When we got back we sneered at the supermarket. Good God, what is this stuff? Because for two years we'd walk around the markets with no boxes or cans. It was fresh vegetables and live animals.

Were your families supportive?

Beverly: They were supportive. Joe's parents drove down from Peoria (Illinois) in a Cadillac pulling an Airstream trailer.

Joe: The people had never seen either in the village but definitely had seen them on the Pan-American Highway, which was nearby.

What was the food like?

Beverly: We loved the food there; beans, rice, eggs, chicken and the oatmeal, made with whole milk, cinnamon and sugar.

Describe your first impressions of Honduras?

Beverly: It was like going back 200 years in time. ... They had dirt floors, walls made out of leaves, no electricity, no water, and 90 percent cooked on wood fires in their one-room houses.

Joe: Where we were it was beautiful, and the people were beautiful.

Do you think your work in Honduras was successful?

Joe: I always hoped that our lives there were an example against the 'Ugly American' perception; our existence in that village showed that we are normal people with normal concerns.

How do you think the Peace Corps changed your life?

Joe: I think the willingness and interest in having a big family came from there. (The Hanlons have four daughters and five grandchildren.)

Beverly: I've never been in another situation where I had to adapt so amazingly. It's my bellwether for how I judge my life. It's such an eye-opener.

Jamie Pilarczyk

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