52 Facts About Joseph Blatchford

Joseph Blatchford was the third Director of the United States Peace Corps succeeding Jack Vaughn.

Joseph Blatchford was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 7,1934.

Joseph Blatchford's family moved to California when Blatchford was ten years old and Blatchford grew up in Beverly Hills, California where his father dealt with motion picture finances.

Joseph Blatchford attended Christian Science Sunday School growing up; however, in a profile published in the New York Times in 1970 he said that he is no longer a practicing Christian Scientist.

Joseph Blatchford attended the University of California at Los Angeles where in 1956 during his senior year he was captain of the University of California's tennis team.

Joseph Blatchford went on tennis tours of Europe and competed in the British tennis championships at Wimbledon in 1956.

On March 19,1959, Joseph Blatchford left on a 120-day goodwill tour covering thirteen countries with their first stop in the Dominican Republic.

Burdick suggested that Joseph Blatchford obtain financial assistance from private enterprise to make a survey of the needs of various countries in Latin America.

Arthur K Watson, president of IBM, financed another trip to South American where Blatchford talked to politicians, labor leaders, and students.

Joseph Blatchford said that over 400 students had applied for the program and that screening would soon begin at the University of California, Stanford University, and the University of California at Los Angeles.

Joseph Blatchford said the cost of the program would be $125,000 for the first year with half the money already raised and that under the program each volunteer would receive basic expenses plus a stipend of about $1,100 for fifteen months of duty.

Joseph Blatchford placed his first volunteers in Venezuela in September, 1961.

Joseph Blatchford first recruited thirty college graduates willing to volunteer overseas.

The New York Times reported on January 28,1966, that Joseph Blatchford had been invited by business leaders in Rio de Janeiro to help organize activities in Brazil based on the Venezuelan model.

Joseph Blatchford ran Accion for nine years and at one time during his tenure had 300 volunteers in Latin American and an annual budget of $2 million.

In May 1969 Joseph Blatchford was appointed Peace Corps director by President Richard Nixon.

Joseph Blatchford has the responsibility, despite his very young years, to come up with new ideas.

Joseph Blatchford has the opportunity to develop new programs and those programs will receive the very highest priority within the administration.

Joseph Blatchford had the confidence and support of President Nixon as Peace Corps Director.

Joseph Blatchford used his athletic ability to help forge a working relationship with senior officials in the administration.

On May 19,1970, Joseph Blatchford was invited to play in a charity tennis match with Vice President Spiro Agnew.

Agnew was known for "beaning" his tennis partner but Joseph Blatchford came prepared with a motorcycle helmet on the sidelines.

Joseph Blatchford immediately set about making changes in Volunteer support services, eliminating some, changing others, and consolidating other services.

Joseph Blatchford eliminated the requirement that volunteers could not return to the United States during their Peace Corps service for vacations.

Joseph Blatchford opened the Peace Corps to married couples with children.

Payne Lucas and Kevin Lowther in their seminal book about the Peace Corps from 1960 to 1977, Keeping Kennedy's Promise, noted that although Joseph Blatchford said the Peace Corps could only survive by providing more technically skilled volunteers, the great majority of programs continued to be designed around generalists.

Joseph Blatchford reiterated that the Peace Corps would continue its policy of permitting dissent but not if it was done publicly in the host country.

The New York Times reported on June 3,1970, that Joseph Blatchford received petitions protesting the war signed by hundreds of volunteers serving in South Korea, Panama, Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.

Joseph Blatchford endorsed the new agency unwilling to question any plan of President Nixon who Joseph Blatchford thought supported the Peace Corps.

Joseph Blatchford believed that combining the Peace Corps with domestic programs like VISTA might shield it from critics of foreign aid by adding VISTA supporters to its constituency.

Joseph Blatchford received the proposed federal budget for FY72 and to his surprise, the Office of Management and Budget had cut the number of Peace Corps volunteers from 9,000 to 5,800 and reduced the Peace Corps' budget from $90 million to $60 million.

Joseph Blatchford dashed off a memo to John Ehrlichman, special assistant to the President on domestic affairs pleading for preservation of the Peace Corps at its current budget level.

Joseph Blatchford announced that 2,313 volunteers stationed in thirty-three countries were being brought home.

Joseph Blatchford cleared the diplomatic cables with the State Department and arranged to send them one minute past midnight on March 7,1972, for volunteers to return home by April 1,1972.

Joseph Blatchford did sense hostility to the Peace Corps from some of the president's advisors, especially Ehrlichman and Patrick Buchanan, but says it did not hamper his work.

On November 15,1971, the New York Times reported that Joseph Blatchford had made the decision to rigorously enforce a 1965 rule that staff and volunteer service in the Peace Corps be limited to five years.

Still, Joseph Blatchford showed a restraint that earned him a few points with old Peace corps staff by agreeing to take on those Republicans with demonstrateble qualifications for the job.

Joseph Blatchford enforced the five-year rule to a greater extent than Vaughn, but when key staff resigned or had their terms expire he promoted from within.

Searles said that Joseph Blatchford saw the five-year rule as one way to help assemble his own team, just as Jack Vaughn had done when he became director in 1966.

Joseph Blatchford's remaining tenure as Action Director was uneventful; except for one unusual opportunity to present the Peace Corps through mass media to the American people that occurred on February 16,1972.

Joseph Blatchford appeared on the Mike Douglas Show at the invitation of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who hosted the program for a week.

Joseph Blatchford spoke about his vision for the Peace Corps, and his belief in service, foreign aid, and cross-cultural understanding and partnership.

Joseph Blatchford was an enigma in the Nixon administration, a Republican who held ideas that seemed liberal.

Whatever the outcome, Joseph Blatchford had taken himself out of the running and on November 21,1972, Joseph Blatchford announced that he was resigning as head of the Action Corps effective December 31,1972.

In 1974, Joseph Blatchford helped Republican Houston Flournoy campaign for Governor of California.

In 1974 Joseph Blatchford looked into the California Senate race but found that money to promote a young candidate was unavailable.

In 1977, Joseph Blatchford founded his private law practice, Summit Communications, in the field of international trade and public affairs.

In 1978, Joseph Blatchford represented 13 defectors from Reverend Jim Jones' cult who were with Congressman Leo Ryan when he was killed at the airstrip near Jonestown in Guyana.

In 1989, Joseph Blatchford was the principal lawyer for his firm representing Alfredo Cristiani, the President of El Salvador.

Joseph Blatchford lobbied against a Senate effort to reduce some of the $400 million in annual aid to El Salvador because of the slaying of six priests in El Salvador.

Joseph Blatchford was active in helping negotiate and obtain passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Caribbean Basin Initiative, and the Andean Trade Preference.

In 1967 Blatchford married the former Winifred A Marich, whom he met while working with Accion in Venezuela.