“I made my decision the day after JFK was assassinated,” said Bob Englund of Stoddard about his commitment to serve in the Peace Corps. President Kennedy created the service organization by executive order two months after taking office in 1961, and inspired that era’s young people and thousands of individuals since then to share their skills, talents and learning with corners of the world in need of them.

“Two of the best years of my life,” is how Englund described his time in Nigeria in the 1960s. He and just over a dozen other veterans of major service organizations gathered at the Mariposa Museum in Peterborough on Saturday to share their tales of service to others and reflect on their impact in various parts of the globe.

Since its founding, over 240,000 individuals have served in teaching and technical capacities in over 140 countries. A television ad for the organization in the 1980s called it “The toughest job you’ll ever love,”

In addition to Peace Corps volunteers, individuals who had been part of VISTA - Volunteers In Service To America - and Habitat for Humanity swapped tales of diving into new situations thousands of miles from home, where many of the creature comforts and daily trappings of life in the U.S. were not to be found, in order to better the lives of others.

Steve Schuch of Hancock went to the Dominican Republic with the Peace Corps to find no paved roads and no running water in his mountainous area.

“I went there to work on agroforestry, but you end up doing whatever you can do to help people where you are,” said Schuch. He ended up doing some teaching, and 35 years later, returned to find one of his former students as a school principal who had saved a pen that Steve had given him over three decades earlier.

Hope Driscoll, who is now at Franklin Pierce University working with International students, went to Costa Rica to teach English, but ended up working to make clean water available to her village. Driscoll spoke of the emotional range such purpose can foster.

“It involved the highest highs and the lowest lows,” she said of her service. She also used a term that others repeated regarding the experience of working to benefit others far from home: transformational.

Judith Stout nodded as Driscoll spoke. As a retired nurse, at the age of 72, Stout went with the Peace Corps to South Africa to work with HIV patients. The former Hancock resident who now lives in Brattleboro brought a beat up, duct taped sphere that sufficed for a soccer ball in her village from 2008 to 2010.

Dick and Heather Ames were also stirred by President Kennedy’s words, and went to the Philippines after law school.

“We ended up doing family planning there – and a nun actually helped us,” said Heather.

Diana Feige took another direction. “I’ll stay here in the US, since it seems like we have enough work to do here,” the Peterborough resident said of the nation in the 1960s. She joined VISTA and was sent to Corpus Christi Texas to teach English to Mexican-American children.

“I was 22 years old and those are some of the best years of my life,” she said as others in the circle nodded.

Prior to serving with the American Fiends Services in Vietnam and working in the Philippines, Mariposa co-founder David Blair worked in eastern Kentucky where coal miners were battling to get treatment for black lung disease.

“Parts of this country could seem pretty foreign as well,” said Blair. “The things that I learned in eastern Kentucky served me well working in Vietnam,” he said.

Sherry Sims worked for Habitat for Humanity in Guatemala, and husband Winston Sims told of having to leave his work in Haiti in 1963 when the actions of a dictator made staying there unwise.

Being involved in such purposeful endeavors can also mean sensing a void when the purpose is gone. When it was mentioned that returning to the US after such missions can prompt depression, many heads nodded in agreement.

Peter Henriques has settled in Peterborough after a peripatetic career that began as a teacher in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Teaching children to teach English was an absolute blast,” he said, adding that one day he asked his students if they’d like to learn some Hawaiian, and they reveled in it.

“Someday an anthropologist is going to go to the DRC and hear people say “Aloha.” That will be interesting,” said Henriques.

Language played a role in Bob Winterbottom’s Peace Corps work beyond Upper Volta, which is now Burkina Faso where he served on the African continent. “I had lots of travels in French-speaking Africa. It’s been quite a life,” he said.

While a life of service in one land was cut short, Judy Putnam found it a springboard to an amazing life. She was teaching English in Libya in 1969 when the dictator Muammar Gaddafi decided that nobody there needed to learn English. She moved on to Thailand, then Brazil, then England, having several children born in these nations along the way.

“That was the influence of this experience,” Putnam told the audience.

For all of the tales of unpaved roads, dictators and efforts required to get fresh drinking water to where they were living, all of those who had been involved in service to others reflected warmly on those years, and many noted its impact on them back here.

“What it gave me that I can bring back to my community here is invaluable,” said Driscoll.

This understanding is not lost on a younger generation. Henriques’ daughter was a Peace Corps volunteer herself in Botswana, and Sarah Hull of Hancock is headed out with the Peace Corps this August. The UNH grad had an internship with the Women of Peace Corps Legacy, and will be traveling to teach English in Namibia later this year. She wondered aloud about how current political realities could impact the Peace Corps and its mission.

“I’m hoping that nothing changes between now and August,” she said.