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You Never Know the Connections You'll Make at an Amigos Gathering

                                 Evelyn LaTorre, Apaseo  '63

The October 2 annual Amigos board meeting and barbeque yielded decisions, surprises, and a happenstance.  For the decisions, check out the board minutes.  I can tell you about the surprises and a big coincidence.

First off, I was surprised that I could convince my husband, Walter, to attend.  He's an introvert and usually prefers to stay home.  However, he always enjoys the Amigos he meets.  They appreciate his Latino culture and often speak with him in his native Spanish.  So, this time he agreed to accompany me.


Next, Rick and Natalie Champion were surprised when trying to use public transportation to travel from their home in San Francisco to the Amigos reunion in Union City.  They had a rough time figuring out the altered bus routes in San Francisco.  Getting to the Bay Area Rapid Transit BART station was only the first obstacle.  A half hour into their train ride, the voice over the loudspeaker notified them that BART had chosen that weekend to work on a section of the tracks between them and their destination.  The'd have to get off the train in South Hayward and take a bus to Union City.  The interruption added an extra half hour to their already hot and lengthy trip.  

Walter and I drove from Fremont to retrieve Rick and Natalie at the Union City BART station.  With the magic of cell phones, Natalie found my burgundy-colored Buick and I recognized the harried couple carrying bags of food for our event.  Soon, Walter and Rick were engaged in deep conversation.  I was pleased to see my formerly reluctant husband having such a good time at this social event.  

The most amazing moment came in the form of a coincidence involving a mutual acquaintance.  For that, I need to give a bit of my 'romantic' history.

During my junior and senior college years, along with other Bay Area university students, I assisted Cesar Chavez on weekends to take a census among the migrant workers in small towns like Parlier in California's Central Valley.  A guitar-playing student from St. Mary's college named Tom also volunteered many times when I was there.  I developed a crush on the tall, dark-haired college senior.

One November 1963 Saturday, at the church meeting facility for our evening meal, I didn't see Tom and his guitar.  I turned to Father Cowan, our volunteer group's host.

"Where's Tom?" I asked the cleric, as I bit into a homemade tamale that one of the local women had brought for the volunteers.

"Oh," the rotund priest said as he pushed the fresh salsa towards, me.  "Tom joined the Peace Corps in Peru."

"Oh," I said, swallowing hard.

Though disappointed, I was also heartened because I'd already requested an application to join the Peace Corps myself after hearing Sargent Shriver speak at a convention I attended in August.  I'd just come from a summer in Apaseo el Grande with the first Amigos Anonymous group sent there.  I'd loved working with the people of the town to set up a school and a library.  The logical next step would be to join the Peace Corps.

When my Peace Corps application arrived, I puzzled at how to answer the question: "In what countries would you like to serve?"  There were three lines.  I was unfamiliar with most Latin American countries, and Mexico hadn't requested volunteers, so I wrote "Peru" in all three spaces.  Imagine my delight when in February 1964, my Peace Corps application was approved, and I was assigned to go to Peru.  I wrote to Tom to seek his advice on what to pack for two years in the country.

When I arrived in Lima, I went to lunch with my friend.  He had been assigned to a town on the coast.  I was sent to the Andes to work.  We wished one another well and parted ways.  I'd not known much about his life since then.  

Fifty-seven years later, on October 2, 2021, I sat at the Amigos' barbeque next to volumes of my latest memoir, Love in Any Language: A Memoir of a Cross-Cultural Marriage.  I offered a copy of the book for each $20 donation to an Afghan Refugee foundation.  I was telling Lydia Stack about my first memoir, Between Inca Walls:  A Peace Corps Memoir, when Linda and Mike McKenna entered the conversation and asked if I possibly knew a friend of theirs who had also been a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s.

"His name is Tom," Linda said.

She said Tom's last name and I got goose bumps.  It was the guy I'd known in Parlier and briefly in Lima.  Linda and I looked at one another with amazement.  I'm always awestruck at the serendipity of life.

"Tom is the reason I went to Peru where I met a Peruvian to whom I've been married now for 56 years," I said with a laugh.  "And you can read about all the coincidences that made it happen in my books."  I held up Between Inca Walls.

I am enchanted by the coincidences in my life.  The connections made at an Amigos party can't be predicted.  I gave Linda and Mike two bookmarks for my books to give to Tom the next time they see him.  If I see him, I'll need to give him thanks for luring me to Peru.  That decision changed my life.


Oh, and one more surprise.  We raised $200 for the Khalid Hoessini Foundation to assist Afghani refugees.