Early Life, Education, and Peace Corps Service
Blackwill was born August 8, 1939, in Kellogg, Idaho. and grew up in Kansas. "From my boyhood on the Great Plains, I brought back east more than 30 years ago the values of Kansas and its people: honesty, candor, compassion, hard work, a dogged stamina in the face of challenge and adversity, a sense of humor, a recognition of one's own limitations, and a deep and abiding love of country," Blackwill said in June 2001 at his Senate confirmation hearings to become ambassador to India. Blackwill earned a B.A. from Wichita State University.
Blackwill served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi from 1964 to 1966. While in the Peace Corps Blackwill served with writer Paul Theroux who Blackwill later described as "the glorious American writer who was my friend in the Peace Corps in Africa more than thirty years ago." In an interview with Rediff News on June 27, 2006 Blackwill was asked if he was still in contact with Theroux and replied "Not recently. But I just finished reading his new novel, Blinding Light. It is terrific."
Read more about this topic: Robert Blackwill
Famous quotes containing the words early, peace, corps and/or service:
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“You’re a grand old flag;
You’re a high-flying flag.
And forever in peace may you wave.”
—George M. Cohan (1878–1942)
“L’amour pour lui, pour le corps humain, c’est de même un intérêt extrêmement humanitaire et une puissance plus éducative que toute la pédagogie du monde!”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“In the service of Caesar, everything is legitimate.”
—Pierre Corneille (1606–1684)