Interview with Larry Geiter, December 2, 2021

Interview Summary

Larry Geiter served as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1973 – 1976 (plus 1977 in Peace Corps Administration) in South Korea working in the Korean National Tuberculosis Control Program at the Ulsan City Health Center assisting with health education, patient follow-up, and smear microscopy for two years. Then he spent a third year of service at the Ministry of Health in the tuberculosis section in Seoul working on a program outcomes survey. He learned of the Peace Corps while a student at Cornell University (NY) studying biology while he lived in Brockport, NY, where there was a Peace Corps training site. A recruiter worked him through the application process and shortly afterwards he received a phone call and was invited to attend a “staging” session in Chicago where the Peace Corps, the job, and Korea were described. A month later he was on a plane with other volunteers headed to a few countries in Asia. Thirty-one of his colleagues were to work in tuberculosis in Korea. He had no actual training in the United States but spent 14 weeks in Suwon, south of Seoul. For the first two weeks all of the volunteer trainees and the training staff lived together in a training academy with classrooms and dormitories. After that the trainees lived with a smaller group of five or six volunteers going to the training center for about nine hours Monday through Friday with an additional four hours of language training on Saturday. Technical training occurred every afternoon. In the afternoon or evening, there were many cross-cultural sessions and he also visited other volunteer sites on field trips, some lasting up to a week. His group was the fifth general health group and the fourth with an emphasis on tuberculosis control. The town of Ulsan, southeast of Seoul, was an emerging industrial hub, and Larry lived with the Health Center director, his wife, and their three children. He was tasked to help the head doctor with English while he delved further into the Korean language. He had his own room in the house, but there was no indoor plumbing; a pan of hot water was placed outside of his door each morning to wash up. There was adequate electricity, and half the homes in the area had running water. Larry took a while to get used to the spicey food of the area, and he lost a lot of weight during the first part of his tour. He reported directly to a key tuberculosis control worker and early in his service spent many of his days being introduced to other workers and dignitaries and giving talks on health education while demonstrating some of the technology dealing with microscopes and culture slides. He made many home visits to patients registered in the program as it was up to Larry to set up his own workday routines. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, many patients came to the clinic for a monthly visit to collect medications. Larry worked with vaccination campaign teams to provide vaccinations, including the BCG vaccine, to infants and primary school children He had no fears concerning his own health and spent much of his free time exploring the city and absorbing the culture. There were only a few Americans in the area then, and Larry sensed the genuine anti-North Korean sentiment which still existed. During a part of training, Larry visited the DMZ zone where he realized that the potential for war still existed. New Year’s Eve was a major holiday in Korea, and Larry met with other volunteers during that time. He also went to Pusan periodically to meet with the two other volunteers working on tuberculosis in his province. Larry did an additional extension year working out of Seoul with the Ministry of Health department, tuberculosis section, where he helped with the development of a program evaluation tool for the national tuberculosis program. After three years as a volunteer, Larry worked on a contract to redesign the country’s training program for volunteers working in the public health-oriented tuberculosis and leprosy control programs. Upon returning to the United States, Larry attended the University of Hawaii for a Master’s Degree in Public Health, worked at the United States CDC, Division of TB Elimination, and retired in 2019 after leading a clinical development team that led to the approval of a new drug to treat tuberculosis. He is married to a Korean woman, was involved with the “Friends of Korea,” while living in Virginia and Maryland, and is on the board of RPCV of South Florida after moving to southern Florida.

Interview Keyword

Peace Corps (US) Country of Service: South Korea Dates of Service: 1973 – 1976 Peace Corps Volunteer Job: Health Peace Corps (US): 1970 – 1980 Language: Korean Language Training: Suwon, South Korea Cultural Training: Ulsan, South Korea 1977 P. C. Administration

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