In Memoriam to a Great Man of Peace Sargent Shriver

On Tuesday, all of us in Service For Peace were saddened by the news of the passing of a great man of peace, Sargent Shriver. It was Shriver who, as a senior official in the Kennedy Administration, created the Peace Corps, largely in response to the global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

As Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity in the Johnson Administration in the mid-1960s, Shriver developed a multi-faceted War on Poverty designed to transform the economic and social roots of the conflict over civil rights in America. Like the Peace Corps, the programs of the War on Poverty - including Head Start, Job Corps, VISTA, Community Action Program, Legal Services to the Poor, and Foster Grandparents - continue to serve Americans to this day.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Shriver addressed the inter-religious tensions at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East by convening, for over five years, the first official Trialog of the Abrahamic faiths since the Moors ruled medieval Spain.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as Chairman of the Board of Special Olympics International, Sargent Shriver joined with his wife and son, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Timothy Perry Shriver, to transform the roots of violence and discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities by promoting Special Olympics Games throughout the world.

In 1994, Shriver received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton. “In my lifetime, America has never had a warrior for peace and against poverty like Sargent Shriver,” Clinton said at the time.

Sargent Shriver was a man who worked for peace throughout a long life of public service. He is an inspiration to all of us.

Charles Phillips President Service For Peace