Class Note 1964
Issue
Sep - Oct 2017
What alternatives are available when retirement arrives? One of our classmates decided to use his time to support a humanitarian cause.
Ray Peters retired in 2012 from his teaching job as professor of psychology at Queens University, Ontario, Canada, where he started teaching in 1973. Although born and reared in Pennsylvania, after he was graduated from Dartmouth, Ray found himself in Canada for graduate school. Canadian policy on refugees is different from the United States. While Canada has sponsored refugees from Syria, there are organizations that work with private citizens to sponsor refugees. Ray and his wife, Ellen, first got the idea of sponsoring a Syrian refugee family when they saw the startling photo of the refugee boy on the beach. So in 2016 they looked around and found an organization in Kingston, Ontario, that sponsors refugee families. Ray and Ellen were joined by a group of friends from their church and several other churches to sponsor a Syrian refugee family–a husband, wife and their five young children. The family had left Syria in 2012 under threats of death, spent two weeks in a refugee camp and then moved to Amman, Jordan, where they stayed with relatives in one room for two years. In Jordan they could not work and the children could not go to school. In June of 2016 they finally were allowed to come to Canada under the sponsorship of the Lutheran Refugee Fellowship, the organization Ray and Ellen had founded. The vetting process took a year and a half. Ray, Ellen and the other families formed a support group to assist them. As Ray determined, in order to sponsor a refugee family it was necessary to have both the financial as well as social and other resources to assist the family to get them housing, to assimilate, to learn English, to get their children into school, to get the husband a job and to teach his wife to drive, something she could not do in Syria or Jordan. Ray notes that this effort required a year’s worth of financial support as well as a sufficient number of volunteers to assist the family to get settled and acclimate to their new country. To garner these resources Ray and Ellen organized a fundraising effort to get the necessary financial resources and enlisted a team of 20 volunteers so that there were always persons available to assist the family when help was needed. “They formed a wonderful team,” according to Ray, “to spread the labor and commitment.” Ray indicated to me that although both he and Ellen are Christians, the motivation for this effort was not religious, but rather humanitarian. They found that others got involved for the same reason. Ray and Ellen feel that they have benefitted as much from the process and experience as the refugee family has. Because of that, they are thinking about sponsoring another family. If you want more information from Ray, you can contact him at ray.peters@queensu.ca.
—Harvey Tettlebaum, 56295 Little Moniteau Road, California, MO 65018; (573) 761-1107; dartsecy64@gmail.com
Ray Peters retired in 2012 from his teaching job as professor of psychology at Queens University, Ontario, Canada, where he started teaching in 1973. Although born and reared in Pennsylvania, after he was graduated from Dartmouth, Ray found himself in Canada for graduate school. Canadian policy on refugees is different from the United States. While Canada has sponsored refugees from Syria, there are organizations that work with private citizens to sponsor refugees. Ray and his wife, Ellen, first got the idea of sponsoring a Syrian refugee family when they saw the startling photo of the refugee boy on the beach. So in 2016 they looked around and found an organization in Kingston, Ontario, that sponsors refugee families. Ray and Ellen were joined by a group of friends from their church and several other churches to sponsor a Syrian refugee family–a husband, wife and their five young children. The family had left Syria in 2012 under threats of death, spent two weeks in a refugee camp and then moved to Amman, Jordan, where they stayed with relatives in one room for two years. In Jordan they could not work and the children could not go to school. In June of 2016 they finally were allowed to come to Canada under the sponsorship of the Lutheran Refugee Fellowship, the organization Ray and Ellen had founded. The vetting process took a year and a half. Ray, Ellen and the other families formed a support group to assist them. As Ray determined, in order to sponsor a refugee family it was necessary to have both the financial as well as social and other resources to assist the family to get them housing, to assimilate, to learn English, to get their children into school, to get the husband a job and to teach his wife to drive, something she could not do in Syria or Jordan. Ray notes that this effort required a year’s worth of financial support as well as a sufficient number of volunteers to assist the family to get settled and acclimate to their new country. To garner these resources Ray and Ellen organized a fundraising effort to get the necessary financial resources and enlisted a team of 20 volunteers so that there were always persons available to assist the family when help was needed. “They formed a wonderful team,” according to Ray, “to spread the labor and commitment.” Ray indicated to me that although both he and Ellen are Christians, the motivation for this effort was not religious, but rather humanitarian. They found that others got involved for the same reason. Ray and Ellen feel that they have benefitted as much from the process and experience as the refugee family has. Because of that, they are thinking about sponsoring another family. If you want more information from Ray, you can contact him at ray.peters@queensu.ca.
—Harvey Tettlebaum, 56295 Little Moniteau Road, California, MO 65018; (573) 761-1107; dartsecy64@gmail.com