An Interesting Post-Peru Insight

I wish I had thought of it before we left. But it never occurred to me, unfortunately. Otherwise, I would have had a chance to see it. Here's the story. For 26 years, I was the Head of School of a school that was founded by Jean Garvey. She and her husband, Willard, were prominent Wichitans, philanthropists, and community leaders. Over the 26 years I learned a lot about their family and their business philosophy, but there was a lot I didn't know. In about 2004 (I think), Mrs. Garvey went on a long cruise through the Panama Canal, and she told me about stopping in Peru. Willard was involved in building some starter homes in Peru, and she went to the area to see what the houses looked like now. She said it was amazing what the families had done with the homes, and she was treated like a queen. She described the gated community, the flowered yards, the courtyards . . . it sounded wonderful. Of course, did it occur to me when we were going to Peru to find out where the community was so I could go see it? No. Not until April 28 did I think about it, and then I began to do some research, and this is what I discovered. In the late 1950s (Willard was in his late 30s), he worked with several people nationally (Dwight and Milton Eisenhower and Allen Dulles, for example) to try to build low-income housing in other parts of the world. He had already created a number of homes and apartments in Wichita that are used to this day, and he strongly felt that to counteract Khrushchev's "Every Man a Communist" manifesto, he would make "Every Man a Capitalist" by providing a starter home for people, coupled with low mortgage rates. Using the surplus grain that the US had, he had a plan for using the grain, philanthropy, and governmental aid to allow people to own their own homes. The homes were much in line with what was described to us in Peru - squatters built one floor, and then they would add on as they could. Willard's homes usually had four walls, windows, a floor, plumbing rough-ins, and that's it. Some of the homes only had three walls with a curtain over the fourth, but the majority of the homes were the four-wall style. At the time, Pedro Beltran was in the Peruvian government and was very interested in Willard's plan (he also worked with two other Wichitans - William Graham and Bob Martin), and together they were able to build 450 of the planned 500 homes. The neighborhood was called Villa Los Angeles, and according to our guide (who I contacted about this), it is a gated, nice area. I wish I had seen it. Willard also built homes in India and other countries. In reading about the project, one person suggested that the plan worked in theory but that the reality was that too many governmental and management obstacles caused the program to finally stop. But one thing Mrs. Garvey told me has stuck with me. She said they considered building in the Israel/Palestine area. She thought that perhaps, if they had been able to build there, if people had lived and worked together, perhaps many of the problems of the Middle East would not have developed. I was told Willard carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. I think his attempts to help the hard working people of the world is an example of his generosity.