1968-
2019
James Carragher worked
in a Forestry Reforestation program involving raising pine seedlings and
selling/giving them to farmers. He did
not continue in the forestry field after returning, but went on to be a US
diplomat for 32 years with the State Dept.
He believes that PC service influenced him to enter a helping
profession. 
Jim writes: I think this idea, as you say, "the point we may try to make is that our PC service sort of focused some of us to become involved in global helping professions as adults," is an excellent one. In my own case, what the PC experience did was show me that I liked living outside the US, with all the learning, little irritations and adventures, big and small, that come with that choice. As a result, after two years of graduate school and six months after we married, my wife, DanaDee and I, moved to Paris (where she had lived previously) and taught English with Berlitz for two years. We had a small, freezing cold in winter, house outside Paris and would commute by train to the city to work most every day. Together we realized that we both like the living abroad experience and that led to me taking the written exam to be a US Foreign Service Officer, that is a US diplomat). I passed all the hurdles and, in summer 1975, just after the birth of our first child, began a 32 year career working in embassies and State Department headquarters in DC.
Over the career we were assigned -- in order -- to the Dominican Republic (75-77), South Africa (78-81), Argentina (84-88), El Salvador (93-95, an unaccompanied tour by family choice. DanaDee had a good job in Washington), Zimbabwe (95-98), and Chile (98-01). At the latter two posts, I was the Deputy Chief of Mission, the number two person in an embassy after the Ambassador. The years not listed we were in DC, except for the final two years, 05-07 when I was a diplomat in residence at City College of New York, where I taught a class in diplomacy and traveled to other colleges in my region to talk to students about working with the State Department. At the end of that two year assignment I had reached the six year maximum for consecutive years working in the US and, in order to continue my career, would have to have gone abroad. Those were of course the years when we had an enormous presence in Baghdad and Kabul, one of which would have been my destination. I had no interest and so, having reached retirement age, opted to retire and continue living in NYC.
After five more years there, during which I became a docent at the American Museum of Natural History, we moved to Richmond to be near the kids and now split our time between there and here in Murphys CA.