JOHN LINDER: “I first met Paul Coverdell in 1972. He was one of few Republicans in the Georgia State Senate, soon to become its…”

“I first met Paul Coverdell in 1972. He was one of few Republicans in the Georgia State Senate, soon to become its Republican leader, a position he served in for 15 years. He had come to Georgia as a teenager from Iowa. He then attended the University of Missouri, graduated with a degree in journalism, and he went from there to the Army and was stationed at Okinawa and Taiwan. When he returned to Atlanta, he involved himself in a very, ultimately very, successful insurance business, the Coverdell Insurance Company, and continued his activities in politics. In 1989, as has been said, he received an appointment as the head of the Peace Corps from President George Bush. I was curious as to why that was the position he wanted, since he could have had many others. He and President Bush were very close friends for very many years. But he told me that things were changing all over the world; that socialism and communism were going to ultimately be extinct. He had watched the uprisings in Poland in 1980. And, of course, it was not long after he became the head of the Peace Corps that the walls came down. He sent, through the Peace Corps, its first volunteers to Bulgaria, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary, Poland and Romania. And he also paved the way for the establishment of Peace Corps programs in China and Mongolia. When he stepped down from the Peace Corps, he ran for the United States Senate and won. So he won four elections that year.…”