Paul Coverdell

Paul Douglas Coverdell (January 20, 1939 – July 18, 2000) was an American politician who served as a United States senator from Georgia from 1993 until his death in 2000. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the director of the Peace Corps from 1989 to 1991 under President George H. W. Bush.

Coverdell was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1939 and lived much of his childhood in the Midwest. Coverdell graduated from Lee's Summit High School in Lees Summit, Missouri. and went on to graduate from the University of Missouri in 1961 with a degree in journalism. While in college, Coverdell was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

Coverdell joined the Army in 1962 and served as a captain in Okinawa, Taiwan, and Korea. After completing his service Coverdell settled in Atlanta with his wife, Nancy. Coverdell began a career in insurance, founding the firm Coverdell & Co. Inc. with his father and becoming president of the family business in 1965.

Coverdell was unsuccessful in his first attempt to win election to the state senate in 1968 but he ran again and won in 1970 representing north Fulton County. Coverdell began serving as Senate Minority Leader in 1974, a position he held until he left the Georgia Senate in 1989. Coverdell worked with Democrats to accomplish his goals. Roy Barnes, a Democrat who would later be elected Governor of Georgia, said that when he joined the Georgia State Senate, Republican Coverdell took him under his political wing. "He showed that people of different parties could discuss their personal strengths and weaknesses," Barnes said. "I never worried that Paul would disclose anything I said." During Coverdell's time as minority leader he worked for pension reform, supported DUI legislation, and raising the legal drinking age in Georgia.

In 1977 Coverdell lost a special election for Andrew Young's congressional seat to Wyche Fowler. After Coverdell's loss in 1977, he began working to develop a base for national Republican candidates and a viable statewide Republican Party organization. In 1985 Coverdell was elected Chairman of the Georgia GOP.

In 1978, Coverdell was vacationing in Maine and decided to look up former chairman of the Republican National Committee George H. W. Bush. Coverdell found Bush's address in a phone book, went to his home, knocked on the door and introduced himself to the future president. Bush and Coverdell became close friends and over the next fourteen years Bush and Coverdell would help each other on a number of occasions. In 1980, Coverdell was finance chairman in Georgia when Bush first ran for the Republican nomination for president. In 1988, Coverdell was the Southern steering committee chairman for the Bush campaign. Coverdell's efforts paid off in 1988 when Bush carried Georgia's twelve electoral votes. When Bush was elected president, Coverdell sent a letter. "If I can help, I'd like to help," Coverdell wrote. Bush appointed Coverdell to head the Peace Corps.

Coverdell was sworn in as Director of the Peace Corps on May 2, 1989, in a ceremony in the Oval Office. At the same time Coverdell stepped down from the Georgia State Senate, a post he had held for 15 years and resigned as president of Coverdell and Co. Inc to devote his time to the Peace Corps. Coverdell's primary initiative as Peace Corps Director was the creation of the "World Wise Schools" program. The program linked students in the United States with Peace Corps volunteers serving around the world. During the time Coverdell was in office, the World Wise Schools program connected volunteers with 5,000 classrooms in the United States. Coverdell was well regarded among the Peace Corps community. In the fall of 2000, after his death, a tribute was held in his honor at the Peace Corps Headquarters to honor his life and legacy.

Coverdell sent the first Peace Corps volunteers to Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. On June 15, 1990, President George H. W. Bush hosted a send off for volunteers headed for Poland and Hungary. "The key you carry with you will be the English language—what Paul calls the language of commerce and understanding. And just as national literacy has long been the key to power, so today English literacy has become the key to progress. Like your liberty, your language came to you as a birthright and a credit to the dreams and sacrifices of those who came before. And today you're investing that birthright in the ancient dreams and the new ideas of faraway peoples and their own nations reborn. Your investment is America's investment in the consolidation of democracy and independence in Central and Eastern Europe. Peace Corps programs in Poland and Hungary, and then soon in Czechoslovakia, are another tangible element of America's sustained commitment to Central and Eastern Europe's democratic transformation toward a Europe whole and free."