2024 Peace Corps Week: Watch interview with former Peace Corps volunteer, Hawaiʻi Island resident Romel Dela Cruz

Posted on February 26, 2024March 4, 2024 by Staff

A Honokaʻa High School grad who served in the Philippines as a Peace Corps teacher, Romel Dela Cruz says the experience helped him understand the world as it is.

By Susan Enright.

This story is the first in a five-part series on Peace Corps volunteers who, after their service, settled down on Hawaiʻi Island. One former volunteer, with video and story, will be featured each day here at UH Hilo Stories, during 2024 Peace Corps Week, Feb. 26 through March 1.

Timed for publication this week during 2024 Peace Corps Week, the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo has produced a series of five talk-story interviews, recorded on video, with members of the Hawaiʻi Island community who served in the Peace Corps and then settled down on the island.

Three in the series are UH Hilo faculty and two are members of the local community; some grew up on the island, and others found their way to the island following their Peace Corps service.

Romel Dela Cruz

The series begins with Romel Dela Cruz, a graduate of Honokaʻa High School who was born in the Philippines and came to Hawaiʻi Island at the age of nine. He grew up in Paʻauilo, a sugar plantation community on the Hāmākua Coast of Hawaiʻi Island. He was educated in the public school system and received a bachelor of arts in history from Loyola University in California and a master of arts in public health from UH Mānoa.

Dela Cruz served with the U.S. Peace Corps in the Philippines from 1967 to 1969, and then worked with several governmental and not for profit agencies related to education, social, health services, finally serving as a hospital and nursing home administrator for 20 years and retiring in 2007. He is a father of two adult sons and grandfather of four. In retirement he enjoys gardening and making music.

He says his interest in the Peace Corps started when he was a junior in high school.

“John F. Kennedy just got elected, and he called on the young people of America to join the Peace Corps, do something for your country,” says Dela Cruz. “We were all young. We wanted to see the world and answer his call.”

As a Peace Corps volunteer, Dela Cruz was assigned to Iligan City located in the province of Lanao del Norte, where he served as an elementary school teacher.

“But what we did primarily was not to teach class, but to work with teachers to help them in their teaching method,” Dela Cruz explains. “My school happened to be the pilot school for the entire province of Lanao del Norte. And so the teachers would come in and we would conduct in-service for them.”

Teachers sit on chairs in front of blackboard. — Romel Dela Cruz (second from left) and next to him his future wife Jodean Schneider sit for photo with fellow Peace Corps teachers. (Courtesy photo)

Two teachers with a room full of schoolchildren at their desks. — Jodean Schneider (standing at left) in classroom during her Peace Corps service. (Courtesy photo)

Romel and Jodean stand next to a bicycle, waving to the camera. — Romel and Jodean on a fun outing. (Courtesy photo)

Group of Peace Corps volunteers stand for photo with Merry Christmas banner. — Romel and Jodean stand with their fellow Peace Corps volunteers for a photo at Christmastime. (Courtesy photo)

Reflecting on his time in Iligan City, Dela Cruz says that as a Filipino looking like a Filipino native, many times he was not considered an American.

“But I navigated that in and out,” he says. “When we were with Americans, my future wife (Jodean, also a Peace Corps volunteer) and I would be walking in the big city and she meets some of her Peace Corps friends that she trained with in San José, and they ask her, ʻWhat, do you have a guide now to show you the city?’ And I start laughing, you know.” The two later married in 1972 and settled down on Hawaiʻi Island, raising their two boys. Jodean passed away in 2021 after a long career as a teacher and school administrator on the island.

Romel and Jodean ride a large animal, water buffalo? — Romel and Jodean in the Philippines during their Peace Corps days. (Courtesy photo)

Romel and Jodean stand for photo. — Romel and Jodean met in the Peace Corps and later married in 1972 and settled down on Hawaiʻi Island. (Courtesy photo).

Dela Cruz says of his time in the Peace Corps, he and his fellow volunteers thought they would help the country, but he now believes the experience actually helped them understand the world as it is.

“It was more a matter of self-discovery of who I was and who I am,” he says. “Yes, I am a Filipino-American, but there is a part of me, part of the Philippines that remained with me. I got and what I give.”

Dela Cruz recommends that university students consider joining the Peace Corps after graduation.

“Yes, I would recommend,” he says. “Get out of your normal routine and feel how it is to be outside of your zone. Because I think that’s what happens when you grow up in America and you never go and live like the locals. You never will know and feel what it is for those people in those countries to respond to what is happening in America and what is happening in their country.”

Return Peace Corps Volunteer Project

This week’s series of video interviews is part of a larger project headed by Su-Mi Lee, an associate professor of political science and chair of the department at UH Hilo, who along with her poli-sci students and members of the local community are collecting biographical stories of former Peace Corps volunteers who have ties to Hawaiʻi Island. Last spring, Lee received funding from the College of Arts and Sciences, where the poli-sci department is located, to advance the project.

Learn more about the Return Peace Corps Volunteer Project: UH Hilo political scientist Su-Mi Lee compiles biographies from Peace Corps volunteers with ties to Hawaiʻi Island.

Su-Mi Lee and Romel Dela Cruz stand for photo. — Su-Mi Lee and Romel Dela Cruz. (Courtesy photo)

This inquiry is significant to UH Hilo because Hawaiʻi Island was chosen as a primary training location for thousands of Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s and the university’s precursor—University of Hawaiʻi-Hilo Branch—contributed greatly to that training. And many of those Peace Corps volunteers, who spent years forming connections abroad during their Peace Corps work, returned to Hawaiʻi Island, enriching local communities with their professional lives and service.

The Peace Corps stories Lee and others on the project are collecting are from 1) people who did their corps training on Hawaiʻi Island and came back to live, 2) staffers who trained Peace Corps volunteers on Hawaiʻi Island, 3) returning Peace Corps volunteers who are from Hawaiʻi Island where they did their Peace Corps training and may or may not currently live on the island, and 3) returning Peace Corps volunteers who chose to live on Hawaiʻi Island after their Peace Corps experience.

Lee’s goal is to document these stories for future generations to read and learn about the personal and professional value of direct engagement with people in other countries.