The Black Hills was the backdrop for the 45th anniversary of the Peace Corps' Malaysia Seven, the seventh group trained in 1964 to go to Malaysia to offer health care, education and technology. Twenty-four of the original members gathered in Rapid City to rediscover each other and reconnect with their past.

For former Peace Corps roommates Karen Pettigrew and Flavia Williams-Rutkosky, the weekend has been a blur of activities, cooking, sharing meals and catching up.

Pettigrew of Rapid City recalls 103 members made up secretaries, teachers, radio technicians and nurses who trained at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., and in Hawaii for a month before traveling to Southeast Asia. Most of them were just out college, like Pettigrew, a new registered nurse, but two people in their group were in their 60s. Yet, it was the beginning of a two-year commitment to live and work in a developing country.

"We were there for two years; teachers were there for 2-1/2 years because of how the schools operated," Pettigrew said. "The nurses were living in World Health clinics. Some of the teachers were in remote areas, and some were in pretty cosmopolitan areas."

Pettigrew said she and the eight other nurses of the Malaysia Seven filled in while the local registered nurses were away getting midwifery training.

They earned about $100 a month.

"We did OK," she said.

She said the Corps paid an additional $500 to the volunteers after they had finished their service. Pettigrew saved a little money there and then took off for three months for an extensive tour of Asia.

Having attended a hospital school in a Catholic-run hospital, Pettigrew said she hadn't gone to college. "We had a couple college courses, but other than that, we were nursing-focused," she said.

Joining the Peace Corps changed the focus of her life.

"I learned to live a different life and met people from all over the world, eat their food, live their lives. It was great," Pettigrew said.

For Williams-Rutkosky of Smyrna, Del., the weekend has been a family reunion.

"I hadn't seen this family since 1989, and for some of them since 1966. This is my Peace Corps family. They're an important family," she said.

Her work and life in the Peace Corps definitely colored Williams-Rutkosky's life.

"It is an intricate part of who I happen to be now," she said.

One of the aspects for Williams-Rutkosky's experience was growing up as an African American in a segregated America. Taking part in the Peace Corps training, she had the opportunity to interact with white people as part of a team, as buddies.

"It was a very seminal part of my training," Williams-Rutkosky said.

Arriving at DeKalb, she was initially thrown when she found out that she had a roommate.

"As an only child, it didn't occur to me that there was going to be someone in my room," she said. She checked back at the desk, where she was assured that everything was in order and that she did have a roommate, who was white.

"Her back was to me, she turned around, and it was Karen. She started to talk, and we've been having that conversation since 1964," Williams-Rutkosky said.

Williams-Rutkosky said through her experience, she knows she doesn't need hot water, a telephone or television to survive.

"I've never had a television," she said.

She did have the opportunity to meet people from around the world who thought and lived differently than she did, and she became engaged in that dialogue. It even led to her change in careers. Williams-Rutkosky now works as a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"I don't know how it changed me, but I just know how it made me who I am," she said.

Contact Jomay Steen at 394-8418 or jomay.steen@rapidcityjournal.com.