And the woman he married, Agnes Manglona, was educated by the Mercederian Sisters on Navy Hill.
Sam says his father had just come out of the Episcopalian seminary when the elder McPhetres met and not long after married his mother, who was a 16-year-old from an old California pioneer stock.
He recalls their move from Colorado to Junction City in Kansas where his father served as chaplain in Fort Riley.
From Kansas, Sam says they moved to Juneau, Alaska where he finished grade school and high school.
In college, Sam tells Variety he went to the University of California in Santa Barbara; however, before he could earn his BA degree, he says “itchy feet” led him to France.
There he studied in a small international school — Centre Europeen Universitaire de Nancy — where he obtained his Diplome D’Etudes Superieures Europeennes in 1958.
He came back to California to earn his B.A. in Political Science/International Relations from Univ. of California in Santa Barbara.
At the time, President John F. Kennedy organized the Peace Corps and Sam says he was among those to be the first to volunteer.
Asked why he volunteered, Sam says, “It just hit me. It’s exactly what I wanted to do.”
He remembers his first assignment was Ecuador where he served as volunteer from 1962 to 1964.
From there he came back to Washington, D.C. to join a teaching program for newly returned Peace Corps volunteers.
He taught at Cardozo High School, a predominantly African-American school, where he taught a student who later ended up on the list of acclaimed authors by the New York Times.
But his teaching stint was short lived, he says, as he arrived at a decision to return to Peace Corps. In 1966-1968, he was in Ivory Coast then he was assigned in Somalia.
“In ’69 I went to Somalia. I was there for a year until the president was assassinated and the whole place was falling apart,” recalls Sam.
As the country was mired in a political upheaval, Sam says his job was to head out to the desert and pick up volunteers whom he would advise to “get on the plane right now! Bring only your wallet and your passport.” They were all evacuated to Nairobi.
Sam remembers that those who had time left in their contracts were reassigned to other places.
At the time that they were thrown out of Somalia and replaced by the Soviets, he says he had the option to choose between Western Samoa, Baguio City in the Philippines or Chuuk.
He said he picked them in that order; however, he was told, since he survived Somalia, “why don’t you take Truuk instead?”
“So I ended up on Truuk [now Chuuk],” says Sam.
Asked about the entire experience, he replies, “I liked it very much. I learned very passable Chuukese.”
He tells Variety every place he went he learned the language of the area. He says, “It’s a good passport into the culture and the community.”
When contract was up, he chose to be on Saipan.
On moving to Saipan, Sam admits he wanted to stay close to the islands.
He worked for the Trust Territory government. “I had a job at public affairs. I was also an archivist.”
Then he says, as the Trust Territory started to shrink, he became the liaison with the United Nations for the Trust Territory which offered him the opportunity to travel throughout the Trust Territory with the U.N. delegations coming out in the region.
His work with the Trust Territory government was riddled with surprising finds.
In the aftermath of a typhoon, Sam says he found voluminous Navy administrative records he describes as “rare” and “original” in drawers and filing cabinets.
These were records from 1944 to 1952.
He was told that these records were to be destroyed when the Trust Territory terminates. But Sam was adamant at preserving these records for posterity.
When he got the chance, he says, he finally had microfilming of these documents from 1982 to 1990 that resulted in 2,000 reels.
Sam says these are now stored at the archives of Northern Marianas College, in the Hamilton Library in the University of Hawaii, and a set each for FSM, Palau, and the Marshalls.
Variety inquired with Sam if he stumbled upon rare discoveries, Sam says, he found “wonderful stuff.”
Among his favorites was the reference to the civilian High Commissioner who found the Trust Territory Code was inappropriate for Micronesian cultures.
“They had been using the California state code as the main code for criminal and civil cases here — with no relevance at all,” he says.
The high commissioner, he says, wanted to have a code that included unacceptable sexual behavior.
At the time, Sam says, the Trust Territory government set up an anthropological training program in Stanford University that trained people to come out to the islands and serve as communications funnel between the government and the communities.
These anthropologists were instructed to find out what was unacceptable sexual behavior in the communities.
Sam says when their report came out, the Trust Territory Code was amended to make 14 as age of consent.
The long-time political science instructor says he also found a box full of carbon paper.
Packed so tight and ink was running, the box contained letters of anthropologists divulging what they discovered in the islands, says Sam.
Although he sent the box to the head anthropologist, the latter denied ever receiving it. The box has since been missing.
Sam says he found out the anthropologists were sworn to secrecy to never reveal their findings. He cites an example what one expert found out in Yap. He says he read in the letters that a Yapese girl has to get pregnant and has to have a successful birth before marriage. He also read about an abortifacent— herbs used for abortion — commonly used in the island.
This and a lot more, knowledge of the islands at that time, were lost.
He also found envelopes of money which were subscriptions to “Micronesian Reader” and a savings account book for scholarship fund set up in memory of a civilian director of education.
Looking back, serving in the Peace Corps and the Trust Territory government gave Sam some of the more memorable years of his life.
These are the stuff that will make for a good read once Sam starts writing his books, two or three, when he finally decides to retire.
Asked by Variety when he intends to do so, “As soon as I can guarantee myself at least $1,000 a month to add on to my social security that will give me the same amount of money I am making now.”
When he does get the chance to consign his knowledge of the islands’ culture and politics to paper, he says he will discuss at length the Trust Territory days, political decisions that helped shape the way the CNMI is today.
He says he will also write about economic conditions, more specifically, the demise of the garment industry. He says he spoke to members of the industry warning of the ramifications of the establishment of the World Trade Organization which at the time received lukewarm reception.
He says he was told, “It’s not going to happen. We’re too important. The U.S. Congress is going to amend Headnote A to continue giving the CNMI the advantage.
Sam says, “That didn’t happen.”
While he works on his books, Sam, in the meantime, has the classroom as venue to share his knowledge of the islands — 40 years and counting.
