The papers of Kermit Krueger document the experiences of a young Peace Corps volunteer living and exploring culture in Asian villages and cities in the early 1960s. This collection contains documents and artifacts created and collected by Krueger during his service in the Peace Corps from 1963 to 1965 as well as documents created after his return to the United States that reflect on his time in Thailand. The collection is organized into four series: Stories from Thailand, Visual Materials, Correspondence, and Travel Materials.
In 1963 a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, Kermit Krueger, enrolled as a Peace Corps volunteer after having been inspired by a speech given by John F. Kennedy in 1960 on the steps of the Michigan Union in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Krueger was assigned to teach English at the Teacher's Training College in Mahasarakham, Thailand. While living in Thailand, Krueger documented his experiences with village life in Mahasarakham, Buddhist practices and rituals, and teaching English to the college students.
In an effort to help integrate English into his students' vocabularies, Krueger assigned each of them to write a folk story in English that was from or about their places of origin in Thailand. Krueger helped his students to edit and improve the English stories. He then created a compilation of the stories to be used as a student reader for teaching English at the Teacher's Training College.
After Krueger returned to the United States approximately half of the Thai stories were compiled and published by the World Publishing Company in the book The Serpent Prince (1969). Shortly following the publication of The Serpent Prince a single Thai story Krueger had recorded, The Gold Swans of Chaiyapum (1969) was also published by the World Publishing Company.
