Edgar "Pop" Buell (April 26, 1913 – December 30, 1980) was a humanitarian aid worker in Laos. He worked as a farmer in Steuben County, Indiana until the age of 47, but following the death of his wife in 1958 he joined the International Voluntary Services, a precursor to the Peace Corps, which offered him a job as an agricultural adviser in Laos. Buell worked in Laos through the Laotian Civil War, organizing relief aid to refugees and isolated villages. He was forced to flee Laos in 1974 when the Communist Pathet Lao gained control of the country. Volunteer In 1958, Buell volunteered with the International Voluntary Services (IVS), a Bible Belt edition of the Peace Corps, at the salary of sixty-five dollars a month. In May 1960, he left Indiana for an orientation course in Washington, D.C., and then flew to Laos (his first time out of the United States) for his new job. In Laos, Pop (as he came to be universally known) was assigned to a small village about 100 miles north of Vientiane on the Plain of Jars. He lived in a hut without plumbing or electricity, his life there reminding him of growing up on the farm in Indiana. The Laotian Civil War In the early 1960s the CIA was building up its secret Hmong army on the Plain of Jars where Pop lived. Laos' isolation and low international profile changed dramatically with a coup d'état in 1960 and the entry of Laos on the world stage as a pawn in the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Pop became involved in the Laotian Civil War between the Royalist government, supported by the United States, and the Communist Pathet Lao. Increasingly, both the United States and North Vietnam intervened militarily in Laos to protect their toehold in the country. Unlike Vietnam, where the US sent more than 500,000 soldiers, only a few Americans, civilian and military, worked in Laos. The CIA supported local efforts to fight the Pathet Lao, made up largely of Hmong and other highlanders and Pop Buell was the man on the scene who knew the Hmong and had their trust. Many Laotians were displaced by the fighting or, in the case of the highlanders, cut off in their mountaintop villages. To Buell, now working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, fell the task of organizing