[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 78 (Thursday, May 11, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6559-S6560]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


        TRIBUTE TO INTERNATIONAL HERITAGE HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

 Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I would like to recognize the 
accomplishments of four distinguished community leaders from the 
Detroit area. These four individuals will be inducted tonight, 
Thursday, May 11, 1995, into the International Heritage Hall of Fame 
housed at Cobo Center. The inductees have been selected for outstanding 
service to their respective ethnic groups and the community at large.
  The International Institute of Metropolitan Detroit has been working 
since 1919 to assist immigrants who have arrived in the Detroit 
metropolitan area. The inductions of the four 1995 honorees will bring 
the membership in the Hall of Fame, which began in 1984, to 56. The 
inductees are U.S. Circuit Court Judge Damon J. Keith, the late Daniel 
F. Stella, Dr. Helen T. Suchara, and Mrs. Barbara C. VanDusen.
  U.S. Circuit Judge Damon Keith is a former president of the Detroit 
Housing Commission and former chairman of the Michigan Civil Rights 
Commission. An African-American, Keith has served as a Federal judge 
since 1967 and was chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Eastern 
Michigan from 1975 to 1977. He is a graduate of West Virginia State 
College, the Howard University Law School, and Wayne State University 
School of Law. He also holds honorary doctorates from those 3 
institutions and 24 other colleges and universities. He has held 
numerous civic positions including national chairman of the Judicial 
Conference Committee on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, 
chairman of the Citizens Council for Michigan Public Universities, and 
general cochair of the United Negro College Fund.
  Daniel Stella was president for 10 years of Friends of the 
International Institute. An Italian-American who died last July, Stella 
was instrumental in the establishment of the Hall of Fame and an active 
promoter of relations between Detroit and its sister city, Toyota, 
Japan. Mr. Stella was also a partner in the Detroit law firm of Dykema 
Gossett. He was a graduate of the Harvard Law School, the College of 
Holy Cross, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, 
and a member of the Michigan and California bars, among others. He was 
a director of the Detroit and Windsor Japan-American Society and a 
member of the Association for Asian Studies, American Citizens for 
Justice, the Michigan Oriental Arts Society, and the Founders Society 
and Friends of Asian Art of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Mr. Stella 
also served in Vietnam with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's 
Corps.
  Helen Suchara, a retired educator, last served as director of the 
Office of Student Teaching at Wayne State University. A Polish-
American, she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland from 1990 to 1992 
and has begun a new career in public service since her retirement. She 
holds positions on the Madonna College Social Work Advisory Board and 
the board of regents of Saginaw Valley State University. She received 
bachelor's and master's degrees from Wayne State University and a 
doctorate from Columbia University. She taught at WSU, Columbia, the 
University of Delaware, the University of Virginia, and Wheelock 
College in Boston, and earlier in public schools in Detroit and Howell, 
MI. She has worked on the boards of the International Institute and 
Friends of the International Institute. She has also worked in 
affiliation with the Polish-American Congress of Michigan Scholarship 
Committee, the Catholic Social Services of Wayne County, the Michigan 
Elementary School Curriculum Committee, and the 
[[Page S6560]] Dominican Sisters of Oxford Formation Committee.
  Barbara VanDusen is a member of the executive committee of Detroit 
Symphony Orchestra Hall and cochair of the Greater Detroit Inter-faith 
Roundtable of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. An 
English-American who also has Cornish, Irish, Dutch, and Scottish 
heritage, she is the widow of Richard VanDusen, former chairman of the 
Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce. Holder of a 1949 bachelor's degree 
from Smith College, she has also been involved in numerous community 
organizations as a trustee of the Community Foundation for Southeastern 
Michigan and as a member of the governing boards of the Michigan Nature 
Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.
  I know my Senate colleagues and the people of Michigan join me in 
congratulating these distinguished members of the metropolitan Detroit 
community. Their commitment to their communities and to public service 
is an example to us all. We thank them for their extraordinary 
efforts.


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