[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 113 (Monday, July 29, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9007-S9008]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       JOE JAMELE--A TRUE PATRIOT

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, in a short while, my longtime press 
secretary, Joe Jamele, will be retiring. Joe Jamele set probably an 
all-time record as press secretaries of 15 years in my office. I think 
this is a great compliment to two Italian-Americans, Joe and myself, 
that we put up with each other for 15 years. We were good friends when 
we began our association; we are even better friends as it comes to an 
end.
  Joe Jamele is one of those very special people who is a true 
Vermonter. I remember when I grew up, we always had the debate of what 
it took to be a Vermonter. Usually, the debate centered around whether 
your great-great-grandparents were born and raised in Vermont or 
whether your great-great-great-grandparents were born and raised in 
Vermont.
  Joe Jamele established it in the best of ways. He earned his right to 
be a

[[Page S9008]]

Vermonter through his sense of hard work, honesty and loyalty, loyalty 
to his family, loyalty to his community, and loyalty to those who were 
fortunate enough to have him serve in their office, whether it was the 
Governor of the State of Vermont, Governor Salmon, or whether it was 
myself.
  Having Joe Jamele as a member of your office comes with a price. I 
would often come in feeling that I just made some brilliant coup, 
either in the media or on the floor or back home. Joe would lean back 
and say, ``Well, you know, Patrick, the way I heard it was,'' and then 
he would give it to me from the eyes of the vast majority of 
Vermonters. And I would say, ``Yeah, I guess I didn't do quite as good 
as I might have,'' and he would bring it back to Earth. But he also did 
it in a way that was in the best interest of Vermont.
  He would say oftentimes, ``Let's talk about what really is on 
people's minds back there.'' That is something he knew because he had 
such a farflung group of people, and still does, around Vermont, people 
he could call and talk with, people who are the true opinionmakers, not 
those who thought they were the true opinionmakers, but the people who 
really were the true opinionmakers and those who understood it.
  Joe had, and has, this sense of history in Vermont. We sometimes have 
members of the press who come there, have been there a very short time 
and don't know who had gone before them. He was a very distinguished 
member of the press and has a sense of history that has probably only 
been seen, in my recollection, in Mavis Doyle, a former, and now 
deceased, reporter for the Rutland Herald. Joe knew who the players 
were. He knew those who spoke just for a sound bite as compared to 
those who spoke to do what they thought was best for the State or our 
country.
  He had a professor's true heart, because over this decade and a half, 
we had so many young people who came into our office who found their 
real mentor was Joe Jamele, and they could go to Joe with everything 
from a professional to a personal concern and get the best of advice.
  So, Mr. President, I was very pleased when Sam Hemingway of the 
Burlington Free Press wrote in May a column about Joe, and I ask 
unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Burlington Free Press, May 31, 1996]

                           (By Sam Hemingway)

                   Washington Bids Farewell to Jamele

       To his last day on the job--today--Joseph Jamele Jr., 65, 
     was remaining true to form: part curmudgeon, part romantic 
     and full-time Vermont political junkie.
       ``It's terrible,'' he muttered on the phone from 
     Washington, D.C., where he's worked as press secretary for 
     U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., for 15 years, an eon in a 
     profession famous for short life spans.
       ``Winding down is terrible,'' he went on. ``I don't like 
     this going-away stuff. I'd rather say goodbye on a one-to-one 
     basis than have those cheery testimonials. I've been to a lot 
     of them and every one's been a disaster.''
       And then, a minute later, he was talking fondly about 
     working for peanuts as a reporter in the 1950s. About 
     managing the gubernatorial victory of Democrat Tom Salmon in 
     1972, one of the great upsets in Vermont political history. 
     About the changes in Vermont he can't bear to watch.
       ``There's some parts I can barely visit because they've 
     changed so much,'' he said. ``Like the outskirts of 
     Burlington. I can remember driving through Colchester at 
     night and not see a light on. Or up around Lake Seymour. It 
     used to be you could go for miles and not see anyone. Now 
     it's ringed with cottages.''
       The two sports are important to Jamele. Lake Seymour, close 
     by Morgan in the Northeast Kingdom, was where he was sent to 
     summer camp by his family in New Jersey all through the 
     Depression and World War II. Burlington is where he got his 
     first job while still a college student, bundling freshly 
     printed Free Presses on the midnight shift.
       A reporting job soon followed, with Jamele honoring the 
     advice of a plaque on the wall in the office of his 
     University of Vermont mentor, Andrew Nuquist, that read: 
     ``Never give them two bad ones in a row.''
       He didn't. Jamele's news writing career covered the 
     mundane--taking sports briefs over the phone--to the 
     dramatic: a story about the abused dog who crawled home to 
     die. He once interviewed a blind man who had wandered lost in 
     a forest for three days. He talked with a sobbing Gov. Phil 
     Hoff the day President Kennedy was assassinated.
       By the early 1970s, his love for politics and weariness 
     with low-paying journalism jobs got the best of him. In 1972, 
     he had begun working for the GOP gubernatorial campaign of 
     then-Attorney General James Jeffords when Salmon called and 
     coaxed him to not only switch horses, but political 
     affiliations as well.
       The move paid off, Jeffords eventually lost his party's 
     primary to Luther Hackett; Salmon went on to victory in 
     November.
       ``The night Tom won, the first returns that came in came 
     from Granby, which voted 26-0 for Hackett,'' Jamele said. 
     ``Tom's daughter began to cry on the couch, and Tom consoled 
     her by reminding her about Hackett's pledge to visit every 
     town. `I think he spent too much time in Granby,' he told 
     her.''
       Jamele remains convinced that had Salmon run for retiring 
     U.S. Sen. George Aiken's seat in 1974, he would have won. ``I 
     think Aiken really wanted Tom to succeed him,'' Jamele said.
       But Salmon passed on the chance, and the door was opened 
     for Leahy. Jamele worked for Salmon for four years, then for 
     Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. He joined Leahy's staff 
     in 1981, a move he's never regretted.
       And will not now sentimentalize as he heads for the exits. 
     He leaves, critical of the way federal workers have become 
     scapegoats for those who blame government for what's wrong in 
     the country, angry about the dominance of polls and 
     television ads in political campaigns.
       Passionate and skeptical to the end.

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I will say that my career in the Senate has 
been greatly enhanced because Joe has been willing to give so much of 
himself to this office, to the State of Vermont, to the U.S. Senate, 
and to our country. He is, indeed, a true patriot.

                          ____________________