[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 57 (Tuesday, May 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H2173-H2174]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                TRIBUTE TO MY TEACHER, FATHER JOHN PUTKA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Bob Schaffer, is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, today is National Teacher 
Appreciation Day, and we celebrate this all week long. I am reminded 
today especially of the teachers that have had such a profound 
influence in my life, and powerful influence at that, not the least of 
which was my father, a school teacher for his whole career, retired 
now; taught in a government-owned school system in which I did not live 
and did not have the chance to attend there, but he had the good sense 
to send me to another school where I had the opportunity to learn from 
this man here who I brought a picture of today.
  Mr. Speaker, this picture is from January 7, and the man, this is me 
over here on the left, the man at the right here is Father John Putka 
who my colleagues will find at the University of Dayton presently. This 
was the day that I got sworn in, and this was a teacher who made the 
trip here to the U.S. Capitol to celebrate the occasion, and I have to 
tell my colleagues that there are many, many individuals throughout 
this country who have been inspired by Father John Putka.
  Now he was my high school teacher at More High School in Cincinnati, 
OH. It is a Catholic school and one that is run by the Marianist 
Brothers, which Father Putka is a member of that holy order, and Father 
Putka was my senior Christian marriage teacher. Now he taught several 
different topics. His training is in political science, and in law, in 
philosophy and divinity, and he manages to bring all of those 
disciplines together in a way that has such a remarkable influence upon 
the lives of all of the students that have had an opportunity to sit in 
the chairs before him.
  It is interesting about this picture itself, because when we were 
having it prepared and it was downstairs in one of the offices, one of 
the staff members who was preparing this did not want to part with it, 
and the reason was because she had the opportunity to learn from Father 
Putka too, as it turned out.
  I have to tell my colleagues that it is unfortunate that there are 
not more students throughout the country that have a chance to learn in 
the kind of setting that I had an opportunity to learn in and that many 
students do throughout the country, but still not enough. I was able to 
attend this school because choice, school choice, was something that 
was available to me and to my family and to my brother and sister and 
others in my community. It was an opportunity for me to choose which 
kinds of education settings made the most sense for me. For

[[Page H2174]]

me this was the setting that was most meaningful and most purposeful.
  This was the setting under Father Putka where we learned quite a lot 
about character and character education. We learned quite a lot about 
our history as a great Nation, a nation where, as our Founders observed 
in our Declaration of Independence, is a nation where we are organized 
around certain God-given unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness and that our Founders appealed to the Almighty for 
the rectitude of their intentions, and in fact they pledged to each 
other their lives and their fortunes and their sacred honor with a firm 
reliance upon the protection of that same divine providence.
  Now those are lessons that I would submit one does not learn 
everywhere. They are lessons that frighten some people when it comes 
right down to it because there are many people in government schools 
and in government settings and centralized bureaucracies who are afraid 
of the lessons that people like Father Putka teach their students. They 
are afraid that individuals might take his lessons seriously about not 
being conformed to this world, about renewal of the mind, that we may 
recognize what is good, what is bad, what is perfect, what is 
imperfect, what is proper and improper. Those are lessons that more and 
more students need to learn and need to hear, especially here in 
America.
  Father Putka keeps in touch with his students; I can assure my 
colleagues of that. He kept in touch with me when I was a State senator 
back in Colorado. For 9 years I would hear from him frequently on 
issues that we were dealing with in the State legislature, issues 
dealing with family, issues dealing with life and death, euthanasia, 
all kinds of topics of those sorts. I spoke with him often about the 
relevance of our Constitution and the decisions that we make every day. 
A constitutional scholar, he has reminded me every single day, 
recalling from those lessons at More High School in his classroom about 
how we organize ourselves as Americans and how we are, in fact, 
governed by that Constitution.
  Teachers like Father Putka understand full well that the students 
that they teach are in fact messengers that we send off to a distant 
time, and what message will they carry? They will be future leaders 
perhaps, they will be business leaders and government leaders and 
perhaps even spiritual leaders or maybe teachers themselves. What 
message will they convey?
  Mr. Speaker, I can tell my colleagues that the message I am here to 
convey is that we have to move away from a centralized bureaucratic 
structure of public schooling. The Republican Party is committed to the 
freedom to teach and the liberty to learn. We believe full well that 
every student in America ought to have the same choices I did to choose 
the educational setting of their choice, the same kind of choices that 
occurred to our President here in Washington, DC.
  Mr. Speaker, congratulations to all the teachers throughout the 
country today on this commemoration of their profession.

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