[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 76 (Thursday, June 5, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1127]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO JOYCE BAYNES

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. STEVEN R. ROTHMAN

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, June 5, 1997

  Mr. ROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Joyce Baynes 
from Teaneck--a woman from my district who represents all that we 
aspire to be.
  Her life story was told in a newspaper from my district, The Bergen 
Record, in its weekly ``Inspirations'' column.
  Ms. Baynes did not quit when her husband died 2 days after her third 
child was born. She did not quit when she only had one salary and some 
survivor benefits to feed four hungry mouths. She did not quit when one 
of her children was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome.
  She persevered. She did all the things that a mother should do. And 
she did all the things a father should do. She is an example which we 
all should follow. Her success and that of her children is humbling to 
all.
  Instead of using the challenges she faced as excuses for failure, Ms. 
Baynes used them as motivations to excel. She is unique and worthy of 
our mention on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives today.
  I submit the news article for the Record so that my colleagues, 
present and future, can draw inspiration from her.
  The article follows:

              [From the Bergen (NJ) Record, Apr. 27, 1997]

                   Hardship Only Deepens a Mom's Love

                          (By Caroline Brewer)

       March 6, 1978, found Joyce Baynes reveling in one of the 
     happiest days of her life. Her third son, Marcus, had just 
     been born.
       Two days later, she was writhing in the pain and sadness of 
     one of the worst days of her life. Her 31-year-old husband, 
     Walter Jay Baynes, had just died of systemic lupus disease.
       The awesome collision of a son's birth and a husband's 
     death left Joyce Baynes crushed. It was the end of the world 
     she knew and loved and had hoped to spend the rest of her 
     days delighting in.
       ``I felt totally helpless. Everything became just a fog,'' 
     she recalled.
       But with four mouths to feed on one salary and survivors' 
     benefits, Baynes didn't have the luxury of disappearing into 
     the fog. So she created a new world in the two-parent-flush 
     suburb of Teaneck, a world centered on devotion to her sons.
       Nearly 20 years later, Baynes basks in the light of three 
     well-rounded young men--one a graduate of Dartmouth, one a 
     junior at Princeton, and one a freshman at the Massachusetts 
     Institute of Technology.
       She's sure their father would have been proud. After all, 
     Walter had degrees in physics and medicine from Dartmouth and 
     Harvard and worked as an ophthalmologist and emergency room 
     doctor.
       Baynes herself has math degrees from Swarthmore and 
     Harvard. A longtime educator, she joined Teaneck schools in 
     1988 as mathematics supervisor and in 1995 was promoted to 
     assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction.
       She managed to juggle career and parenthood only by staying 
     organized.
       ``I shopped on the weekends and cooked enough meals on 
     Sundays to last the whole week,'' said Baynes, who is 50. 
     ``If you're going to try to beat all these odds, you have to 
     plan.''
       Her plan was to keep sons Jeffrey, Jason, and Marcus busy. 
     They were taught piano and played midget league baseball and 
     basketball. They also sang in the choir of Christ Episcopal 
     Church in Teaneck and were acolytes.
       Despite Baynes' own hectic schedule, she was in the 
     bleachers for all of the boys' sporting events, and, like a 
     lot of fathers, coached them on their performance. ``Arch it 
     up! Bend your legs!'' the tall, curly-haired mom would cry 
     out during basketball games, to her sons' embarrassment.
       Baynes' consistent presence made an impression.
       ``I remember one time I was supposed to play in a baseball 
     game, and she got dizzy [from exhuastion] and had to go to 
     the hospital. I wasn't going to go to the game, but she told 
     me to go. Then, she came, too!'' said Jason, now 21.
       ``I see how a lot of parents put their jobs first. But not 
     my mom. Sometimes I'd call her and she'd be in an important 
     meeting and she'd come to the phone,'' he added.
       When she did come to the phone, Jeffrey, always a worry-
     wart, was struck by how she never seemed stressed.
       ``She could have a paper due Tuesday, a board meeting 
     Wednesday, and be dealing with seven employees,'' he said. 
     ``But she would seem very calm and have a plan for how she's 
     going to handle each thing.''
       Looking like a force of calm in the midst of a storm was 
     just one way Baynes mothered by modeling the behavior she 
     expected from her children.
       ``They didn't hear me cursing or lying or see me smoking. 
     They also saw that the rules I set up for myself, I 
     followed,'' Baynes explained.
       ``I remember Jason asking me how it is that [they] never 
     had a desire to smoke or do drugs. It was just kind of our 
     existence that we never had those desires,'' she elaborated.
       Baynes' sons didn't have those desires, but they don't 
     pretend to be angels. Jeffrey battles selfishness. Jason 
     believes he's kin to Mario Andretti; one night two years ago, 
     he was caught speeding down a highway at 100 mph.
       Marcus had a long bout of immaturity, but now says his 
     mother's integrity is so powerful, it haunts him hundreds of 
     miles away at Cambridge, Mass.
       ``She's turned us into such honest people. I have some 
     people say, `Your mom's at home, you can do whatever you 
     want.' But I won't. The respect for her is so great,'' Marcus 
     said.
       When Marcus turned 5, doctors confirmed that he had a mild 
     case of Tourette's syndrome, which causes facial and vocal 
     tics, jerking, and, in some people, involuntary uttering of 
     obscenities.
       Marcus displayed compulsive behavior, such as rewinding 
     taped songs dozens of times to catch the lyrics. But he never 
     cursed. Baynes believes that's because she didn't.
       The Tourette's did boost Marcus' already high energy level, 
     which in turn made the job of raising the three boys that 
     much more difficult.
       They argued, wrestled, and banged holes in the walls. Jason 
     would scream and holler when it was time to go to bed. During 
     their younger years, Baynes couldn't even take a bathroom 
     break until her sons were in bed.
       By day's end, she was drained.
       ``I used to just think I had bright kids, but when I 
     reflected on all that I did, I realized I did play a big part 
     in this,'' she laughed.
       A big part, indeed. Even though the boys were intelligent, 
     the eventual Teaneck High graduates weren't always motivated. 
     Though Jeffrey was a fixture on the honor roll, Marcus and 
     Jason didn't really focus on academics until their sophomore 
     years. It was not any lecture from their mother, but her 
     years of setting high standards, that eventually brought them 
     around.
       After graduation, Jeffrey, the oldest, tallest, and most 
     reserved son, walked in his father's shoes to Dartmouth. He 
     graduated in 1993 with a degree in math and works at the 
     agricultural firm of American Cyanamid in Parsippany. He's 
     also pursuing a master's degree.
       Jason, the middle son, whose face and personality are most 
     like his father's, is a junior at Princeton. Like Walter, the 
     self-assured Jason plans to be a doctor, specializing in the 
     study of the brain.
       Marcus, the youngest son, who with his mother's love and 
     patience mastered his academics as well as his Tourette's, is 
     winding up his freshman year at Massachusetts Institute of 
     Technology.
       As for Joyce Baynes, the struggle is not over. Her income 
     was too high for the boys to qualify for full scholarships to 
     college. So she footed the $20,000-a-year bill for Jeffrey's 
     stay at Dartmouth and still shells out more than $20,000 a 
     year for schooling for Jason and Marcus.
       Yet no one in the Baynes quartet would trade the creature 
     comforts they've sacrificed, or even a new dad, for the new 
     world that was forced on them when fate took an unexpected 
     and agonizing turn.
       ``It would have been nice to have remarried,'' Baynes said, 
     ``but after three or four years of dating and nothing working 
     or feeling right, I felt I had built such a relationship with 
     the boys that it would have been hard to bring in someone 
     new.''
       Jason, a toddler when his father died, always felt secure 
     with just his mom. ``I didn't even know people had two 
     parents until maybe I was 9. I thought my life was great with 
     just one parent,'' he said with the deep, throaty laugh the 
     Baynes' boys share.
       Marcus, too, likes his family as it is. He, most of all, 
     used to pine for a father figure. ``Sometimes I would get 
     jealous when I'd see commercials and TV shows with kids 
     playing with their father. We never got to do that.
       ``But,'' Marcus concluded, ``I've lived a happy life. When 
     people say a child needs a father and a mother, it depends on 
     who you have. Not every child has a mother as wonderful as 
     Joyce Baynes.''

     

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