[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 76 (Thursday, June 5, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3545-H3548]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1845
                       TRIBUTE TO DEPARTING PAGES

  (Mrs. FOWLER asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mrs. FOWLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as chairman of the House Page 
Board to pay tribute to our departing pages. I know I speak on behalf 
of all of my House colleagues when I say thanks for a job well done. 
You, the pages, have had a unique and historic experience and one which 
we hope will serve you well as you continue your education and begin 
your careers.
  So much of what we do in Congress is done for the next generation, 
for you, our pages, who are here in the back of the room today are the 
next generation. You can be proud that what we have done in this 
Congress has not only been done for you but with you. Like each Member 
of Congress, you are now a part of this institution, and as of Friday 
you will be a part of its history. Some of you may even be part of its 
future, returning some day as staff members or even Representatives 
yourselves like the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell], the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kanjorski], the gentleman from Arizona 
[Mr. Kolbe], the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis], and the gentleman 
from Mississippi [Mr. Wicker], or our late colleague, Representative 
Emerson, the former chairman of the Page Board.
  We know that whatever path you choose in life, it will have been 
enriched by your experience here in the United States House of 
Representatives. As you prepare to graduate on Friday, we want you to 
know that this entire House is grateful for your service to us and to 
our country. We wish you all well.
  Mr. Speaker, at this time I will include for the Congressional Record 
the names of the pages that we salute today:
       Joshua Abrons, Clinton Bonelli, Joshua Booth, Justin 
     Boyson, Elizabeth Bracken, Brett Bruen, William Carr, Marny 
     Cavanaugh, Holli Cavender, Amanda Charters, Kari Charters, 
     Virginia Clotutier, Sara Cobb, Katie Dewberry, Kathryn Eddy, 
     Ryan Edmunds, Jami Feinberg, Ashley Fellers, Lisi Fernandez, 
     Elizabeth Frank, Stephanie Freund.
       Wayne Green, Page Griffin, Ryan Hemker, Antonia Henry, Kim 
     Holcomb, Edward Holman, Peter Janelle, Christina King, Todd 
     Koehler, Mary Konitzer, Matt Kummernuss, Sam Langholz, Sarah 
     Lash, Melissa Leuck, Mary Elizabeth Madden, Jennifer 
     Madjarov, Kevin Marlow, Kevin McCumber, Aric Nesbitt, Erik 
     Newton.
       Philip Nielsen, Luke Peterson, Melissa Poe, Aaron Polkey, 
     Sabrina Porcelli, Jenifer Scott, Mary Megan Siedlarczyk, 
     Lizzie Smart, Brandon Snesko, Howard Snowdon, Paul Soderberg, 
     Katie Sylvis, Megan Taormino, Erin Tario, Maria Toler, Tyson 
     Vivyan, Pete Voss, Angela Williams, Timothy Willimason, Sarah 
     Wilson.

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. FOWLER. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of minority leader Gephardt and 
minority whip Bonior and the chairman of our Caucus, the gentleman from 
California, Mr. Fazio, all of the leadership and all of the Members on 
this side of the aisle, I am very pleased to join the distinguished 
gentlewoman from Florida in congratulating our pages.
  Mr. Speaker, the pages represent, as the gentlewoman from Florida 
[Mrs. Fowler] said, the future. I have risen before on this floor and 
talked about the page program. I was privileged to be President of the 
Maryland Senate, and one of the duties of the President of the Maryland 
Senate was to recruit high school students for the page program.
  I would tell, Mr. Speaker, the young people, if I could address them 
directly, consistent with the rules, I would tell them that this 
experience will affect you for all of your lives. You will be better 
citizens. You have had an experience that few citizens in our Nation 
have. You have been on this floor and seen democracy in action. You 
have seen how conscientious the Members of this House are.
  Too many Americans, I say, Mr. Speaker, if I could directly to the 
pages, too many Americans do not have a full understanding of how hard 
Members work. How conscientious they are and how much they care about 
doing the right thing for their country, irrespective of whether they 
are conservatives or liberals, moderates, Republicans, Democrats or 
Independents. You have learned that firsthand. So you will have 
something that millions and millions of your neighbors and friends and 
relatives will not have had: firsthand experience, how the greatest 
democratic institution in the world works.
  And you will have the opportunity to go back and tell our fellow 
citizens, too many of whom tend to be cynical, that the system works 
and that they need to participate, not necessarily run for Congress, 
maybe some of you will do that, but to participate by voting, by 
speaking out, by writing, communicating, by involving themselves in the 
democratic process.
  I am very pleased, Mr. Speaker, to join the very distinguished 
gentlewoman from Florida as a former member of the Page Board, never a 
page but an intern to a Member here, so like you, having had an early 
experience, I say to our young people, go back to your communities, go 
back to your schools, go back to your States and help teach democracy. 
Make our country better. We will be the better for it.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. FOWLER. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona, former member of 
the Page Board.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me. I 
thank her for taking this time for those who serve here to take a 
moment out of our day at the end of this week and at the end of a year 
of experience for our pages to thank them. Normally we stand in the 
well of this House here and we address our colleagues who are out here 
in front of us. But this evening we stand here and address the pages 
who stand behind the rail over there and have served us so well and, I 
might add, the pages who sit behind me over here at the documentarian's 
table.
  To all of these pages, let me say that we thank you. We thank you for 
the service that you have given, we thank you for the confidence that 
you give us in the future of our country.
  I began, as I think most of the pages know, I began my own service in 
public service, my own service in Government nearly 40 years ago when I 
came here as a page. In those days the program was quite different and 
I came as a sophomore in high school and stayed through my senior year.
  I know from that experience what a difference it has made in my life, 
how it has fundamentally changed my own life. When I think back on the 
class of 1960, two of whom in addition to myself have served this House 
so ably, Donn Anderson, the Clerk of the House, Ron Lasch, who is the 
Republican floor assistant over on our side. And I think of the others 
who have not chosen to participate in the Congress of the United States 
but participate in their own communities and participate in our public 
life in other ways.
  So what the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer] said is so very true, 
that no matter where you go, no matter what career, no matter what 
profession you follow, no matter where life takes you, this experience 
will always

[[Page H3546]]

be a profoundly important one for you. I cannot make any other 
prediction for you, but I can guarantee you that, 40 years from now, 
you will look back on this experience and say that it has been an 
extraordinarily important one for you.
  There are many people who have said that the page program is 
unnecessary, that it is too difficult, that we really ought to change 
it, that we ought to not have high school students, that we ought to 
have regular employees doing the work. We have resisted that through 
the years. I think there has been strong support in this House of 
Representatives to keep the page program as it is for young men and 
women who come to us from all over the country, from all walks of life, 
all communities, from every kind of ethnic and economic background 
because of what they represent and because of what they stand for as 
the future of our country and for the hope that they give us and the 
message that they take back to their communities. So you are a part.
  The gentlewoman from Florida [Mrs. Fowler] has said, now, of the 
history of this House of Representatives and your service is not 
forgotten. We have a lot of people who make the flow and the work in 
this House go well. It takes a lot of people for an organization this 
big to carry on its daily activities. It may seem to you sometimes that 
your work has not been that important, but collectively and together it 
is a vital cog of the machinery of the House of Representatives that 
makes this place function smoothly, not always so smoothly but usually 
smoothly, to function smoothly and to function well.
  I think that each and every one of us has enjoyed the opportunity 
over the course of this last year or, for some of you, the last 5 
months to get to know you, to get to understand your hopes and your 
dreams, your aspirations. Through you we also understand just a little 
bit better about the young people of America, about the hopes for our 
country and for ourselves. So we thank you for the service that you 
have given us and we thank you even more for what you represent for 
this country.
  Speaking personally, I want to say I wish you all very well. I know 
that you are going to go back to your schools and your communities and 
I predict each and every one of you is going to be a great and 
wonderful success with your life. We hope we have contributed to a 
little bit of your understanding and we hope that when you go home to 
your schools next year, to your communities this summer, and you hear 
somebody say about how bad government is and they express the cynicism 
that I know you have heard before and we will all hear again, that you 
will say, stand up and say, but there are a lot of good people that are 
involved and there are a lot of people that work hard, a lot of people 
that care. And this is what the process is all about and this is what 
democracy, this is what liberty, this is what our freedoms are all 
about. You are a part of that and we thank you for that service. 
Godspeed.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. FOWLER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan, another member 
of the Page Board.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.
  The very first vote I cast in the House of Representatives in January 
1977 was to cast my vote to elect Tip O'Neill Speaker of the House. And 
the best assignment that Tip O'Neill gave to me many, many years ago 
was to serve on the Page Board. It has been a very enjoyable 
assignment. It has been an assignment where my hope for the future has 
been sustained every year as class after class of pages have come 
through.
  Let me say this from the bottom of my heart. No class, no group of 
pages has surpassed or been better than this class this year. Indeed, 
you made the chairman, myself as ranking member, our job very, very 
easy this year. You have been extraordinarily good. There is a program 
in America, a very good program for young people called Close Up, and 
it is a great program. And I always meet with my Close Up students. 
Some of you may have participated in that at one time. But no group of 
young people see the Congress and the Government as close up as you. 
You have seen history. You have seen us at our best, and sometimes 
perhaps you have seen us at our worst. But you have seen Government. I 
think that you leave here not with cynicism but with hope and trust in 
the Government.
  When I was about your age, Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the 
United States. He spoke these words many, many years ago, but I think 
they are as applicable today, perhaps even more so, than when he spoke 
them. He said there is a strange cycle in human events; to some 
generations much is given, of other generations, much is expected. This 
generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

                              {time}  1900

  Meeting you, the pages, this year, I am very confident that all of 
you can meet the challenges of that rendezvous, and I ask that God 
bless you.
  Mr. DAVIS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. FOWLER. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. DAVIS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity 
to say, as my colleagues, to all of the pages who will be leaving this 
evening, thank you very much for a job well done. I guess tomorrow 
night is the time. But thank you very much for a job well done.
  This has been an outstanding class. Many of you know that I served 4 
years as a page in Congress from 1963 to 1967. Some of the defining 
moments in my life were based on that time period: The day President 
Kennedy was shot, the vote on the test ban treaty, the debates over 
civil rights.
  Paging has changed since that time. It is a much more select group, 
for one, than when I started. Screened academically. A very carefully 
run program today, producing some outstanding results.
  We have talked about how hard Members work, but we need to take note 
of how hard you have worked, and, hopefully, you have learned some 
lessons during this time. Hard work and attention to academics, focus, 
the long hours you put in and the discipline that you have had to find 
in yourself, with all of the different things going on around you has 
been helpful and will put you in great stead as you progress through 
life, whether you stay active in politics and government or whether you 
do not. But we have seen some good results.
  And we have shared some good times together. The passage of the 
balanced budget today, I think, is a fitting tribute to you, because we 
do this with our next generation in mind, as we put together a balanced 
budget resolution that hopefully will lead to the first balanced budget 
in a generation by the year 2002, to give your generation an 
opportunity to succeed. And it is with you in the future that we did 
this.
  The experiences that I have had have stayed with me through my life 
and defined what I have done. I have always had an appreciation for 
government, but whether you end up running for office, staying active 
in government and politics, or just going out and being ambassadors to 
your community, we have given you an opportunity that few young people 
have. I know you have learned from this and will take it with you.
  And from our experience here and from our perspective as Members, we 
wish you Godspeed in the time ahead and thank you for a job very well 
done. We are proud to have been a part of the process that you have 
undergone in the last few months.
  Mrs. FOWLER. Before I yield further, Mr. Speaker, I understand that 
we can have the pages come up and sit. The Parliamentarian says it is 
okay, so that their parents and friends at home can see you better.
  So while we complete honoring you, why do you not come have a seat in 
our chairs so that you can enjoy this better.
  So if the gentleman from Mississippi does not mind for just one 
minute, hopefully the cameras will get a good view of them and the 
folks back home can see them as well and these great young men and 
women that we are honoring now.
  And I want to thank the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth] for 
coming up with this great idea of having them come forward. We should 
know someone from the media would come up with this sort of idea.

[[Page H3547]]

  Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. FOWLER. I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and 
also thank the gentleman from Arizona for his excellent idea of 
bringing these young people forward.
  Let me add my comments to those very eloquent remarks that have been 
made this evening on behalf of the pages and to thank you for your time 
of service here.
  The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis] mentioned that he was a page 
for 4 years in the United States Senate. I was a page for only 1 month, 
and that was in 1967, in October of 1967, and it is hard for me to 
believe that it has been almost 30 years since I came here to serve as 
a congressional page for the honorable Jamie Whitten, who later on 
became chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and served 53 years 
in the United States House.
  But this is a very excellent group of young people, Mr. Speaker. They 
are a particularly good looking group, too. And they worked mighty hard 
for us and they performed good service for their country and for the 
United States House of Representatives.
  They have seen us on the floor in debate, they have seen us also in a 
more human sense walking up and down the back aisles there and in the 
cloakrooms. And I simply would say to these young people, I hope you 
will go back as goodwill ambassadors for this House of Representatives 
and for our system of government; the greatest system of government 
ever known to the mind of man, the oldest Constitution existing on the 
planet today.
  You have seen a great deal of history. You saw the second 
inauguration of President Clinton, you saw the reelection of a 
Republican majority for the first time since the 1920's, therefore you 
saw divided government and all of the challenges that that brought for 
us, a President of one party and a Congress of the other party having 
to come together. And today you saw the fruition of that, rising to the 
occasion to pass on a bipartisan basis a balanced budget which will 
bring us to the first balanced budget since I was in high school.
  Some of you today had the opportunity to see Mother Teresa of 
Calcutta. Others may have had to see that on closed circuit. But you 
really saw a remarkable little piece of history there with Mother 
Teresa. And to see this distinguished lady receive the Medal of Honor 
from Congress, a woman slight of stature, with very little personal 
wealth, and to think of the impact that that one individual has had 
across the face of the globe. I am certainly glad that you had that 
opportunity.
  Mother Teresa wished for us today and for our children joy, peace and 
love, and she expressed the prayer that we would persevere in the time 
to come, and that is my wish and my prayer for you as you leave this 
job. Godspeed to you and thank you very much.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. FOWLER. I yield to the gentlewoman from Maryland.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank the page 
board for making such a great selection of such a fine group of young 
people to be here to serve their country and to specifically help us.
  We heard my colleagues all say about the fact that they were pages or 
they worked as a staff member here when they were very young and the 
memories they had. I was never a page. The first time I came on the 
floor of the House of Representatives was when I was sworn in in 1987. 
And so I say to you what a grand opportunity you have had at such a 
young age to be here in the Chamber of the House of Representatives 
where all the joint sessions are held, where all of the policy is 
molded here, where your friends and families can turn on C-SPAN and see 
what is happening, but you are here and you have been part of it and it 
is going to continue to be part of you. You will have been touched in 
so many ways that you will realize many of them at a later time.
  I very much appreciate the kind of service that you have given us. I 
have always found, and I know my colleagues agree, I have always found 
that despite the hour, you have been upbeat, you have been 
enthusiastic, you have at least smiled and pretended to have been 
enthusiastic about what you did. When we had requests, you were always 
there, always responded to us.
  As a matter of fact, I was always amazed, I think that you could 
recognize more Members of Congress than I thought I could at times, 
because you had the pictures and you knew who it was.
  I can remember sometimes in the Cloakroom where you had a message for 
somebody and somebody might have been sleeping, and you say is that so-
and-so; now, do I dare to wake him? It happened very rarely, but there 
were nights when we were here very, very late and you were here very, 
very late.
  I recognize the fact that you also had to go to classes, and I think 
10 o'clock was the cutoff; that if you were here up until 10 o'clock, 
you might not have class the next day, but you would have to make up 
for it. Whatever. My point is, for young people you had to juggle a 
very burdensome schedule that was exceedingly difficult, because you 
had to study, you had to be awake, you had to be alert, you had to 
follow through with your own studies as well as come here and move 
around and move with the rhythms of this very vibrant House of 
Representatives.
  I am sure at times you wanted to change the schedule yourself, and 
you might have felt that had you been there you would have had voting 
in a more timely manner.
  I was lucky this time, too, because I was able to nominate somebody 
who became a page with you, Christina King, and I know she did a great 
job, and I have always been very proud of her and she would pop into 
the office to say hello. But I felt that each and every one of you were 
my pages. It is because of the way you handled yourself, the way you 
handled your jobs. Any one of you I could have stopped and asked for 
something and you would have been very responsive.
  I know there were times when we were rather tired, and maybe 
despondent, although we do not really get too despondent around here, 
but we would look to you and you would enliven us because you 
represented the future and you represented people who have an 
enthusiasm, who have an energy, who have personality, who work hard and 
who are driven by ethics.
  So I commend you. I want to thank you. Again, I know that this will 
be part of your lives in the future; that you will all do well. I know 
you have all met each other, and I think that is pretty exciting, 
people from so many different States, and you realize that each State 
is not an individual country, that each State does have much in common 
with the other and that people are people.
  So when you go out into the world, and I remember something from 
``Everything I Needed to Know About Life I Learned in Kindergarten,'' 
and that is when you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold 
hands, and stick together. And I hope that you will have an opportunity 
to be able to stick together as you go out into the world. And I 
personally thank you very much.
  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. FOWLER. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have an opportunity to say a 
few words. I am actually here by mistake. I was just passing by and 
stumbled in and said, wow, look at this. This is a great looking group, 
I said to myself. I think you would probably look better than the crowd 
that sits in here every day. So I decided to sit and to listen, and I 
am glad I did.
  I would like to first of all congratulate the page board members who 
have taken an interest, and to the chairperson, the gentlewoman from 
Florida [Mrs. Fowler], for the outstanding job that she has done with 
the leadership of this very important board, and also the ranking 
member, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Kildee], who I have the 
privilege of serving with on the Committee on Education and the 
Workforce.
  Let me just echo what my colleagues have said. It just has not been 
said by everyone, so I am going to simply join in with the praises to 
you.
  I have the opportunity sometimes, when I bump into some of you as I 
ride the trolley, and I will say hello and ask your names and where you 
are from

[[Page H3548]]

and what grade you are in, because I am always curious and interested 
in young people. I think that young people are indeed our most valuable 
possessions and as a nation we have an obligation to try to make 
opportunities for young people because that will guarantee that this 
great Nation will continue to be great.
  I started my career as a schoolteacher. I was a secondary 
schoolteacher in the city of Newark. Many of the young people there did 
not have many opportunities. I brought them to the local YMCA and they 
were able to have opportunities at the local YMCA in Newark. They 
became involved in a program called Youth in Government, where they 
were able to become mock legislators, and they would go to the 
statehouse to be legislators during a period of time where they would 
learn legislation. So you have had that opportunity to really be here 
to see how legislation is crafted and created.
  Your work is so important. When you go back, I think you have to be 
diplomats. You have to talk to your colleagues and tell them about your 
opportunities, and you have to encourage them to become interested in 
government. You know, young people are not as interested in our 
elective process as they ought to be, and I think you have a 
responsibility now, an obligation, to go back and tell young people 
when they become 18 that they should register to vote; that we need to 
have people participating in the electoral system to make it strong and 
to make it good.
  So you have an obligation that goes forth from this place and this 
time to tell them, the cynics, that they have to get involved, that if 
they dislike what is going on, they have to change it.

                              {time}  1915

  Senior citizens vote. That is why we have so much senior citizens, 
housing. Have you heard of any young people's housing lately? No. Well, 
we have got to get young people involved. We have to get them 
participating.
  So I am just here, like I said, to congratulate all of the pages. I, 
too, will have the opportunity to have my first page that will be 
coming in on Sunday, Andre, from the town of Irvington; and I feel 
very, very excited about it. Our Page Board selected him, and I really 
have not met him yet. I am going to meet him on Saturday and his family 
before he comes down. So I am just as excited, I think, as he is. It is 
a tremendous program. Keep up the good work.
  Just one other thing. There is an interesting thing that happened in 
my district. Three little boys, 9, 10 and 11, found $500 in Newark, 
cash. But they also found the name of the person with this $500, and 
what these boys did was to go to a lady in the neighborhood and said, 
``We found this $500,'' it was about a week ago, and they said that it 
should be returned to the person.
  When we found out about it, we found out that none of these three 
boys ever owned a bike, none of them had ever been to a summer camp, 
they lived in public housing, and they lived in very impoverished 
situations, lived with relatives, grandparents. But for them to say 
that this did not belong to them and to try to find the person that it 
belonged to, and actually these little boys, and it just happened a 
week ago, were ridiculed by some of the kids in the neighborhood. How 
stupid it was, they said, for them to give back $500 that they found, 
that they should try to get it back to the person who lost it and that 
they do not even own a bicycle.
  I do not know, but they probably got about five bicycles each by now 
because the community came out. They are going to go to camp for the 
first time in their lives. They are going to go there with all nice new 
clothes on because we want to make sure all of that happens.
  So I just say that to say that the future belongs to those who 
prepare for it. Our Nation, I believe, is in good hands because of 
people like you. You have to go back to your neighborhoods and convert 
others to being just like you.
  Mrs. FOWLER. On behalf of all of the Members of the House, we want to 
thank the pages for their service and wish them well in their future 
endeavors.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take a moment from 
our legislative business to recognize and commemorate the end of a tour 
of duty for our 1996-97 House pages. This year, 61 young men and women 
from across America took time away from their families and friends to 
come to Washington and perform a time-honored public service.
  The tasks of a House page are not always glamorous, but are 
nonetheless necessary and valuable. They serve as messengers and aides. 
They learn about the workings of Government and observe history being 
made. In fact, I believe some of my colleagues in this House once had 
the honor of serving in the page program.
  I wish I could take the time to name all of our pages, but allow me 
to at least make mention of those in our Michigan delegation: Ryan 
Hemker, Virginia Cloutier, Antonia Henry, Paul Soderberg, and Aric 
Nesbitt.
  I have had the privilege of sponsoring one of these fine pages: Ryan 
Hemker of Coldwater, MI. Ryan, a top student at Quincy High School, has 
demonstrated all of the characteristics we have come to expect from our 
pages. He is industrious, intelligent, and a true leader in the page 
program. It was my privilege to have the opportunity to get to know him 
and the other pages in this year's program.
  Now, as their term as pages comes to a close, I wanted to salute 
these young people for their efforts, their dedication, and their 
enthusiasm to serve the Members of this, the people's House. I am 
confident that their contributions here will be long remembered and 
that they will distinguish themselves in their communities just as they 
have here in Washington.
  To all of our pages, I offer my best wishes and thanks.

                          ____________________