[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 105 (Thursday, July 30, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1468]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 AN EXPRESSION OF CONGRATULATIONS TO COLONIA COUNTRY CLUB ON ITS 100TH 
                              ANNIVERSARY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. BOB FRANKS

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 29, 1998

  Mr. FRANKS of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate 
the officers and members of Colonia Country Club on the occasion of 
their Club's 100th anniversary.
  Colonia, the name of both the Club and the section of Woodbridge, New 
Jersey in which it is located, is a derivation of the word, colony, a 
term defined by Webster as ``a body of people living in a new 
territory.'' Colonia is a most appropriate designation for the 
community-originally Houtenville-that was the site of many 
Revolutionary War events. Immediately adjacent to Colonia Country Club 
is the highway on which George Washington traveled on his way to his 
first Inauguration. That roadway was also a main north-south artery 
during the Civil War and was later named The Lincoln Highway. In 
Colonia, the highway is also bound, on its east side, by the nation's 
major east coast rail line.
  It was in 1898 that a group of area residents agreed to form a golf 
and country club, using an Inn constructed just prior to the Civil War 
as its clubhouse. Designed to serve as a gathering place for sport and 
social occasions, their new ``home-away from home'' was to be called 
Colonia Country Club. Part of their agreement called for the purchase 
of a horse-drawn lawnmower to trim what would become a nine-hole golf 
course.
  The century that followed will be remembered by the citizens of 
America and, indeed the world, as one filled with joys and achievements 
unparalleled in recorded history and with toils and tragedies that 
would test human endurance. A microcosm of that world, Colonia County 
Club rose from a small gathering of neighbors to become a proud and 
prominent member of its region's social fraternity, the site of a 
modern clubhouse and one of its region's most challenging 18-hole golf 
courses. In the process, those that charted the course of its progress 
proved they had the grit and determination to withstand depressions and 
years of mid-century decline. Colonia Country Club, like many 
venerable, sturdy American institutions both large and small, stands 
today as a model of a modern Americana. It is a story of people 
overcoming difficulty and proving their endurance as they share 
prosperity and camaraderie--and it offers its one hundred year history 
as evidence of that achievement.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask you, my neighbors in the 7th Congressional 
District of New Jersey and my colleagues to join me in offering our 
congratulations to Colonia Country Club as it celebrates its 100th 
anniversary.

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