[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 39 (Thursday, March 11, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2607-S2608]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          REMARKS BY BETH MACY HONORING SENATOR CLAIBORNE PELL

 Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I submit for the Record the 
following remarks made by Ms. Beth Macy at an event honoring Senator 
Claiborne Pell, hosted by the National Association of Independent 
Colleges and Universities (NAICU). Ms. Macy, a former Pell Grant 
recipient, spoke eloquently about the positive difference that the Pell 
grant made in her life and the difference it has made in the lives of 
the students she now teaches. Senator Pell, a statesman committed to 
education, was visionary in his creation of the grant that now bears 
his name. The Pell Grant still serves as the very foundation of our 
federal commitment to postsecondary study and it has helped make the 
dream of higher education a reality for millions of low-income 
individuals. I was pleased and honored to participate in this event for 
Senator Pell.
  I urge my colleagues to take the time to read Ms. Macy's remarks. 
They remind us of why our support for the Pell grant program is 
important.

[[Page S2608]]

  The remarks follow:

                          Remarks of Beth Macy

       When a friend of mine, a writer who is in her 80s, heard I 
     was going to give a speech about having been a Pell grant 
     recipient, her first reaction was to joke: ``Don't do it,'' 
     she said ``Unless they promise to forgive any outstanding 
     loan payments.'' And then she said: ``You always hear about 
     Fulbrights, but nobody ever says how much they appreciated 
     their Pell grants.'' That was my thought exactly. And it has 
     been my thought since the day I realized just how much the 
     Pell grant has done for me and thousands of other people like 
     me. They say the G.I. bill changed America; that thousands of 
     people became the first in their families to go to college, 
     turning education from an elites-only business to a more 
     democratic enterprise. Well, the Pells did the same thing a 
     little later and went deeper, helping more women and 
     minorities than the G.I. bill did. And I say this to you 
     unequivocally because I believe it: Had I not gone to 
     college, I don't think I'd have any of the things I treasure 
     most today--my husband, my sons, my friends, my work, even my 
     psychological well-being.
       I am not a rich person now, by any means. I drive a used 
     Volvo station wagon with 122,000 miles. My husband drives to 
     the inner-city school where he works in a 1986 Mustang 
     convertible--with a roof that leaks every time it rains. We 
     live in a three-bedroom, four-square house in Roanoke, 
     Virginia, with questionable floor joists and cranky plumbing. 
     The house was built in 1927, the same year my mother was 
     born. Both my house and my mother have character, as they say 
     of things that charm you and annoy you and sometimes make you 
     laugh. My mother was too poor to go to college, and my father 
     dropped out of school in the seventh grade. He told me once 
     that serving as a cook in World War II was the best thing 
     he'd ever done, but he came home from the war to a life of 
     alcoholism, depression and scattered employment. My three 
     older siblings--whose early-adult years predate the founding 
     of the Pell grant--didn't go to college, either; they didn't 
     even consider it. It was just not something people in our 
     family did. I don't want to give you the impression that we 
     grew up hungry or physically abused; we didn't. But we were 
     afflicted with the most serious side effect of growing up 
     poor: the inability to dream. We felt inferior to the kind of 
     people who took vacations and drove cars that started 
     every time.
       A few years ago I was reminded of how small my world used 
     to be before I went away to college. My husband and I were 
     driving my 16-year-old niece, who lives in Ohio, to our house 
     in Virginia--on her first trip across state lines. We stopped 
     in Charleston, West Virginia, to refuel the car and our 
     bellies, when Sara removed her requisite teenage earphones, 
     bolted upright in her seat and gasped, ``You mean they have 
     McDonald's here, too?!''
       Today I teach personal-essay and memoir writing as an 
     adjunct instructor at Hollins University. I also teach 
     freshman comp and remedial writing part-time at our community 
     college. When any of my students complain that their stories 
     aren't worthy of the written word--or that nothing 
     significant has happened to them--I have them make a list of 
     the defining moments in their lives. To find your plot, I 
     tell them, try to think of one event in your life that has 
     fundamentally changed the way you think and act.
       This is mine: I am riding through the flat cornfields of 
     Northwest Ohio on my way to Bowling Green State University. I 
     am in my mom's rusting Mustang, which is packed to the roof 
     with stolen milk crates and cheap suitcases containing my 
     life's belongings: my clothes and books, my Neil Young album 
     collection and my beloved stuffed Ziggy. The year is 1986, 
     and I am 18 years old. I have never seen the beach, nor 
     written a check, nor spent the night any farther from home 
     than Mary Beth Buxton's house on the outskirts of town. As we 
     drive, there are thousands of station wagons packed with 
     thousands of suitcases; thousands of grinding stomachs 
     converging on universities across the country. As we drive, 
     I'm certain that I'm the only college freshman who fears 
     getting lost, not making any friends, failing courses, being 
     shipped back home. And I know I'm the only one arriving on 
     campus with a lucky buckeye from my Grandma Macy's tree in 
     the pocket of my brand-new too-blue jeans. Courage, as 
     defined by Emerson: having the guts to do the thing you've 
     never done before. The one time I drove off the city-pool 
     high dive, I land flat on my belly. They said you could hear 
     the smack at the tennis courts a quarter-mile away. Sure, I 
     tried something new, but I never climbed that ladder again. 
     In my mom's Mustang, my heart soars and plummets with every 
     mile crossed. I'm excited that I just might break into the 
     ranks of the Official Middle Class, but I fear being found 
     out as the impostor I believe I am. I consider asking my mom 
     to turn around and take me home, but for the life of me I 
     can't even talk. Courage, as defined by me: having the guts 
     to dive in over and over again, until the belly flop becomes 
     a perfect plunge. I climbed back up the high-dive ladder the 
     day I went to college. But I couldn't have done it without 
     the Pell grant, which paid my tuition. To cover room and 
     board, I worked two, sometimes three jobs at a time, and I 
     received several National Direct Student Loans.
       This is why last year, on my first night of teaching--after 
     working as a journalist for 12 years and earning a master's 
     degree in creative writing at Hollins--the following people 
     inspired me: Sandy and Teree, sisters who both drive school 
     buses and dream of earning associate's business degrees so 
     they can help their truck-driver husbands start their own 
     company; Amy, a single mom who spoke of what it was like to 
     be diagnosed as having ADD (at age 30) and, with the help of 
     medicine, finally being able to THINK; Charles, who'd 
     recently moved to Virginia from a drug-treatment center in 
     Connecticut, ready to try life without drugs; Beth, mother of 
     four, who said she came to college because she doesn't want 
     her kids to grow up thinking she's stupid; And Randy, a 
     mechanic who came to class without first washing his 
     greasy hands. For our first in-class exercise, Randy wrote 
     about the best job he'd ever had, in construction. His 
     ideas were developed, his examples full of detail. But he 
     didn't have a single period or comma on the page. He said 
     he had no idea where to place a period. ``If I get me a 
     computer,'' he asked, ``won't that put in all the periods 
     for me?'' Randy wasn't exactly Hemingway by the semester's 
     end, but he did know how to punctuate a sentence. He came 
     to every class early, stayed late and never missed 
     dropping by during office hours to show me his work. He 
     improved more than any student I've ever taught, and I'm 
     told he's still in school--plugging away at ``The Great 
     Gatsby'' and ``Once More to the Lake'' after his eight-
     hour shift fixing cars. He wants to buy his own business, 
     too, and I believe some day he will. He was one of several 
     who stayed late that first night to get me to sign his 
     Pell Grant form.
       I know there are people who like to bash Pell grant 
     recipients. About 10 years ago, on our way to cover a 
     newspaper story, a photojournalist friend and I were riding 
     in a company car, when the subject of lost loves and old 
     boyfriends reared its ugly head. The daughter of a doctor, my 
     friend confided that she still pines over one ex-beau in 
     particular--but added that he was not worthy of her angst, on 
     account of, as she put it: ``He was a total loser. I mean, he 
     went to college on a Pell grant.'' Back then I was too 
     ashamed of my roots to confront that kind of elitism, so I 
     stewed and said nothing. But a few months ago at a teaching 
     conference I attended, a colleague made a similar comment. He 
     said that most of his Pell students are slackers; that they 
     take advantage of government hand-outs; that they don't have 
     what it takes to make it in a white-collar world. This time I 
     could not keep quiet. I told him that most of my Pell 
     students are even more driven than my middle- and upper-class 
     students, with a lot more riding on the success of their 
     papers than a letter grade or the refinement of their 
     creative-writing skills. Most of my Pell students are working 
     toward not only a degree and a decent job, but also a 
     fundamental shift in the direction of their lives. They want 
     to worry not about paying the bills, but about whether their 
     kids are more suited to playing soccer or the violin. When 
     you're mired in poverty's problems, you don't have the luxury 
     of worrying about basic ``quality of life''; it wouldn't 
     occur to you to even use that phrase.
       I am not rich now by any means. But most of the time I am 
     happy, and I am productive, and I am not ashamed. I thank 
     you, Senator Pell, for your gift of education--on behalf of 
     myself, my students and all the rest of the people out there 
     who might yet get a shot at a life better than the one they 
     were born into.

                          ____________________