[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 124 (Friday, October 6, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1691-E1693]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  FIGURE SKATING: A GLIMPSE OF FREEDOM

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DONALD A. MANZULLO

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 5, 2000

  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, Janet Lynn fascinated the nation several 
years ago, when, as a 14-year-old figure skater, she participated in 
the 1968 Olympics. Four years later, she won a Bronze Medal. Her faith 
and perseverance captured the Nation. She spoke during the Independence 
Day celebration in her home town of Rockford, IL, where the people 
named the ice arena after her. Her remarks on family, faith, and 
freedom are so compelling that I want her testimony to affect other 
Americans.
  I would like to submit the following remarks into the Congressional 
Record.

                  Figure Skating; A Glimpse of Freedom

                            (By Janet Lynn)

       I am honored to be asked to speak with you. What a 
     privilege that the City of Rockford remembers me with such 
     respect. I realized recently that the honor I feel is even 
     stronger because I have been at home as a wife and mother 
     longer than I was a skater. The fact that I am still 
     remembered, yet alone having an ice rink named after me, is 
     very humbling. I will try to reflect what is in my heart and 
     tell you what it means to me.
       Speaking is not my favorite past time and preparing to 
     speak is more difficult for me than you can imagine. You may 
     not know this, but my parents introduced me to skating hoping 
     it would help cure my extreme shyness and timidity around 
     people. But I liked to skate because I could express myself 
     without talking to anyone! Somehow I think the joke was on me 
     when I find myself invited to speak.
       I grew up in Rockford from the age of 8. My memories of 
     growing up here include my time at home, at the Wagon Wheel, 
     at church and school, and my many opportunities to travel. It 
     is here that foundations were built into my life. Skating was 
     such an incredible vehicle to learn about many areas of life. 
     I would like to share with you what I learned from the 
     foundations of my skating, and relate them to the foundations 
     of our nation; specifically, family, faith and freedom.
       Since this is the eve of our country's birthday in a new 
     millenium, I thought this would be entirely appropriate. The 
     ability to live in a free and civilized nation has become a 
     great passion for me. Over the years, even the many years 
     that I have been raising my family, I have given deep thought 
     to our freedom; where it comes from and why it is important. 
     The skills and priorities I have developed from my job as 
     wife, mother of 5 sons, and homemaker have strengthened my 
     belief in the power and importance of strong foundations. The 
     foundations historically provided by family and faith were 
     the inspiration for our nation's beginning. I strongly 
     believe that in order to continue to enjoy freedom in a 
     civilized nation, we must rebuild our foundations.
       God has placed in each and every human spirit the desire to 
     be free. I think that skating is a very powerful metaphor of 
     that hope of freedom.
       It is my belief that one of the things that makes skating 
     so very popular is that it looks so free. The people who 
     skate well seem to fly. There is great exhileration in 
     watching skaters fly across the ice and then into the air 
     with such beauty and grace! It touches something deep in the 
     soul of many who watch.
       I can tell you that when I was skating well, it did indeed 
     seem like I was soaring; and I felt very free to attempt 
     anything I wanted to on the ice. It was so much fun to let 
     God and beautiful music inspire my spirit on the ice, to the 
     point that I could express what in my soul, without talking. 
     That freedom that I had to skate was built upon foundations.
       I not only learned about freedom from learning to be free 
     on the ice, but also from my experience of visiting nations 
     that were not free.
       Perhaps my travels when I was young have given me a 
     perspective of which many are unaware. I had the rare 
     opportunity to visit nations that were not free at the time 
     and to experience in a small way the oppression and fear of 
     expression so many wonderful people had to live under. I have 
     seen people so afraid of being caught socializing with people 
     from other nations that they hid in a closet. I was sobered 
     when suspicions were confirmed that some ``officials'' who 
     closely monitored and traveled with my skating peers from 
     unfree nations were actually secret police.
       On one occasion in an unfree nation we were assigned an 
     interpreter for our entire stay with whom I innocently spoke 
     to about God. He must have been immediately reassigned 
     because we never saw him again. I didn't realize how serious 
     that kind of conversation was in unfree nations.
       I have vivid memories of being a young lady who saw the 
     Stars and Stripes with an emotional and grateful heart upon 
     returning to the United States. I had a new awareness of what 
     that flag meant and what it has meant to many millions who 
     have sought the privilege to live under its freedom and 
     protection. I remember wanting to kiss the ground of my 
     country, the most free country on the face of the earth.
       Even at a young age I knew there was an important 
     difference between what I experienced in nations that were 
     not free, and the freedom I knew in our great nation. I have 
     thought long and hard to determine what the difference is 
     between freedom and a lack of freedom and I believe the 
     difference is found in the substance of foundations.
       I learned about foundations from my skating. My brilliant 
     coach, Miss Kohout, as I respectfully called her, constantly 
     emphasized the foundational skills of my skating. How I 
     executed a single jump was as important as how I executed a 
     double or triple. I once had a three hour lesson on just one 
     simple turn. Our challenging weekly Saturday night workout 
     sessions mostly emphasized the foundations of skating. Plain 
     stroking to music, as our muscles burned, was something I 
     think we all dreaded. As Miss Kohout's students, we were 
     especially challenged the day we had to stroke to music in 
     rental hockey skates on very bad and chewed up ice. In the 
     face of these challenges, our skills had to be strong and the 
     technique proper. If the simple skills were not perfected, 
     the advanced skills would become difficult, if not impossible 
     and certainly much more dangerous.
       As with the techniques and skills of skating, I learned 
     that in order to have civilized freedom, our country must 
     remain on its solid foundations. In skating, mastering those 
     foundations required 4-10 hours a day, six days a week, of 
     training, teaching and practicing. The discipline of school 
     figures was an essential part of my training. Only when the 
     foundational skills were mastered did I have the freedom to 
     use those skills to express myself without fear of getting 
     hurt. The training in those foundations of my skating 
     continued for all the years that I skated. If I started 
     having trouble with a jump, spin, turn, or edge, it could 
     always be traced back to the loss or incorrect execution of 
     foundational skills.
       For 17 years I did not skate at all while I have tried to 
     build and raise my family. When I began to skate again for 
     physical fitness purposes, it became immediately clear that I 
     had lost most of my freedom to express myself on the ice 
     without fear of getting hurt. The foundations of my freedom 
     on the ice were still somewhere in my memory, but I had to 
     start reteaching myself and fighting with my body, which did 
     not want to do those foundational skills in a way that gave 
     me the freedom I once had. I could no longer enjoy the fun 
     part of flying across the ice and doing jumps, spins, and 
     footwork. To regain that freedom, I need to pay the price of 
     rebuilding the foundations on the ice. When those foundations 
     become second nature and I have the self-government of each 
     muscle, then I will have earned the freedom to express myself 
     without fear of getting hurt.
       With all my heart I believe that these thoughts about my 
     skating are a metaphor to what is happening in our nation. 
     Our nation's freedom cost a great price. It was built upon 
     certain foundations including the natural family and personal 
     faith in the God Almighty. Today we have altered, or ignored, 
     or perhaps forgotten the foundations of our nation's freedom, 
     and I believe we are in great danger of losing our freedom to 
     express ourselves without fear, as I have lost my freedom to 
     skate.
       There is a price to relearn the foundations of our freedom. 
     But we can do it--and we must! I am concerned about the 
     direction of our country. What kind of nation will my 
     children, and yours, inherit? A lack of self control is 
     omnipresent. Our culture seems to exist to satisfy the 
     senses, and we have forgotten or deadened our souls. It is 
     true that

[[Page E1692]]

     if we are not governed from within ourselves, that we will 
     have to be controlled with excessive regulation or 
     restrictions and force. If we relearn our self-government, 
     there will be no need for excessive restrictions.
       Peter Marshall put it best: ``James Madison, chief 
     architect of the Constitution of the United States, once 
     explained the nature of the American Republic in these words: 
     `We have staked the whole of all our political institutions 
     upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the 
     capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to 
     control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten 
     Commandments of God'.'' (This quote comes from ``The Glory of 
     America'' by Peter Marshall and David Manuel.)
       I do not want the next generation to inherit a nation where 
     children are killing children as we have seen this past year 
     in shock and horror, and where mothers and fathers are 
     neglecting, abandoning or killing their own children. I want 
     my children to inherit a nation that is relearning and 
     applying the foundations of self-government, civility, and 
     freedom. This work is hard, especially because parents have a 
     hard time finding healthy opportunities for their children's 
     growth that are not influenced by our degrading culture. That 
     is why it is so important to make available in Rockford 
     wholesome activities like ice skating which preserve the 
     innocence of childhood.
       I agree with William Bennett [as quoted in the Washington 
     Times on October 12, 1999] as he spoke about ``The Leading 
     Cultural Indicators''. He said, ``the last 3\1/2\ decades . . 
     . have `fractured' many of the pillars American civilization 
     stands on, and the nation remains `more violent and vulgar, 
     coarse and cynical, rude and remorseless, deviant and 
     depressed,' than the one we once inhabited''. He went on to 
     say, ``America's `capacity for self-renewal is rare and real. 
     We have relied on it in the
       The foundations of my skating were supported by the 
     foundations of our free nation. This profoundly impacted my 
     ability to learn to skate and share my skill with others. In 
     the United States of America I was free to express on the 
     ice, without fear, what God put in my soul. The foundations 
     of our free nation are within reach of every person in this 
     land. They include family, faith and the great gift of living 
     in a free country.
       The important foundation of my family was essential as my 
     skating developed and started to grow beyond anyone's 
     expectations. I mentioned earlier that there is a price to 
     learning and sustaining foundations. In my case my family 
     often found themselves sacrificing for my success. They 
     always did so with great grace, love and encouragement to me. 
     It is hard to adequately express my thoughts and gratitude 
     for the big and little things they did. I could not have 
     accomplished what I did in skating without my father and 
     mother, my brothers and sister, and my grandpa. They, all of 
     them, gave me an honorable place to belong and a strong 
     assurance that I was loved whether I won or lost (my worth 
     did not come from skating). They taught me how to laugh at 
     myself and they let me know I was a part of my natural family 
     no matter what part of the world I was in, or how many hours 
     I spent training. They gave me a perspective on life that 
     went far beyond what I did on the ice. They are part of the 
     reason that I know that what I have been doing as a homemaker 
     is the most important job in the world.
       The natural family is committed to one another and draws 
     lessons, knowledge, love and a place of belonging from one 
     another. It is a part of the foundation of our freedom. We 
     need mothers who are devoted to their children and who are 
     willing to spend quantity time loving and teaching them right 
     and wrong. They must be willing to forgo immediate personal 
     fulfillment for long term family rewards. We need faithful 
     fathers who work with all their might to take moral 
     responsibility for their families and provide for them. 
     Fathers and mothers need to grow in the ability to give 
     strong, loving guidance. We need parents who are willing to 
     make their children and homes a priority each day, providing 
     them with security and safety; protecting the innocence of 
     childhood.
       Though material wealth may have to be sacrificed, the 
     wealth of spirit can hold the family foundation steady. 
     Taking the time to learn, and then to teach our children the 
     morals and virtues that sustain freedom only costs our time, 
     effort, and a healthy balance of love and discipline. These 
     foundations of our freedom are available to anyone.
       Faith, which is available to everyone, was another deep 
     foundation of my skating. Even now, as I look back on my 
     skating, it is continually apparent to me--even more than 
     when I skated--that God had a plan for me to skate. I made 
     that statement in an interview as a shy 14 year old girl 
     right after I made the Olympic Team in 1968. The next day the 
     headlines in the Rockford paper read something like: ``God 
     has plan for Janet to Skate''. I have wondered if that 
     sincere statement would make a headline today?
       I did not choose the circumstances that surrounded my 
     ability to skate. Nor did I choose my ability, nor the love 
     that I developed for skating. It had to be a Providential 
     plan.
       My skating gave me so many incredible, enriching 
     opportunities and joyful experiences for which I am deeply 
     thankful. But in life, the bitter often comes with the sweet. 
     There were hard parts: getting up early every day, being so 
     cold so often, having muscles aches and being away from 
     family. It was difficult to have motion sickness since age 8 
     and to travel very uncomfortably. I had an obstacle to 
     overcome when I had strep throat during the 1968 Olympics and 
     was not able to take medicine because of the drug testing, 
     but I was determined to be in the Olympics. I ended up very 
     sick and delerious with fever after the Olympics. It was hard 
     skating on intense exhibition tours with what was thought to 
     be severe bronchitis, though I wanted so much to skate and 
     was not about to go home. The emotional lows that 
     corresponded to the extreme emotional highs were a part of 
     training and competition. I didn't enjoy developing exercise-
     induced asthma at the height of my career after suffering 
     from strep throat, pneumonia and pleurisy. I felt crushed 
     when I realized that the medical treatment for my exercise-
     induced asthma caused more of a negative reaction from my 
     body than the condition itself. When I had come home from Ice 
     Follies to get my condition fixed so I could skate, I had no 
     idea my body would not respond as I wanted. One of my 
     favorite posters says: ``When life gives you lemons, make 
     lemonade.''
       Through the joys and difficulties, Jesus Christ has been my 
     stability. He has a plan for my life and it certainly 
     included skating. The faith that my family introduced me to 
     through regular church attendance has been what ultimately 
     enabled me to focus on the good and persevere through the 
     unpleasant things. My faith in Christ, knowing that the 
     loving God can take even broken dreams and make something 
     beautiful in His time, has been the hope of my life. This 
     faith was a foundation of my skating.
       Let me tell you a story. A few weeks before I competed in 
     the 1972 Olympics, I appeared on the cover of Newsweek 
     Magazine as a Gold medal hopeful. My life to this point, 
     including all the effort and sacrifice of my family and 
     coach, as well as my personal dreams and ambitions for self, 
     country and God, were wrapped up in this competition. I was 
     devastated when I found myself in 4th place after the school 
     figures with no possibility to win the gold medal. That day I 
     argued with God as I lay weeping in my Olympic village 
     apartment.
       Somehow, through my broken dreams, a thought came into my 
     mind, that if I couldn't win, then all I could do was to 
     finish the competition and decide to dedicate my free-skating 
     to show God's love to all who watched. A medal no longer 
     mattered. Somehow, God heard my cries and answered a girl's 
     prayers in ways I could not have imagined.
       I fell on a flying sit spin, which I had never missed 
     before, even in practice. Because of the way I had been 
     trained, and the purpose that was in my heart, I was still 
     smiling when I was sitting on the ice. That performance did 
     earn me the bronze medal, but even more, that night I began 
     an incredible relationship with the nation of Japan that has 
     lasted 27 years. I was able to go back to Japan to talk about 
     my faith soon after the Olympics. ``How could I keep smiling 
     when I fell in the Olympics?'', is a question that has always 
     been asked of me in Japan. Fifteen years after I spoke in 
     Japan of my faith, I went back to Japan to skate. A young 
     woman approached me and gave me a note. In the note she told 
     me that when I had spoken of my faith 15 years earlier, she 
     had wanted to take her own life. After hearing about the hope 
     in Christ that I had when I fell in the Olympics, she decided 
     to take that hope for her own and continue her life. That 
     reward is one that is eternal; a reward that was given
       One of the foundations of our free nation is faith in this 
     Almighty God, Who is bigger than ourselves, or any situation. 
     He is the One Who put the yearning for freedom into the human 
     spirit, and it is He Who directs us towards the loving path 
     of discipline and self-control--or self-government--that 
     allows us to live in that freedom.
       I had the gift of being born a free citizen in the United 
     States of America. My success in skating was built upon the 
     foundational element of being born in this country. I didn't 
     have to flee my country to gain freedom of artistic 
     expression, as some had to do during the era in which I 
     skated. I didn't have to fear because I spoke to God.
       I had the opportunity to visit some nations which did not 
     allow their people to believe in God or to express that 
     publicly. As a young lady I was amazed, and even depressed, 
     when I was taken on tours of old and beautiful churches which 
     were empty, unused, and explained a way as only great 
     architectural works. God had been shut out, unwelcome; even 
     unspeakable. I was even more depressed when we were taken on 
     an Easter Sunday tour of a place where a bloody revolution 
     had been started. One of the results of that revolution was 
     the expulsion of God from a people rich in heart.
       Because of that perspective, it disturbs me greatly to see 
     instances in our nation become more and more frequent where 
     people try to exclude God or create fear of talking about God 
     in public. He has blessed this nation so richly. Why would 
     anyone want to shut Him out? It is upon the principles of 
     this God that this nation's foundation rests.
       One of those principles of God is charity. I believe 
     perhaps our nation has been the most charitable nation in the 
     history of the world, and I believe that is because of our 
     foundation of faith and freedom. We have been able to choose 
     how we will earn a living with honor and honesty. And we have 
     been able to freely choose, according to our conscience, how 
     to spend what we earn.

[[Page E1693]]

       I was not beholden to a government or its ideals that 
     provided my training. My family did not believe that freedom 
     was having everything provided. We all worked very hard and 
     my family was very frugal. But at a point in my skating when 
     I was going to have to quit, the charity of Mr. Walter 
     Williamson as the sponsor of my skating allowed me to 
     continue working to become the best I could be. This kind of 
     charity one can never repay, nor did Mr. Williamson ever 
     expect me to repay his charity to me, though I can pass on 
     what I learned from it. He never exploited me or my name nor 
     did he keep me beholden to him. His charity remained a quiet, 
     unassuming foundation of my ability to learn to be free in my 
     skating.
       In this great nation, hard work and charity have been the 
     often unnamed foundation that has helped develop hopes and 
     dreams.
       The freedom of our nation allowed my parents to choose a 
     coach who valued discipline and hard work. And Miss Kohout, 
     with incredible charity, freely chose to stop sending bills 
     for lessons as my skating started to blossom.
       By God's grace I was the benefactor of the free and 
     charitable spirit of my coach and sponsor. Besides the 
     generosity of Mr. Williamson and Miss Kohout, there was a man 
     and wife, who we had never met, who freely offered to pay for 
     my skates. And some generous people in New York helped me 
     with costumes, as well as street clothes and hair cuts, in 
     order to present myself properly. Professional secretaries 
     freely gave of their time and energy to help with my mail 
     when it became too overwhelming, and my mom tells of her 
     friends and neighbors who would each take a part of my 
     costumes to bead. Friends, family and neighbors often 
     traveled to my competitions for quiet moral support. My 
     ballet teacher, Helen Olson, patiently worked with me for 
     many years, though I had no flexibility and had no promise of 
     dancing. There was a woman from Rockford who donated cowboy 
     hats to go with my choreography to the music of Rodeo. An 
     American soldier on leave in Davos, Switzerland volunteered 
     to shovel snow from the ice a few hours a day so I could 
     practice school figures while training for a World 
     Championship, though the snow did not stop for three weeks. 
     The stories of help and charity are endless--all made 
     possible by freedom.
       The freedom to give and receive and to work hard and have 
     the choice of how to use what we earn through our hard work--
     this freedom, based on self-control and self-government, was 
     a foundation of my skating. Without this freedom and 
     charitable spirit I would not have had the opportunity to 
     develop my skating talent for God and for all those that took 
     part. Ultimately it was God Who gave me this freedom. It was 
     His plan for my life.
       Family, faith and freedom--The three deep foundations that 
     supported my skating. The foundational skills of skating 
     allowed me to gain freedom to express the joy God put in my 
     soul. And my desire to express God's love on the ice changed 
     the destiny of one young woman in Japan. God's power and love 
     is all about changed lives, and nations that are renewed, 
     free and civilized.
       The foundations of these United States of America have, and 
     can again allow the greatest nation on earth to continue to 
     express what God has put into our national soul and spread 
     that freedom for others to enjoy.
       As I learn again the foundations of my skating. I hope you 
     will join me in learning again the foundations of family, 
     faith, and freedom, starting in our own minds, hearts and 
     homes. I want all of our children to inherit a nation where 
     God is not shut out, a strong nation that is free and 
     civilized. I hope we can rise above the desire to just do 
     things that appeal to our senses, and rebuild a nation that 
     fulfills the yearning of the soul.
       May God grant us the will to do so.
       To end, I would like to dedicate the ice arena that will 
     carry my name, to all those who have sacrificed so I could 
     learn to be free on the ice; to all those who have sacrificed 
     so our nation can be free, and to God Who has given us the 
     foundations in the Ten commandments and teaches us how to be 
     free without fear of getting hurt. It is these unsung heros 
     who deserve the honor, and God Who deserves the glory.
       Thank you for your kind attention as I have tried to share 
     what the honor you have given me means to me.

     

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