[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 69 (Friday, May 9, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E907]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 IN RECOGNITION OF HEADMASTER WILLIAM MECKLENBURG POLK OF GROTON SCHOOL

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                      HON. RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 8, 2003

  Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to honor 
William Mecklenburg Polk, Headmaster of the Groton School in Groton, 
Massachusetts for twenty five years of dedicated service as Headmaster.
  Like his illustrious predecessors John Crocker and Endicott Peabody, 
Bill Polk has left a remarkable legacy at the school and has touched 
the lives of thousands of young men and women who attended Groton over 
that span of time.
  In his own words, ``everyone who has attended Groton or entrusted 
their children to its care knows that Groton is a small, singular 
school. Today, in a society that seems increasingly to prize celebrity 
over character and self over service, Groton puts character, 
intellectual rigor, values, and service first.''
  Mr. Speaker, from his days as a Groton student, Bill Polk has 
epitomized Groton School values in all his academic, athletic, 
religious and pedagogic pursuits.
  Appointed Headmaster in 1978, Bill Polk has made it his business, in 
his own words, to see that ``Groton creates opportunities to cultivate 
individually students' minds and characters (and) as a church school, 
it inevitably challenges students to discover their own moral and 
spiritual values. Groton's insistence on the highest academic standards 
would matter little if its graduates, to borrow Walker Percy's line, 
`earned straight A's in school but flunked life.' ''
  Mr. Speaker, and colleagues, please join me in saluting Headmaster 
Polk's stewardship and that of LuAnn Polk, his better half, for all of 
their years of service and love of the young, education and life.

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