[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 73 (Thursday, May 15, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E976]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E976]]
                HONORING JOHN MEHRMANN OF MANCHESTER, NH

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JEB BRADLEY

                            of new hampshire

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 15, 2003

  Mr. BRADLEY of New Hampshire. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor 
Manchester's John Mehrmann, New Hampshire's winner of the VFW's Voice 
of Democracy Scholarship contest. This contest is held each year to 
give high school students the opportunity to voice their opinion on 
their responsibility to our country. The following is Mr. Mehrmann's 
essay:

       We were just kids. All our lives, everything was perfect; 
     everything worked. Everything was planned. We went to school. 
     We came home. We slept. We went to school. We came home. We 
     slept. And somewhere along the road of our lives, we would 
     graduate from school. After graduating from school, we would 
     go to a new school, we would come home, and we would sleep. 
     There was nothing to fear; there would always be food in the 
     fridge and gas in the car. Every time we flicked the light 
     switch, there would be light.
       Then something happened. Suddenly something, somehow, 
     someway, somewhere--shattered. As the dust settled and the 
     magnitude of what we'd lost became clear, it wasn't the death 
     of an age for us, and it wasn't the death of jokes. But as we 
     walked across the street or through the halls or drove our 
     cars, something was different. The world was smaller that 
     day, and all the faces--you with your expensive car, or you 
     who always had something important to say--they all looked so 
     much alike. They didn't all have the same hair color or 
     number of freckles. Some had straight teeth and some had big 
     chins. But they were all sad. All thinking.
       Innocence died that day--the innocence that let us worry 
     about our grades, or the pimples on our noses. The freedom to 
     do what we wanted, when we wanted, was lost somewhere in a 
     hundred stories of broken steel and dust. We didn't grow up 
     when we got our driver's licenses, and we didn't grow up when 
     we got our first jobs or even when we turned 18. We all grew 
     up when we had to.
       We heard a lot of talk after our abrupt maturation about 
     freedom and responsibility. There were a lot of speeches, and 
     everyone seemed very serious. But mostly, we knew. We knew we 
     could never be kids again. We finally realized what it meant 
     to be responsible. Being responsible was doing our best, even 
     when no one was watching. The responsibility thrust on us 
     some unexpectedly one late summer morning opened our eyes. We 
     learned to think with our minds and feel with our hearts. Now 
     the people we heard speaking French or Swahili when we came 
     to school each day weren't foreign--they were victims of 
     reality like the rest of us.
       We never knew how or when we would grow up. We didn't know 
     why we had to. Then we saw the photos and the film clips of 
     men and women leaping from flames only to careen hundreds of 
     feet to their deaths. Again and again, we saw the missiles 
     which we had all thought so harmless piloted to murder what 
     could have been our entire school in an instant.
       Freedom wasn't a badge. Freedom isn't a badge. It isn't a 
     prize trophy to be flaunted and waved in the faces of the 
     enslaved. Freedom is a burden, but a burden worth its prices. 
     Responsibility is the price of freedom. Freedom does not 
     unequivocally allow for self-indulgence. Self-indulgence and 
     selfishness are not responsible, and it is irresponsible to 
     self-perpetuate at anyone's expense. We think identities to 
     be so important, and we imagine our lives to be so worthy of 
     greatness that we forget the community of mankind of which we 
     are so preciously miniscule a part.
       Obsequiousness and submission are not the stigmas they were 
     before adolescence was made extinct. Freedom is not a right 
     to individuality, but a right to community. It is a right of 
     individuals to determine their sociality within the bounds of 
     a world not limited to oceans or lines drawn on a map, but 
     one which spans the entirety of a globe, encompassing a 
     myriad of peoples with enumerable concerns. It is the 
     responsibility of the world's free people to determine which 
     concerns take precedence. The free peoples of the world must 
     recognize the greater goods for which to strive. Absolute 
     singularity is no longer an option.

                          ____________________