[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 163 (Saturday, December 17, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2584]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO OLGA DeFELIPPO

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. VITO FOSSELLA

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, December 16, 2005

  Mr. FOSSELLA. Mr. Speaker, it is with both great pride and sadness 
that I remember Mrs. Olga DeFelippo, a distinguished, life-long member 
of the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn community, a tireless advocate for the 
developmentally disabled, and an exemplary American, who recently 
passed away on November 3rd at the age of 88.
  Today, I honor her memory as a selfless defender for those who could 
not defend themselves. As a mother of a developmentally disabled child 
herself, whom no school would accept, she understood personally how 
children with no voice of their own suffered injustice at the hands of 
a society that did not comprehend their plight.
  This emboldened her to undertake a righteous crusade to render 
justice and dignity to the thousands of others like her son. She 
organized other parents and founded the Guild for Exceptional Children, 
an organization that today still works to help people reach their 
maximum potential and help families cope with the responsibility of 
caring for disabled family members at home. With the support of 
numerous elected and civic leaders in New York State, she lobbied 
exhaustively, and successfully, for legislation that guaranteed 
children with developmental disabilities the same right to an education 
as all other children, and to bring these human beings out of 
institutions and return them to the comfort of real homes, where they 
would be surrounded by those who could love and care for them.
  Joining the ranks of our Nation's great reformers like Dorothea Dix, 
Mrs. DeFelippo's efforts to restore dignity to those, less able than 
we, cannot and will not be forgotten. Olga departed leaving behind her 
three children, Joseph, Vivienne, and Noel, and her two grandchildren 
Michael and Peter. However, while we mourn her loss, we as a Nation 
should smile proudly at her life and her deeds, for there is no greater 
credit to her accomplishments than having left this Nation and our 
world better than she had found it.

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