[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 135 (Friday, December 8, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11693-S11694]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO HANNAH TETER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I would like to recognize the achievements 
of an outstanding and accomplished young Vermonter. Last February, 
Hannah Teter of Belmont made her family, her friends, and her fellow 
Vermonters proud as she won the Olympic gold medal in the women's half 
pipe event in Turin, Italy. While this accomplishment alone deserves 
congratulations, Hannah has, perhaps more impressively, reached beyond 
her athletic success and used her national--and international--
recognition to forge one of the most creative charitable endeavors I 
have seen in quite some time.
  Just 19 years old, Hannah has enjoyed immense success on the 
international snowboarding circuit, winning nine titles and medals in 
the last 2 years alone. In the summer of 2005, ESPN recognized her with 
an ESPY Award for Excellence in Sports Performance. Realizing how 
blessed she was with the opportunities that gave her the chance to make 
her mark in snowboarding, Hannah was inspired to give something back. 
She has seized this opportunity to demonstrate to other young people 
that they have the power to make a difference.
  Upon her return from Turin earlier this year, Hannah enjoyed the 
limelight that her Olympic successes brought her. But it wasn't long 
before her altruism opened the door to a creative way to help others to 
benefit from her success. Raised in a family where maple syrup 
production was an annual event, Hannah drew on her childhood 
experiences and, together with her mother, conceived ``Hannah's Gold.'' 
The bottles of maple syrup, produced on a neighbor's farm, are sold to 
benefit World Vision, a charitable organization that provides aid to 
struggling people in Africa. Proceeds from each bottle of syrup will go 
toward alleviating hunger and the AIDS crisis in impoverished areas.
  Hannah's efforts are just one example of the long legacy of service 
and charity in which we Vermonters take so much pride. She is truly an 
example to the many young people who look at her achievements with 
dreams of their own.
  The Boston Globe recently published a superb account of Hannah's 
story, ``Teter's Syrupy Story is Worth Telling,'' profiling Hannah and 
her charitable venture. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in 
the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There being no objection, the material was 
ordered to be printed in the Record.

                   [The Boston Globe, Oct. 26, 2006]

                 Teter's Syrupy Story Is Worth Telling

                      (By Bob Duffy, Globe Staff)

       Belmont, VT.--At the crest of a spiraling dirt road, 
     fronting the private pond and the greenhouse attached to the 
     small wooden home, on the outskirts of this splotch of a 
     village amid the amphitheater of the Green Mountains--at the 
     peak of her universe--Hannah Teter stands in the ramshackle 
     wooden shed and explains how you make really good maple 
     syrup.
       You collect enough logs to suffocate a room, like the one 
     behind the elongated brick-and-steel oven she's pointing to. 
     You jam the wood under the oven until you have a small 
     inferno.
       You let the sap from the maples creep agonizingly along a 
     tubular labyrinth--you do this for hours upon hours--until it 
     achieves a viscous state.
       You fill bucket after bucket with it. You dump each bucket 
     into a huge vat on the bed of a truck. You drive the load to 
     the processing plant.
       Then you pour it all over the world.
       Granted, the standard recipe doesn't include this last 
     ingredient. But Teter likes to think big. She's in a position 
     to, as she has been since she won the Olympic halfpipe 
     snowboarding gold medal at Turin in February.
       Standing atop the podium, she was transported to another 
     perch--the large rock in the field at the bottom of her 
     street, where she used to sit and muse.
       ``I was doing all this traveling for snowboarding then,'' 
     she says. ``I'd think about how much I was doing, how lucky 
     and blessed I was, and I wanted to reach back, give something 
     back.''
       In the hubbub of triumph, she found an Olympic torch of 
     inspiration.
       ``The fire was still burning,'' says Teter. ``I thought, 
     `This is my big chance to do something to help people.' ''
       It was still a vague notion. Teter wanted something special 
     to express her charitable inclinations, but she had no clue 
     about what it should be. She turned to her mother, Pat, whose 
     brainstorm became Hannah's Gold.
       Hannah's Gold is marketing metallurgy. Its intent is to 
     provide nourishment in the truest sense. The proceeds from 
     each $15 bottle of Vermont maple syrup, produced by Mapleside 
     Manufacturing, go to the charitable organization World Vision 
     to alleviate the hunger and AIDS crises in Africa's most 
     impoverished towns.
       It's personal. It's indigenous. It's pure, well, Hannah.
       ``Maple syrup made me what I am today,'' she says.
       All right, so it isn't actually snowboarding's answer to 
     Popeye's spinach. Give the kid a break; she's only 19. And 
     maple syrup sweetens an abundance of her childhood memories.
       Out in the shed, Hannah and some combination of her four 
     brothers--Amen, Abram, Elijah, and Josh--would sit transfixed 
     on a discarded truck seat overlooking the oven where their 
     father, Jeff, made syrup every spring. He'd let them pour the 
     buckets into the vat. And after they'd driven it around town 
     for processing, she couldn't wait to eat it. Before she got 
     into the house, if necessary.

[[Page S11694]]

       ``Snow syrup,'' says Teter, her eyes sparkling at the 
     recollection. ``Nothing like it.''
       Such was the flavor of her youth on this 10-acre plot--
     simple, ineffable pleasures. With an extended family that she 
     estimates includes ``about 50 cousins,'' she'd swim and canoe 
     and skate on the pond. She'd skateboard on a homemade ramp. 
     She'd play volleyball at the net that stood in the side yard. 
     She'd jump from an upstairs bedroom window onto a trampoline 
     in front of the house--when her parents were away, of course. 
     And after she became a globetrotting snowboarding prodigy, 
     following her apprenticeship at the local ski area, Okemo 
     Mountain, she'd miss all that.
       ``Not being here for maple syrup season,'' says Teter, ``is 
     like missing Christmas.''
       Now she's trying to turn maple syrup season into Christmas.
       ``I wondered where the money would help the most,'' says 
     Teter. ``I thought of Africa. I read up all I could on it. I 
     read about the AIDS and the hunger and I thought this would 
     be the best place to start.''
       ``Start'' is the operative word. Hannah's Gold has raised 
     only about $5,000 so far, but it was launched just a couple 
     of months ago, and Teter's grasp is of a much grander scale. 
     She'll appear on Jimmy Kimmel's late-night TV show Dec. 15 to 
     promote Hannah's Gold. She has agreements from Okemo and 
     Burton Snowboards to donate $1 each per bottle of Hannah's 
     Gold sold.
       This is only the ground floor, anyway. Teter now lives in 
     the limelight; she's based in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., but 
     most of the time she's ordering room service on a 
     transcontinental whirlwind on behalf of sponsors Motorola, 
     Burton, and Mountain Dew. ``They keep me pretty busy,'' she 
     says.
       But she wants to do the majority of her cashing in for 
     charity.
       ``People know me as a snowboarder,'' she says, ``but I want 
     to branch out to different avenues, really reach out and 
     raise money. Hannah's Gold is the first step. I plan to do 
     more, keep building.'' The ideas are like mountain snow right 
     now, more kinetic rush than specifically targeted, but even 
     as a novice fund-raiser, Teter intends to be more than a 
     mouthpiece.
       ``I plan to go over to Africa soon to see where and how the 
     money is being spent,'' she says. ``I don't just want to lend 
     my name to these projects.''
       No matter how modest a start her altruism is off to, Teter 
     won't be shortchanged on enthusiasm and optimism.
       ``Hannah's Gold has only been out so long,'' she says. 
     ``It's really flying. It's going uphill, the way I go in 
     snowboarding. I hope it goes with me. No, I know it will.''

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