[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 97 (Thursday, June 25, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H7441]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO VIRGINIA SAUNDERS

  Mr. BRADY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, as Vice Chairman of the 
Joint Committee on Printing, I rise in tribute to Ms. Virginia 
Saunders, Program Operations and Evaluation Specialist for 
Congressional Documents, in the Office of Congressional Publishing 
Services at the Government Printing Office, who died June 19, 2009, as 
she was entering her 65th year of dedicated Federal service.
  Ms. Saunders was the recipient of other tributes in this House from 
my friend, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), when she reached 
the 50th and 60th anniversaries of her Federal service. Recently she 
was the subject of a profile in the Washington Post. All this attention 
and adoration was well deserved.
  Born in Darlington, Maryland, Ms. Saunders spent her entire career in 
service to her fellow Americans. After working briefly at the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation, she joined the GPO in February 1946, as a war 
service junior clerk-typist in the division of public documents, stock 
section. Two years later, she was promoted to the division of public 
documents reference section. In 1951, Ms. Saunders was promoted to 
indexing clerk and earned subsequent promotions in the same 
classification. In 1958, she was promoted to library technician. 
Becoming a congressional documents specialist in 1970, she was then 
promoted to supervisor of the congressional documents section in 1974. 
In 1983, Ms. Saunders assumed the position of congressional documents 
specialist in the congressional printing management division, and in 
2004--with 58 years of Government service behind her--she was promoted 
to her current position.
  Since 1969, Ms. Saunders was responsible for the Congressional Serial 
Set, a compilation of all House and Senate documents and reports issued 
for each session of Congress. Published continuously since 1817, and 
distributed to the House and Senate libraries, the Archives, the 
Library of Congress, and Federal depository libraries nationwide, the 
Serial Set joins the Congressional Record in offering students and 
historians a rich insight into the record of our of our Government. In 
the words of historian Dee Brown, the Serial Set ``contains almost 
everything about the American experience . . . our wars, our peacetime 
works, our explorations and inventions . . . If we lost everything in 
print, except our documents, we would still have a splendid record and 
a memory of our past experience.'' As the GPO's 1994 Report of the 
Serial Set Study Group pointed out, researchers and librarians agree 
that the Serial Set is ``without peer in representative democracies 
throughout the western world as a documentary compendium.'' This was 
the document that Ms. Saunders prepared faithfully for Congress and the 
American people for the past 40 years.
  Throughout her career, Virginia Saunders worked tirelessly to improve 
the Serial Set. In late 1989, she submitted a suggestion regarding the 
appendix to the Iran-Contra Report to Congress, which contained 
identical reports from the House and the Senate. She proposed that this 
40-volume publication be bound only once for the Serial Set volumes of 
House and Senate reports that were sent to depository libraries. This 
common sense idea resulted in a reduction of 13,740 book volumes to be 
bound, saving the taxpayers more than $600,000. In recognition of her 
work, Ms. Saunders received a letter of commendation from President 
George H.W. Bush, who said, ``You have demonstrated to an exceptional 
degree my belief that Federal employees have the knowledge, ability, 
and desire to make a difference.''
  Ms. Saunders generously shared her knowledge of the Serial Set with 
document librarians across the country. She delivered presentations at 
library associations and conferences and was an invaluable resource to 
the library community nationwide. In tribute to her work, in 1999 Ms. 
Saunders received the James Bennett Childs Award from the Government 
Documents Roundtable of the American Library Association, one of the 
library community's highest honors. The ALA honored Ms. Saunders' 
``distinguished contribution to documents librarianship,'' and paid 
``grateful recognition'' to a lifetime of exceptional achievements in 
this important field of endeavor.
  Recently, Ms. Saunders told the Washington Post, ``As long as my 
health is pretty good, I intend to hang in with my boots on. I have to 
keep this program going.'' Shortly afterward, in a statement released 
by the GPO, she said, ``I never thought I would thank the good Lord for 
work. Retirement has crossed my mind, but what else would I do? This is 
where my heart is.'' On behalf of the Joint Committee on Printing, I 
offer condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Virginia 
Saunders, and extend our gratitude and commendation for her lifetime of 
work on behalf of Congress and the Nation.

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