[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 41 (Wednesday, March 12, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1576-S1577]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO KATHERINE PATERSON

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today to talk 
about a treasured Vermont author, Katherine Paterson. Her award-winning 
prose has won alcolades near and far, but her writing has reached more 
than just those who have read her published words. In 2004, she started 
a letter exchange with an American soldier based in Afghanistan. Upon 
his return, she helped him launch his writing career.
  Trent Reedy of the Iowa Army National Guard was enthralled with 
Paterson's master work, ``Bridge to Terabithia,'' while deployed to 
Farah, Afghanistan. Reedy's wife Amanda sent him the book, and he loved 
it so much that he read it in one sitting and sent a thank you note to 
the author.
  Katherine's husband John, whom I knew as a gentle soul, sorted her 
mail and made sure that his wife saw the letter from Trent. A 
correspondence began between the two, and Trent finally revealed his 
intent to become a writer. Upon his return, Trent visited Katherine and 
John in Vermont and at Katherine's urging, and with her recommendation, 
studied writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and later wrote his 
first novel, ``Words in the Dust.''
  As someone who considers Katherine and her late husband to be special 
friends, I was thrilled to read Sally Pollak's article in the 
Burlington Free Press, ``Soldier finds lifeline in letter exchange with 
Vermont author.'' In fact I was so pleased, I called Katherine the day 
the story was published.
  In addition to being a Vermont treasure, Katherine is an acclaimed 
author whose stories will be read for generations. Marcelle and I have 
enjoyed them, our children have enjoyed them, and now our grandchildren 
enjoy her stories. Katherine's influence is also felt through the many 
writers she has mentored, including Trent Reedy.
  In honor of Katherine Paterson, I ask that Sally Pollak's story from 
the February 23, 2014, edition of the Burlington Free Press be printed 
in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

            [From the Burlington Free Press, Feb. 23, 2014]

     Soldier Finds Lifeline in Letter Exchange With Vermont Author

                           (By Sally Pollak)

       While serving in Afghanistan Trent Reedy wrote Katherine 
     Paterson to say thank you; the friendship that emerged 
     changed his life.
       The truck pulled into the U.S. Army base in Farah, 
     Afghanistan, on another scorching desert day. This July, 
     2004, delivery promised exciting things: The cook was 
     expecting a load of steak. He had rustled up some potatoes to 
     serve with the meat.
       The soldiers in the unit, housed in a stable with a well 
     that often ran dry, were eager for a real meal. They'd been 
     eating field rations called MREs, meals ready to eat. Yet 
     when the cook opened the coveted steak he almost vomited. The 
     meat had gone rancid en route, recalled Trent Reedy, a 
     soldier in the unit. The meal was scrapped.
       The truck also carried the mail. In it was a package for 
     Reedy, sent by his wife in Iowa. She had mailed him a book by 
     Katherine Paterson, ``Bridge to Terabithia.''
       Paterson, who lives in Barre, is an acclaimed novelist who 
     writes books for children and teenagers. She is a former 
     National Ambassador for Young People's Literature whose 
     honors include two National Book Awards and two Newbery 
     Medals, the first for ``Bridge to Terabithia,'' published in 
     1977.
       Reedy's wife, Amanda, read ``Bridge to Terabithia'' in 
     sixth grade. She sent her husband the book after he mentioned 
     to her that the stories he was thinking about concerned young 
     people. Reedy had never read a Paterson book.
       The day it arrived at the army base, he read ``Bridge to 
     Terabithia'' in one sitting. It

[[Page S1577]]

     would become a kind of lifeline for a frightened young man in 
     a faraway place with dreams of writing. Reedy read Paterson's 
     book in the place that would be the setting for his first 
     novel. ``Bridge to Terabithia'' was also the starting point 
     of a friendship between Reedy and Paterson.
       ``It was amazing,'' Reedy said the other day by telephone 
     from his home in Spokane, Wash. ``I needed that reminder that 
     there was still hope and still beauty in the world. At that 
     time in my life there was none. There was nothing except guns 
     and fear. I was really not at all sure that I was ever going 
     to get out of that place.
       ``This book gave me a little bit of beauty at that time, 
     and I needed it. Not the way I need a new app for my iPad. I 
     needed it to keep my soul alive.''


                        Everything was different

       Reedy, 35, was an English major at the University of Iowa 
     when he enlisted in the Iowa Army National Guard. Clinton was 
     president. Reedy never imagined he'd be deployed to fight in 
     a war. He had graduated from college and was working two 
     jobs: substitute teacher and monitoring a security camera at 
     a store.
       Ten years ago, on a shift at his security job, Reedy got a 
     phone call from his sergeant.
       ``Stampede,'' the commanding officer said, using the code 
     word that signaled the guard soldiers were activated for war, 
     Reedy said.
       ``With one phone call, everything was different,'' he said.
       After basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, Reedy was sent to 
     western Afghanistan. Paterson's book reached him about six 
     months after the word ``stampede'' altered his life. The day 
     ``Bridge to Terabithia'' arrived, Reedy had a rare break from 
     his three-part routine: the unit's mission (providing 
     security for reconstruction efforts), guard duty, sleep. He 
     read the book.
       ``Bridge to Terabithia'' is about two friends--a boy and a 
     girl--who create an imaginary forest world where they play 
     together and share adventures. The world is shattered by an 
     accident: the girl drowns in the river the friends cross by 
     rope swing to get to Terabithia. Paterson wrote the book 
     after her son David's close friend was killed by lightning 
     when the children were eight.
       After reading the book, even as he carried his loaded M16 
     ``scanning my sector to make sure there weren't any hostiles 
     in the area,'' all he could think about was Paterson's novel.
       ``I thought maybe I can keep going if I remember kids are 
     still having friendships,'' he said. ``And the adventures of 
     growing up.''
       On Aug. 1, 2004, from Farah City, Afghanistan, Reedy wrote 
     Paterson a letter. He sent it through her publisher--unsure 
     if it would reach her. The letter begins with an apology that 
     he didn't type it. Reedy explains that he is writing from 
     Afghanistan, where he is on a mission ``in support of 
     Operation Enduring Freedom.''
       He thanks Paterson for a book that ``mesmerized'' him.
       ``You wrote an absolutely beautiful novel and I, like 
     Jessie Aarons, fell in love with Leslie Burke,'' Reedy wrote, 
     referring to characters in Paterson's book. `` . . . Maybe it 
     was because she was a spark of beauty in a land and a war 
     where beauty is of so little importance.''
       In Vermont, where Paterson moved with her family 28 years 
     ago, Reedy's letter made its way to her Barre home. It 
     arrived in a batch of mail sent from her publisher. Paterson, 
     81, estimates she gets hundreds of letters a year, many from 
     students who are encouraged by their teachers to write.
       (Paterson described a humorous note: ``You're the best 
     writer in the world,'' the student wrote. ``Sometime I'm 
     going to read one of your books.'')


                          A writer on my hands

       Paterson was married for 51 years to John Paterson, a 
     pastor who died in September. They raised four children 
     together, and have seven grandchildren. After John Paterson's 
     retirement in 1995 from the First Presbyterian Church in 
     Barre, he took up the practice of reading Katherine 
     Paterson's mail. Each year, he passed on to Katherine 
     Paterson a handful of letters among the hundreds he read. 
     John Paterson selected Reedy's letter and gave it to his 
     wife.
       ``You just read it and weep,'' Katherine Paterson said. 
     ``And you think this poor, lonely kid out there, not knowing 
     what was going to happen to him.''
       She was struck by another aspect of his letter: ``By the 
     time I finished that letter,'' Paterson said, ``I knew I had 
     a writer on my hands.''
       The two became pen pals, a friendship whose beginnings 
     remain a source of happy amazement for Reedy.
       ``I didn't need to hear back,'' Reedy said. ``I just wanted 
     to thank her for letting me keep going. And I thought she 
     should know that what she's doing is really important.''
       Yet he received a response in October, 2004.
       ``She talked about how special it feels for a reader to 
     appreciate this story she had written that seemed, at the 
     time of her writing it, to be almost too personal to share,'' 
     Reedy recalled.
       The next month, on leave in Iowa, Reedy bought all the 
     Katherine Paterson books he could find and brought them back 
     to Afghanistan with him.
       ``I read those and loved them,'' he said. ``There were some 
     Afghans who were learning English, and I passed along the 
     books to them and talked about how much I enjoyed her 
     books.''
       What Reedy initially kept to himself in his correspondence 
     with Paterson was that he aspired to be a writer. He decided 
     to share this when it occurred to him he might not make it 
     home alive. But he never sent her any writing (apart from the 
     letters), mindful of imposing on her.
       Reedy did seek Katherine Paterson's advice about graduate 
     writing programs, and she recommended Vermont College of Fine 
     Arts in Montpelier. Paterson is a trustee of the college, 
     whose low-residency programs include children's and adult 
     literature.
       ``I said `impose,' '' Paterson recalled. `` `Plenty of 
     people impose on me that I don't like nearly as much as I 
     like you.' ''
       Based on his letters, Paterson offered to write a letter of 
     recommendation for Reedy. He accepted only after a letter he 
     expected fell through, she said.
       Reedy was accepted at Vermont College of Fine Arts, the 
     only MFA program he applied to. It was there that he wrote 
     the manuscript for his first novel, ``Words in the Dust.'' 
     The book, published by Arthur A. Levine Books, tells the 
     story of an Afghan girl and her family. It concerns the 
     girl's love for words; and her search for a connection to her 
     dead mother, and for beauty in a place where it's not so easy 
     to find that.
       Reedy's story was inspired, in part, by a girl he met in 
     Afghanistan. Like the character in the novel he would write, 
     the child had a cleft lip. Soldiers in Reedy's unit pooled 
     their money to pay the girl's transportation to a hospital, 
     where a U.S. Army doctor performed surgery to repair her 
     face.
       ``She faced this whole thing with this wonderful sort of 
     quiet courage, this incredible dignity,'' Reedy recalled. ``I 
     promised her that I would do whatever I could to tell her 
     story. She couldn't understand me, but that's what I told 
     her. In the army, we have to keep our promises, so you don't 
     make many. I think if I hadn't made that promise, I wouldn't 
     have been able to stick through to the end to write that 
     book.''
       He was also encouraged by Katherine Paterson to continue 
     writing the book. Her support came amid concerns about cross-
     cultural writing: a white man from Iowa writing a novel about 
     a disfigured girl in war-torn Afghanistan.
       ``I asked her if this made any sense, and if she thought it 
     was a good idea to write this,'' Reedy said. ``And she said, 
     `Well, I think you should try.' And that was all the 
     permission I needed.''
       Paterson, who was born in China, has written books set in 
     Japan and China. The notion that a writer can't write about a 
     foreign culture, its people and places, essentially says 
     imagination is worthless, she said.
       ``Ideally, she could write her own story,'' Paterson said 
     of Reedy's protagonist. ``But she can't yet. And somebody 
     needs to tell it for her. And I do believe in the power of 
     imagination. Tolstoy can write about women very well, and he 
     has never been one.''


                             To be a writer

       Reedy's book, with an introduction by Katherine Paterson, 
     was published three years ago. He dedicated it to Paterson 
     and his father.
       ``I loved the book,'' she said. ``And if my name was going 
     to call attention to it and my name was going to help promote 
     it, I'd write an introduction.''
       In her introduction, Paterson wrote in part: ``I am 
     profoundly grateful for an introduction to a land and culture 
     that are foreign to me through this beautiful and often 
     heartbreaking tale of one strong and compassionate girl. She 
     will live on in my heart and, I feel sure, the heart of every 
     reader of this fine book.''
       Before his first trip to Vermont, Reedy wrote once more to 
     Katherine Paterson. He said he'd be honored, should he be 
     accepted to Vermont College, to buy her a cup of coffee. 
     Sure, she said, but Paterson also had an idea: Why don't you 
     come and stay at our house the night before your residency 
     begins?
       In July, 2006, Katherine Paterson ``and Mr. Paterson,'' to 
     use Reedy's words, picked him up at the airport in Burlington 
     and drove him to their Barre home.
       He was very nervous about meeting Katherine Paterson, Reedy 
     said, expecting her to show up in an expensive car and drive 
     him to her rich mansion. But he found that Paterson, 
     ``arguably the most successful middle-school author who is 
     really around,'' drives a regular car and lives in a ``normal 
     house.''
       The MFA program at Vermont College ``gave me my dream,'' 
     Reedy said. Yet Katherine Paterson taught him what it means 
     to be a writer.
       ``Nobody has taught me more about how to be the kind of 
     writer I want to be than Katherine Paterson has,'' Reedy 
     said. ``No one has taught me more about how to live as a 
     writer. She has, I think, modeled the need for humility and 
     generosity.''
       Once, feeling he didn't belong at Vermont College of Fine 
     Arts and that he was ``hopelessly outclassed,'' Reedy 
     conveyed this in a letter to Katherine Paterson. He wanted to 
     steal lines from Emily Dickinson and walk around campus 
     saying: ``I'm nobody. Who are you?''
       Paterson wrote back that she, too, is nobody. If she ever 
     forgets that, she's in big trouble.

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