[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 190 (Thursday, October 28, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1167]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP PUBLIC LIBRARY IS AN OASIS OF LEARNING, KNOWLEDGE, 
                          WISDOM, AND KNOWHOW

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 28, 2021

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, a hundred years ago, two 
independent library associations merged into one amazing library--the 
Middletown Township Public Library.
  Congratulations to Library Director Heather Andolsen and Board 
President Bill Bucco--and library staff and board members past and 
present--for this remarkable achievement.
  A hundred years ago: Warren Harding was in the White House; New 
Jerseyans Joseph Frelinghuysen and Walter Evans Edge were in the U.S. 
Senate; Theodore Appleby was Monmouth County's Member of Congress; and 
the Freeholder Director was Bryant Newcomb.
  America and the world in 1921 were still reeling and recovering from 
WWI and from the 1918 H1N1 Flu Pandemic that infected a third of the 
world's population and killed 50 million people.
  That same year--1921--my favorite baseball team bought land to build 
Yankee Stadium (I was there in the stands in 1969 for Mickey Mantle 
Day); the treatment of diabetes was significantly advanced with the 
isolation of insulin and Albert Einstein got the Nobel Prize for 
Physics for his many contributions to theoretical physics including his 
1905 theory of relativity.
  And it was Albert Einstein who famously said ``the only thing you 
absolutely need to know is the location of the library'' which in the 
early years of MTPL perhaps begged the question, where is Dorothy 
Norton and her Ford Model T library on wheels?
  Today, the Library is an important cultural and meeting center and a 
venue for assistance when disasters hit like Superstorm Sandy.
  MTPL is an oasis of learning, knowledge, wisdom, and knowhow.
  As food nurtures the body, the availability and accessibility of 
books and other literary works feeds the mind and soul.
  A few weeks ago, I introduced an anti-human trafficking bill named 
after the great abolitionist, author, orator, and former slave 
Frederick Douglass.
  I was joined at the press conference by Frederick Douglass' great, 
great, great grandson Ken Morris, who quoted his famous ancestor who 
said, ``knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave'' and ``Once you 
learn to read you will be forever free.''

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