[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 10 (Thursday, January 18, 2024)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E61]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                      EULOGY FOR MICHAEL DeSTEFANO

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. RITCHIE TORRES

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, January 18, 2024

  Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, long before I was a Congressman 
and long before I had been a Council Member, I am and will always be 
the eternally grateful student of Michael DeStefano. For his influence 
on me is as powerful today, as it was nearly two decades ago, when God 
first brought him into my life.
  When I was a kid, growing up in the 1990s, I would watch a show known 
as Boy Meets World, which had an iconic character, a wise, revered 
teacher by the name of George Feeny.
  Mr. DeStefano was, in many ways, the Mr. Feeny of Herbert H. Lehman 
High School in the Bronx. As a teacher, Mr. DeStefano embodied for me 
the nobility of public education as a profession. And as a person, he 
was a formidable presence who could inhabit a room with the power of 
his personality and the force of his intellect. He had an eloquence and 
erudition that could captivate almost anyone who heard him speak. And 
captivate he did.
  Indeed, Mr. DeStefano was the first educator to inspire me.
  He engendered in me a love of words and ideas--a love that has 
remained with me ever since. He enabled me to discover a talent for 
public speaking I never thought I had. He encouraged me to lead the 
Lehman High School Law Team, which, I believe, set me on a trajectory 
that led to the New York City Council and then ultimately to the United 
States Congress. Words cannot capture the fullness of what Mr. 
DeStefano has meant to me.
  The only constant in life, it has been said, is change. The ancient 
Greek thinker, Heraclitus, put it best: no person steps into the same 
river twice. The river is not the same, and neither is the person. 
Everyone and everything changes constantly at every moment. Reflecting 
on the theme of a constantly changing self, William James once observed 
that we have various selves at various points in our lives, and how do 
we know which one of those selves is the true self? According to James, 
the true self is one in which we feel most deeply and intensely alive.
  Mr. DeStefano inspired me to pursue Moot Court in high school, and it 
is through Moot Court where I began discovering something resembling my 
true self, where I felt most deeply and intensely alive for the first 
time in my life.
  As a student at Lehman High School, I remember looking for reasons to 
stop by Mr. DeStefano's office just to listen to and learn from him, 
just to be inspired by him. He never disappointed. He never ceased to 
amaze me with the sheer breadth of his knowledge and the sheer 
eloquence with which he could express every thought that came to mind 
and the sheer seamlessness with which he could move from one subject 
area to the next: philosophy and history and psychology, economics and 
international relations, literature, and religion. He could speak 
effortlessly about all of it. He had anecdotes and allusions, quotes 
and statistics that he could readily recover from his encyclopedic 
mind.
  Whether it is Abraham Maslow's theory of self-actualization as the 
highest human need or Immanuel Kant's concept of the thing in itself or 
Soren Kierkegaard's leap of faith: all of these ideas that continue to 
shape how I think about life and the world were born out of 
conversations with Mr. DeStefano nearly two decades ago.
  Those dialogues with Mr. DeStefano remain fresh in my mind as if we 
had spoken yesterday. I often find myself wondering: What would Mr. 
DeStefano do about a particular problem? What would he think about a 
particular question?
  As I ask these questions, I am reminded that I am a better person and 
a better public servant for having had Mr. DeStefano as an educator in 
my life.
  Mr. DeStefano brought out the best in me, and that, to me, is the 
greatest gift that one can give you.
  I am grateful to his wife for sharing her brilliant husband and to 
his daughters for sharing their brilliant father with the students of 
Lehman High School, where he served with distinction as an Assistant 
Principal and teacher for decades.
  He was a close confidante of Robert Leder, who at the time was the 
longest serving principal in the NYC public school system, beloved by 
many in the Bronx and beyond. The two of them, together, were the dream 
team in public education.
  I miss and love them both.
  Mr. DeStefano's legacy will live on not only in the lives of his 
family and friends but also in the lives of his students.
  I will end as I began: I am proud to be a student of Michael 
DeStefano--always have been and always will be.
  May my greatest teacher Rest in Peace.

                          ____________________