[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 23]
[Senate]
[Pages 31336-31337]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              SENATE PAGES

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, it is late tonight and we will be in 
session early tomorrow morning, but I did want to take a brief moment 
and give thanks to a very special group of people

[[Page 31337]]

around this institution. There are a number of professional and 
dedicated individuals who spend each and every day working to keep this 
body functioning. But I want to give special thanks to one group of 
people tonight, and that is our Senate pages.
  These are hard-working young men and women who help us each day with 
a broad range of tasks. They do really pretty much everything from 
preparing these desks today--as you look around here and see what is on 
these desks, you can see that that can be a huge task--to running 
errands for Members, errands that we greatly depend upon as we try to 
juggle our various responsibilities of the day, to making copies of 
amendments literally just one after another. In fact, you see the 
copies of the Medicare legislation on the desks today. When you look at 
them, you know that somebody has generated each and every one of those 
copies. The duties really go on and on.
  In the middle of my talk last night, I was speaking from this desk. 
And I thought, I have to get rid of this. How will I do it? I was 
thinking, and all of a sudden the page came and slipped it away so I 
could continue my discussion at the time.
  I thank them and praise the tremendous work they do each and every 
day. This past week we have had very busy days. It has been unusual 
working through last week, through Saturday, through Sunday, through 
Monday, today. Very late seems to be the norm these last few days, as 
we have really worked to complete our work before the holidays. It is 
the pages who have been with us in the past few days where we had not 
anticipated being here this late.
  We have had very special pages with us. I will slip out in a few 
minutes as we close down, and they will still be here as they tidy up 
for early tomorrow morning. They will soon be out for their 
Thanksgiving holiday as well. I really do I want to thank them, several 
of whom are sitting right here looking at me on the floor tonight. I 
thank them for their hard work these last several days: Yael Bortnick, 
Emily Holmgren, Ferrell Oxley, Sarah Smith, Melissa Meyer--and it is 
her birthday today--Margaret Leddy, and Krista Warner. In particular, I 
want to thank Melissa Meyer. But I thank them again for their 
tremendous work.

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