[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10713-10715]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        HONORING THE HOUSE PAGES

  (Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I would like the pages to come on down and 
join me in the well of the Chamber, please. If you could fill in the 
seats in these first two rows and try to stay in the central part if 
you can.
  Well, I have had the great privilege over many years, some people 
would say a great curse, but I would say great privilege, to be 
chairman of the page board for now a good handful of number of years. 
And so I have been able to experience this time in thanking the pages a 
couple times now and it is never easy. It is never the thing you want 
to do, but it is the thing that we all learn in life, that life goes 
on.
  We as Members of the House want to thank you for your service first 
and foremost. You are an integral part of what we do here, and as we 
have said to many of you when we welcomed you here months ago, you have 
a unique opportunity to see the inner workings of the House of 
Representatives, an opportunity that I am sure many people would pay to 
do, but you do it as a service rendered to your country.
  Hopefully, we at the Federal level continue to support this program, 
not just so you at this moment and this time of your life see how we 
operate and what we do, but then we do believe that somewhere in the 
future you will continue in this public service part of your experience 
to help make the world and our country a better place. And whether that 
is involved in partisan politics, which I think is an honorable cause, 
or that is running for office yourself or being a good voter, being 
somewhat involved in the process, being concerned about your local 
community, it really takes individuals to step up to be leaders. And 
you really cannot be a member involved in the page program and not 
experience all those aspects about commitment to the government, to 
your country and as service to other people.

[[Page 10714]]

  So thank you for what you have done. To highlight that for future 
generations, I am going to submit the list of the page program for the 
year 2005 to the Clerk so that it gets placed into the official 
Congressional Record from now on so when you have children or 
grandchildren and they ask you what you did as juniors in high school, 
you can say, oh, I was a page. And they would say, no, you were not. 
And you say, check the Record, there is my name.
  Mr. Speaker, the following is the list of the page program for 2005-
2006:

             U.S. House of Representatives, 2005-2006 Pages

       1. Stephen Archer (NY)
       2. Arielle Askren (OR)
       3. John Atsalis (NH)
       4. Katelyn Baird (FL)
       5. Jack Barnhill (MI)
       6. John Bell (SC)
       7. Katie Bellantone (IL)
       8. Vitaliy Benz (AL)
       9. Adam Brault (MA)
       10. Elizabeth Breen (CA)
       11. Phoebe Brosnan (VA)
       12. Sarah Brehm (MN)
       13. Susan Carr (PA)
       14. Sara Dillion (CT)
       15. Rachel Douglas (PA)
       16. Michelle Elkins (CA)
       17. Linwood Fields (TX)
       18. Stephanie Fleming (MO)
       19. Robert Forsythe (WI)
       20. William French, Jr. (VA)
       21. Kelly Freund (PA)
       22. Richard Frohlichstein (MO)
       23. Jeanette Garcia (NY)
       24. Elizabeth Gartzke (FL)
       25. Chelsea Goldstein (MD)
       26. Jorge Granillo (TX)
       27. Christopher Guizlo (KS)
       28. Travis Hargett (OH)
       29. Shataya Hawley (NJ)
       30. John Hayes (KY)
       31. Steven Henderson (NC)
       32. Sieglinde Hindrichs (VA)
       33. Nathaniel Hutcheson (FL)
       34. Lap Huynh (CA)
       35. Eric Imhof (VA)
       36. Sergio Jimenez (AZ)
       37. Ellen Johnson (WI)
       38. Taylor Krebs (OH)
       39. Henna Mahmood (NY)
       40. Hannah Marrs (CA)
       41. Jenna Matecki (IL)
       42. Emily Medcalf (CA)
       43. Ryan McHenry (WI)
       44. Frank Moran (MA)
       45. Mary Ellen Nocero (NY)
       46. Elliot Osgood (CT)
       47. Jody Owens (NC)
       48. Liliana Pereira (NJ)
       49. Mary Jo Pham (MA)
       50. Michelle Ramirez (AZ)
       51. Ivvette Rios (AZ)
       52. Alixe Ryan (LA)
       53. Joseph Schmitz (NE)
       54. Matthew Sheppard (FL)
       55. Stephanie Shifalo (MS)
       56. Saul Spady (WA)
       57. Andrea Spencer (AZ)
       58. Christopher Stergalas (MI)
       59. Travis Trawick (TX)
       60. Nancy Waters (WA)
       61. John Vance (TX)
       62. Michaela Wilkes Klein (MD)

  Mr. Speaker, with every farewell there is always the good times of 
telling stories and remembering friendships.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SHIMKUS. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Let me just add some accolades. But first of 
all, I want to commend first my friend and colleague from Illinois, 
Representative Shimkus, for the tremendous dedication and service and 
leadership that he has provided to the page program as its chairman. 
But let me also commend and congratulate all of you for the tremendous 
service that you have provided. Many of us make use of your skills, 
make use of your energy, of your legs, your ability to go from one 
place to the other and bring things, but I am amazed at the number of 
people that I have met here who are now Members of this body who at one 
time served as pages.
  So I suspect that in the future we will see some of you here as 
Members from the community where you live and perhaps we will even see 
one of you sitting in the big chair up in the White House.
  Congratulations to all of you. Thank you so much for your service.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Davis from Chicago, 
but I am a legislator and I believe that the big chair is the Speaker's 
chair. So I am an article I guy, not an article II guy.
  But having said that, with living and working and sweating and being 
together for all these opportunities, there are some very important 
historical events that have occurred here and I said that when you came 
in. I am not sure what they will be, but here in Washington there is 
always something that happens that is unexpected. Like surviving the 
Page Plague I, where it was hard for us to find a page because you were 
all sick. And then we had at the second semester, mini-Page Plague 
which affected a good number of folks. I see my friend Jim Kolbe here, 
but maybe we can take some lessons here on bird flu and epidemics based 
upon studying the page class and how they survived the illnesses.
  You got to attend a State of the Union address, and probably it is 
historical in the fact that we had so many, four, joint sessions of 
Congress with leaders from around the world, just most recently the 
President of Latvia, but the President of Liberia, the Prime Minister 
of Italy and the Prime Minister of Israel. All very momentous 
occasions.
  You all really being in tune to the current cultural climate have 
been able to observe and participate in many of the celebrity sightings 
that occur here which is always a challenge as we work around here 
because we really do not want you trying to seek out these celebrities 
but somehow you know where they are at and where they are going. Like 
Dave Chappell or Chuck Norris, Queen Latifa, Glenn Close, George Lucas, 
Bono, I pronounced it right, Jessica Simpson, and of course we cannot 
forget Brangelina. I read this and I said, Brangelina? And they 
followed up as they knew I was going to say this. For those of you who 
do not know, like me, that is Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
  Some of you had the opportunity to see numerous cities, New York, 
Baltimore, Philadelphia, to name a few; and then there was the black-
out in the Capitol. Always momentous. And then I still cannot get true 
clarification of what occurred, but there was something about being 
locked out of the page cage for some reason. But Ms. Ivester and Miss 
Sampson, they are around here keeping an eye on you, would not 
elaborate on it any further, protecting you. All I could get from them 
was some mumbling and shaking their heads and walking away without 
comment.
  I know you all had a great time on your prom. I didn't know I was 
that powerful, but I was able to make sure that we had no votes that 
day so all you young ladies could spend all the hours you needed to get 
prepared for the prom event.
  Being a page is a special program. We love having you here. We know 
you are going to do great things in the future. It is a great 
investment that we make. But we also understand that you are high 
school juniors, and that balance between adulthood and adolescence, 
there are trials and tribulations, but you all have performed well.
  One of the worst things that I have to do as the head of the page 
board is the disciplinary actions, and it is great for me to say that 
you all have stuck together and I haven't been able to exercise the 
full force of my authority and that you are to be commended for that.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. 
Jim Kolbe, who has always had a great relationship with the page 
program. I appreciate his mentorship and this will be his last farewell 
also.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for 
yielding. And I get the chance tonight at your quasi-graduation, your 
finishing exercise, tonight to say a few more words to you so I will 
save most of the thoughts I have, which probably are not terribly 
profound anyhow, until this evening.
  I did want to be here on the floor. I think it is appropriate, as a 
matter of fact, that this is the last time I will speak to you and the 
last vote that you got to see was on Congressman Kolbe's appropriations 
bill for foreign operations. So you can say the last set of votes the 
last day was spent on the floor with Congressman Kolbe in the debate on 
the bill that he was responsible for.

[[Page 10715]]

  It has been a great pleasure. It gives me an added sentimental value 
to this occasion.
  I think most of you know that I have a special relationship with the 
page program that stems from the fact that I started as a page. Albeit 
as some of you know it was over on that other side in that other body 
over there, but you will forgive me for that. At that time it was 
really run as one single program.
  I have to say that the page experience, as you can probably tell from 
where I am standing today, is one of those things, those experiences 
that had a profound change on my life. But having started here as a 
page, I promised Peggy and Miss Ivester and the others that I would not 
tell you all the stories about the things that I did, that we did as a 
page. So I promised not to tell you the story about how we hauled the 
English teacher's Volkswagon bug up the steps of the Library of 
Congress and planted it in the middle of the platform up there. And I 
promised not to tell you about the story of how we faked the suicide of 
one of the pages jumping from the balcony and there was a page spread 
out down below.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. If the gentleman would yield, you would not have 
survived my mentorship as the chairman of the page board.
  Mr. KOLBE. There was no question that almost all of us in the page 
program would not have survived the mentorship.
  I promised not to tell you those kinds of things. Fortunately, it is 
on your last day anyhow, so you are probably not going to find time to 
do too many of those things today.
  The gentleman from Illinois was talking about the celebrity 
sightings. Some people would think there are celebrities enough here in 
the House of Representatives and in the Senate and with all the joint 
sessions that we have. But I remember not too long ago when I had that 
actor. What's his name? Oh, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie down in my 
office down below here on the first floor just below the Chamber here.

                              {time}  1500

  When I finished the meeting and came out, there were a bunch of 
secretaries and few pages there with their cameras, and I thought, 
wonderful, they want pictures of me. But no, none of them were 
interested at all in having a picture with me. It was this actor and 
actress that were there.
  So I guess we know that really Members of Congress are pretty second-
rate when it comes to celebrity sightings, and sometimes maybe we are 
just a little bit of chopped liver.
  But I do want to say to you that this experience obviously is one 
that you may not realize it now, but you are going to carry away with 
you some very important things, some things that will change your life 
in ways that you probably cannot even imagine right now.
  It does not mean that all of you are going into politics, because 
probably only a handful of you might. As a matter of fact, in my 
graduating class at the page school, we went all the way through high 
school in those days. In my graduating class, I am the only one that 
ultimately stayed in elective politics.
  But there, it does not matter. This experience will make a difference 
to you. It will make a difference not only in your school and make a 
difference not only in the way you look on things and events in the 
world, but hopefully will make you more of a citizen of the world and a 
citizen of the United States, and I think this is the important thing.
  Many people ask us why do we continue this program. Let us face it. 
We could do this a lot easier with a lot less expense if we just 
contracted out and hired some people to serve as messengers, but year 
after year, the Congress of the United States supports this program for 
young men and women, and through the course of the more than 150, or 
really almost 200 years, several thousand young men and women like you 
have come through this program and had this experience because we think 
it makes a difference, and we think that your experience becomes the 
experience of the future leaders of the United States.
  So I hope that whatever you do when you go back, you will think about 
this program, and, of course, you will think about your friends, the 
friendships you have made here and you will maintain those friendships 
and you will come back for your reunions. You always come back for the 
first year reunion, 5-year reunion, 10-year reunion. It is wonderful to 
have these friendships, but you will also remember what you learned 
here and you will incorporate into your daily lives and into the 
thinking of whatever you do, if you are in business, if you become a 
physician, if you become a lawyer, if you become a teacher. All of 
these things will be valuable to you.
  So you have had a rare, rare experience, and I hope that you can 
appreciate that. But I want to say now in closing how much we 
appreciate what you do. You make our lives just a little bit easier 
every day. You are the grease that makes the wheel go round without 
squeaking quite so much, and sometimes we take it for granted and we do 
not realize how much of a difference that you make in our lives and the 
work of this body.
  So it is my great privilege to be here to say thank you to you for 
the wonderful job that you have done for us, and I hope that I will see 
many of you in the years ahead, that we will stay in touch and I will 
follow your career, your successful careers in business, but most 
important, in your lives with your families and with the people that 
you interact with. God bless you all and God bless America.
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his 
comments, and every time Jim Kolbe speaks, as you have heard in the 
last comments at the end of the appropriation bill, the Foreign Ops 
bill in which Members from both sides, especially the Democrats, talked 
about his integrity, his commitment, his honesty, and those are 
comments from the heart, and you will get to hear him one more time at 
the graduation ceremony.
  I bring you thanks from all the folks who you have worked with, the 
dorm staff, the school staff and of course, the floor staff here who 
are always well represented in keeping track of where you are.
  Thank you for keeping track of each other during this time. Thank you 
for keeping each other safe and being friends to those who needed 
friends at that time, and thanks for keeping each other out of trouble. 
Those things that you have learned during this time, let us hope that 
you carry them on with you, that you will just make this world a better 
place.
  So thank you. God bless you, and God bless the United States of 
America. We appreciate your service.

                          ____________________