[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[House]
[Pages 27592-27593]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1400
          CONGRATULATING CHESHIRE HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS SWIM TEAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, you know, we live in a world 
that's hard to reconcile sometimes. Now, our focus often is on the evil 
that exists in this world, but all too often we let that focus 
overwhelm the counterbalancing good things that happen in our 
communities every day. And I rise today to recognize that strange, 
delicate symmetry in my hometown of Cheshire, Connecticut.
  This week, the Cheshire High School girls swim team broke the record 
for the longest dual-meet winning streak in American history with their 
235th straight victory. As you can imagine, this is a pretty remarkable 
record to break. In fact, the girls on this record-breaking swim team 
that broke the record on Monday night weren't even alive when that 
streak began some 21 years ago.
  I wasn't there Monday night, unfortunately, but hundreds of parents 
and friends and siblings and supporters were in attendance, and I heard 
that the record-breaking night was pretty magical. But strangely, 
something else happened that night, something that the girls probably 
didn't even notice or seek out. Monday night, the girls swim team at 
Cheshire High School transcended statistics and records and wins and 
losses. And the most important marker that they set down that night was 
not as the best swim team in the country, but as a bright, beaming 
emblem of a resurgent community with so much to celebrate.
  You see, my town has been grieving over the past several months. And 
it's hard to figure out what else to do when you wake up one morning 
and find out that three of your neighbors, a mother and her two young, 
vibrant daughters, lost their lives in an unspeakable act of barbarism. 
It becomes difficult, impossible even, to square the wonderful, serene 
existence of life in a quiet small town with the random and brutal acts 
of violence that left Dr. William Petit mourning the unexplainable loss 
of his family.
  How do you reconcile the two? How do you wake up, even for those of 
us who didn't know the family personally or live in that neighborhood, 
and pretend that the veil of safety and goodness that always seemed to 
envelop Cheshire, Connecticut, was still there after that? I thought 
about little else in the days and weeks following that incident, and I 
know that I wasn't alone.
  But then the unexpected happens. And I know it sounds silly to even 
talk about a murder and a swim team in the same sentence and, frankly, 
of course, the two are incomparable, but therein lies the problem. 
There is no and there will be no one clear moment when we collectively 
decide that the moral order has been restored in our community. And so 
we're left to seek out those moments that simply remind us of why we 
love Cheshire in the first place and why we have confidence that our 
community will heal, that we will persevere, and that we will recover. 
This week is one of those moments.

[[Page 27593]]

  I didn't grow up in Cheshire, so I certainly can't claim to know the 
town like those who call it their birthplace, but I did know a good 
thing when I found it. And Tuesday morning, when I heard that the 
record had broken, I couldn't help but wonder whether it wasn't just a 
coincidence that a national record 21 years in the making matured at 
the very moment that a burst of good news was most needed in our 
community. And I couldn't help but think about how this streak, which 
started two decades ago and has been the careful construction of 
hundreds of girls and thousands more family members, friends, 
supporters and coaches stands as a testament to the strength, 
persistence and spirit of our little town, not just on one night, but 
over the span of decades.
  And so, yes, one unspeakable act can and probably should shake the 
confidence and faith of a community. And nothing will ever repair that 
damage, certainly not for the Petit family, and probably not entirely 
for the community that they call home.
  And so we're left to look for those moments of triumph, those 
instances of community reaffirmation that remind us why Cheshire is 
such a special place to live. Well, we found one this week.
  And so, Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Cheshire High 
School girls swim team and to thank them for everything that they have 
done. Cheshire is a pretty special place to live, and Monday night 
reminded us of why that is.

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