and people from everywhere. it was a really incredible, fun thing. and when you're asking can you run faster than boys, the question should have been can you run faster than congressman. anyway x it was quite the experience. as i said earlier, i am working on a book. some of these things i won't discuss here. but are some fun stories about that whole speernsz. just the experience of being in the whole capitol building without anybody else there but the pages and walking around in the building and being able to be a part of history is just such a sad, sad thing. and i think that i will do what i can do to reverse that if we can. i know that congressman boren

has tried to move this thing along. it does change our lives. at the end, i had the tunt to ask some questions. so i said tell me, how did you get to be a page? she seds oh, my congresswoman called me up and said do you want to be one? i said yes. finally. finally. so, anyway, good things have happened. so that's kind of how i got to be here. >> well rksz i'm a little bit out of place. i'm not a page. i don't have any of my own stories to tell. i did research and did some 50 or 60 interviews of pages going all the way back to the 1920s.

so any story i have to tell is not my own. they are other people's stories. the pages i know, most of them i can't repeat. great, can't tell those stories, either. i'm here more as to provide a historical background to some of the stuff that's going on here. and i think the three people to the right are wonderful advancements. they all have important places in the history of the country. i'm honored to be with them. they were having fashion shows, they were more concerned with what they were going to wear. and ellen, you didn't say that senator percy had to sign a

letter saying that he was responsible for your well being and safety. in order to appoint you, which was important. no boy had to do that. so a panel of firsts, i can talk about the first senate page first. the first girl's basketball game, the first christmas dinner, the first this or the first that, you know. the first person to have 12 letter ins their name to be appointed in the month of march. i don't know what people are interested in vmt. >> well, start with me. what did you do as a page? what did you find most challenging? what did you like best? now, frank, you're -- you worked

in the republican cloak room. was that a different kind of assignmented from some of your other colleagues? >> yes, it was. primarily, i didn't have to run to get cigarettes or coffee or things like that. pretty much just answer phones or make phone calls for the member. initially, the challenge was just to -- and it was a fairly small minority at that time. i only had to memorize the names of 40. during that time, there were some very -- let me say this. there were some very interesting people.

gerald ford became president a few years later, but he was not the most interesting. there was a guy named h.r. gross from iowa. h.r. was kind of the -- he would keep the house honest. he was grammarian. if you split an infinity, h.r. would get the floor an offer an amendment to correct that ghastly error. people like bob dole was the congressman there and donald ruls feld, al kwee who became

governor of minnesota, john lind see who later changed parties and became mayor of new york. it was just a host of people that i had the responsibility to answer phones. one time i got a call maybe more than once from ronald reagan calling for gerald ford. you know rksz at the time, it's just part of your job. but later on, that's pretty cool. >> okay. in the snat, the set up was a little different on the floor and on either side of the presiding officer and our jobs were to fetch water for senators who stood up to speak, attend their other needs. we would run trips from snat tor's office to senator's office

and send out messages from the senate leadership to all of the senators on that side of the aisle. we had to memorize, as frank has alluded to, we had to know the snat t senators by site. and i will cop to falling for being sent to fetch the congressional bill stretcher. however, i did not fall for being asked to find the congressional record player. nor did i fall for going to find a bucket of steam on the fifth floor of an office building that had only four floors. >> there were plenty of antics. we would sit on the back page allocated area by the cloak rooms.

and the phones would all light up. you have to go to this congressional office and go do this. we were literally running all over the place. and we had more than a hundred senators to learn faces for. but when i came, it was the early '70s and i had platform shoes. bad idea. after a week of running in those shows and had terrible, terrible blisters, mary ward, charlie's wife, i stayed with them for the first couple of weeks and i would come home with these horrible feet. one day she showed up with shoes and i kissed her. we were just miserably, horribly tired. we were physically walking all over the place.

it was a thick, paper domt and then after that, the day began. one of the nice things about that was going into all of the members of congress off and meeting their people and knowing oh, this office was going to look like this and it was decorated to their state's things. it was a great experience. >> i would say, too, you mentioned the level of mischief in congress. in the 1800s and certainly into the 1900s, '30s, '40s and' 50s, pages conspired to play practical jokes on eemp other. you know, finding members around the capital sleeping and they spread glue on their faces. it aes not the pages, it's the other members enlisting the pages.

the bill stretcher, i've heard them over and over and over. long standing traditions carried on and on and on through the general ragszs. and so i just wanted to add to that. one other thing about the cloak room. probably the two of you that had huge, plush couches lining this l-shaped room that any of the members, and sometimes there was just a rush to get to one, they would come back and sleep on these couches. they were very comfortable. now, there's no longer those big, plush couches. they removed them probably for that very reason. >> okay. let's throw it open to you and the audience now.

if you have a question or a comment, please make your way to the microphone. don't be bashful. i'm sure you have stories to share with us, too. so while you're thinking, let's move onto another question. the pages on this panel have all had successful careers after you were congressional pages. and many congressional pages and daryl can fill us in on this, historically have fwon onto have greater careers. many members of congress served as congressional pages. why do you think many have gone onto such success?

did your experience give you a leg up? or was it something else? in other words, maybe what i'm really trying to get at is what did you take away from your experiences as a capitol page? well, we were having the opportunity to talk about this before the panel started. and for me, personally, i knew i was going to go to an undergraduate school, for sure. but having had that experience and seeing the world as a different place made me absolutely want to learn more and go more places. i never really had the drive to go into politics. but that doesn't mean that that didn't work for me. it ment that that experience changed me into a working person

which make you very cognizant of what's going on around you. >> i would just underscore what's pointed out. i think it heightens your awareness and how you are just as good. and how you have an responsibility to invest back in your community and do good where ever you see it can be done. >> i did enter politics. i ran in my senior year and i won. and other than volunteering for a campaign here and there was the end of my plit kal career. but it makes -- when you've taken, for me, when you're taken

messages or head, a donald rumsfeld demand you get this done right now, there's not a whole lot in the world that can challenge you and make you afraid. if you say yes, sir and then you get it done, you're going to be able to say that to ms. or mrs. or mr. anybody. so it gives you a confidence that you belong. when i returned after some college to springfield, my local newspaper actually offered me a job reporting. i said i haven't finished my degree yet. they said we'll teach you. and they did. i did obits, o obituarieobituard

the hall report, sports, police beat, everything. and all the people in the staff in the news room, they said okay. now you're ready. we're going to assign you to city hall in springfield. and then i went onto be assigned to the state legislature. for me, it felt like a natural transition to do that, to become a reporter from being a page. and having the congressional experience that i had. it gave me a where he will come knowledge that some of the kids -- i say kids, some of the people that went onto under graduate school didn't have. i sometimes regret not having completed that degree. but, you know, at my age, i don't worry about it so much

anymore. >> i can tell you about 12 years at the page school and numerous pages that the guys who are 70 and 80 years old, they say that the page experience is the most important, most formative experience of their lives and they hold onto that experience. they gain an experience for what it means to be an american. and one of the things i tried to teach at page school was what does democracy do for us? what does it give us? but, also, what does it demand of us. you have to give back to democracy for it to sustain itself. and i saw kids transformed because of the program. and just changing their lives for the good and making the country a beter place. yes, they got to see how laws were made. but i think the real difference is they went back to the

communities and tried to create change and be leaders in their own community. i look out in the audience and i see vance sitting there. a perfect example of someone who holds onto that experience. you know, i don't think the value of the program can be measured in dollars and sense. it's in stories like the ones that are told by the people around you in the audience. and so it's sad that fewer people are going to be able to have that chance now. >> well, if we have no more questions from the aud yeniencet me go to pick up on what daryl just concluded with. both the supreme court and the

page programs are now defunct. is this a good thing or bad thing? what system provided to the congress and to the institutions that it has served. any comments from the panels? >> well, i think you step up when you see a void in your community and in your circle. you step up and you try to fill that void. when something needs to be done. i mean, i was at my nephew's son's christening on sunday. in detroit. i'm a cigar smoker. so after the service, i found me a spot in the shade away from the service and was smoking my

shi g shi gar and waiting on my nephew and family. i noticed some debris had blown over. and i went over and picked it up and put it in the trash. meantime, my nephew came out looking for me, didn't see me, got in the truck and drove off. so i'm like where did he go? but it's not so much that i wanted a pat on the back, but you just do things. i coached foot ball, junior football, church basketball at 2 22, 23 years old. i volunteered, i was working the phone company and these kids were working on the history day project where the finalists are sent here to washington, d.c. to compete on a national history day level. and i worked with these kids to

produce a video tape. and i think if i can remember, it's been about 20 some years ago. i think they finished third or fourth. paid for it was something i felt needed to be done because it was going to affect these six or eight kids' lives. or raising money for scholarships. you just do things like that. and i'm not saying the page program does something magical for you, but it puts a feeling of responsibility in your heart that may have already been there, but it sure helps it grow. >> i can think of a very specific example of how, of the legacy of working in congress, and that is, if you look at capitol hill as the big government, congressional page school was the little government inside, and we acted out the lessons that we learned on the hill in our own student government.

the first day of school, the campaign started, with classmates looking arranged the room and making hash marks on a piece of paper. counting the votes. how much high school student governments do you know of have their own parliamentarian? ours did. i don't know -- i can't remember any of the rulings, but i know -- i'm sure he did. so we -- we left work, went to school, and did the same thing. >> yes, ma'am. >> is there one favorite story from your experience that you might like to share with us, each? >> i have one. >> and this has to do, the legislation happening at the time. one of my starkest memories is the lockheed aircraft loan in

1971, and the issue was, lockheed was going broke. $60,000 were at stake -- 60,000 jobs were at stake, and this was a little stimulus package that the republicans thought was a really, really swell idea. interesting to reflect on how times have changed. >> i don't know how interesting it is, but one afternoon a man from the american nazi party handcuffed himself to the balcony, and threw out some very racist literature. and everyone kind of -- after everybody picked it up, kind of read it, the guards were removing the guy from up in the balcony. everyone kind of looked at me, but nobody asked me, you know,

what i thought about it or made me feel uncomfortable it at all, which, again, i just -- i'm not sure who coached them or whether it was just home training, but it was interesting. >> i have a favorite story. one of my favorite people ever, i can remember being this 18-year-old standing there on the floor of the house, and here's she comes in her big flower dress sashaying down the aisle with her big, floppy hat, bella delivers herself of a speech how it's unfair for women who are poor not to be able to be given money for abortions, and she went through the math. she says, it's not just about that it's going to cost us $100 for this abortion. it's going to cost us $250 for the delivery. this is an unwed child it may cost 18 years of support for it and money and adjudication and

incarceration and all those kinds of things and i'm standing there as kid going, this woman is so together. she just was an amazing woman to me and it was just a time when the women who were there were very impressive women, and she was a very important woman to me. >> my favorite story comes from joe hartlet, a page in the mid to late '40s and he told stories that pages would the first one in the capitol to go to school. they would turn the lights on in the hallways down in the basement of capitol. it was very damp. nobody had been there, they could turn on the lights and see all the rats scatter. joe tells a story it came to a point they to put a page in charge of catching the rats to get rid of the rats. and he was paid by -- every rat he got -- paid by the rat. so they noticed after a while he was camping lots and lots of

rats and making lots and lots of money, yet the population of rats was still going on. and nobody could figure out what was going on until they realized that he was breeding rats. so -- talk about mischief in capitol hill. on the more serious side, some of the stories that are my favorites are stories of -- well, let me take a step back. typically in the spring the president and first lady would host pages at the white house for lunch and a movie, for many, many years. and the stories of the page boys going to the white house during that time when eleanor roosevelt was there are especially touching, because the stories i heard, they remember every detail about those story, but especially the way eleanor roosevelt treated them. with such graciousness, and making them feel at home inside the white house. and that's -- you know, those stories are just touching for me

to hear, because eleanor roosevelt was such a gracious lady. >> i have one more quick one. frances boat, a congresswoman from ohio, and she was just -- first of all, she was extremely wealthy. she had taken her husband's place when he passed in congress and was readedly edrepeat dlip. she would come when long debates would run literally all night. the pages would just be, just dragging. the phones aren't ringing. it's 2:00 in the morning. and we're just sitting there like that and she'd come in with her fur thrown over her shoulder. boy -- you guys look like a motley crew. come on, sit up. sit up. we need to do some deep breathing exercises. close your eyes.

start at your head. relax your head. relax your neck. relax your shoulders, and we'd go all wait down the anatomy and back up. and it was just -- it was just, this is a member of congress telling us, doing relaxation exercises with us. >> i have another quick one. the summer i was a page, 1973. the summer that wayne hayes on the ethics committee was having his rumble with faye -- no. who was it? yes. yes. elizabe elizabeth -- yes. we just like, ah, all the scandal. it was that summer of everything. you know? who knew. >> another thing i veb a story, pages sometimes were invited to high society events in washington, and one story, i can't remember the woman's name who used to own the hope diamond but invited page boiys out to oe

of her parties. in between friped chicken, passing around the hope diamond and just passing it along. talk about opportunities that people don't get. >> okay b. we have another question. >> i was a page in the '80s and at that time it was pretty clear, you figured it out over time, there wasn't a rule out, but the girls weren't allowed to do some of the jobs that the boy was allowed to. did you all see that as well? even once you got in the door? were you able to do everything? that was available? or -- >> paulette remembers this better than i do. the only restriction i recall is not being permitted in a place calmed the marble room, and -- not being permitted in the men's room, which oddly enough was a topic of discussion at the hearing. >> i don't remember being -- i was only there for a summer. so i didn't have a full school year. i don't remember not being able to go any of the places that the guys went.

i don't remember that. >> i'll speak for paul ooet here. paulette is a little taller, in addition to not being able to go in the marble year, not being able to stand next to a senator that was taller than him. she was forbidden to go near allen. >> i had to stand a step down from carl abbott when he took the pictures, because he's not any taller than i am. so -- >> thank you. >> thank you. >> okay. unfortunately i think we could keep going on and on with these fascinating stories, but we have reached the end of our time. we have another program to conclude. i would just like to answer a question that i asked about if the end of the page program represents a loss to the country, and i think it definitely does, because