and it's been a life changing experience and i've met some really terrific people. some of them are right here. >> well, i'm a little bit out of place. i was not a page. i don't have any of my own stories to tell. i did research on the history of the program 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. i guess i could tell my own. they're not that interesting. the stories i know from the pages in the '30s, '40s and '50s, most of them i can't repeat. i 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 examples of this country's civil rights

movement, equal rights movement. they all have important places in the history of the country. i'm honored to be with them. but very important stories and interesting stories. ellen, the story that you tell about the senate coming up with every excuse in the book to not appoint her, you know, they were having fashion shows, they were more concerned with what they were going to wear. and ellen, felda, you alluded to it a little bit, but you didn't say that senator percy had to sign a letter saying that he was responsible for your wellbeing and safety. in order to appoint you, even after all the things that you went through, which was important. and no boy had to do that. so, you know, a panel of firsts, i can talk about the first senate page, the first house page, the first supreme court page, the first girl's basketball game, the first christmas dinner, whatever, the first this or the first that, the first person to have 12

letters in their name to be appointed in the month of march. i don't know what people are interested in. i'll turn it back to the panel and maybe open it up for questions. >> well, let me start off with one question. what did you do as a page? what were your assignments? what did you find most challenging? what did you like best? now, frank, your -- your biography, you worked in the republican cloak room. was that a different kind of assignment 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

and faces of maybe 140 congressmen. if they had been the majority who appointed me, i'd have had to memorize, you know, considerably more. during that time, there were some very -- let me say this. there were some very interesting people in the house of representatives. gerald ford, who everyone knows 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 missed crossing the t or dotting an i, if you have a preposition ending a sentence, if you split an infinity, h.r.

would get the floor and make a point to offer an amendment to correct that ghastly error. there were some other interesting -- i mean, people like bob dole was the congressman there and donald rumsfeld was a congressman then. al quee who later became governor of minnesota, john lindsay who later changed parties and became mayor of new york. it was just a host of people that line the history books that i had the responsibility to answer phones. one time i got a call from maybe more than once, ronald reagan, calling for gerald ford. you know, at the time, it's just part of your job. you don't put it into perspective. but later on it's like, that was pretty cool. you know?

>> in the senate, the setup was a little different. we sat on the floor and on either side of the providing officer and our jobs were to fetch water for senators who stood up to speak, attend their other needs. we would run trips from senator'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 senators by sight. but we considered ourselves fairly busy. but there was plenty of time for pages playing high jinks on each other. 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. >> oh, i did that one. >> 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 cloakrooms. and the phones would all light up. whoever they were sitting at the phones, pushing the buttons. you have to go to this congressional office and go do this and take this there. we were literally running all over the place. and we had more than a hundred senators to learn faces for. but when i came to washington, this was in the mid '70s and early '70s and i had platform shoes. bad idea. after a week of running in those shoes and having terrible,

terrible blisters, mary ward, who is charlie's wife, charlie ward was mr. albert's administrative assistant and i stayed with them for the first couple weeks while i was here. i would come home with these horrible feet. one day she showed up with shoes that were ugly crepe and i kissed her. thank you. literally, we were walking everywhere. our feet were miserably, horribly tired. and it was. we were physically walking all over the place. in the mornings, we would put the congressional record into the folder, a thick document, put it under the seat, and after that, the day began. we didn't know where we would be, but one of the nice things was going into all of the members of congress's offices and meeting people and knowing this office is going to look like this. and it was decorated to their state's themes. it was a good experience to get to know the people who worked in those offices. it was a great experience. yeah, we did a lot of running. >> i would say, too, you mentioned the level of mischief in congress.

in the 1800s and certainly into the 1900s, '30s, '40s, '50s, pages and members conspired to play practical jokes on each other, incredible things. you know, finding members around the capital sleeping and they spread glue on their faces. so it's not the pages doing it, it's the other members enlisting the pages. you know, just the bill stretcher, that story goes back at least to the '30s, i think. i heard that over and over and over. so these traditions inside the capitol, long-standing traditions carried on and on and on through the generations. so i just wanted to mention that. any question i'm going to ask today i'm going to say, it's in my book. available online. >> one of the things about the cloakroom in the years i was there and probably the two of you, there were huge, plush couches lining this l-shaped room that any of the members -- and sometimes there was a rush

to get to one. they would just come back and sleep on these couches. they were very comfortable. of course, sometimes the pages when the congress was out of session would sleep on there, too. but that's changed, among a lot of other things. 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 you'd like to make, please make your way to the microphone. i know we have many former pages here. so if you'd identify yourself and perhaps your class. don't be bashful. i know you have stories to share with us, too. don't everyone get up at once. 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 gone on to have greater careers. many members of congress served as congressional pages. why do you think such a high percentage of former pages have gone on to such success and probably served as business, academia, and the media? did your experience as a capitol page 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. and be a bigger, other person. 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 worldly globally thinking person. and i think that's just as important as running for congress or being part of the pta or any of those other things which make you cognizant of what's going on around you. and we were having so -- ellen, were you going to say anything? >> i would underscore what felda pointed out. i think it heightens your awareness of how the legislative process works, how you are just as good as theport people in it, and how you have a responsibility to serve your community, invest back in your community, and do good wherever you see it can be done.

>> i did enter politics. after my experience. i ran for student council president my senior year in high school in springfield, illinois, and i won. and that, other than volunteering for a campaign here and there, was the end of my political career. but it makes -- when you've taken -- for me, when you're taken messages or had 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, mr. rumsfeld and then you get it done, you're going to be able to say that to miss or mrs. or mrs. or 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, but i haven't finished my degree yet. they said, we'll teach you. and they did. they taught me every job in the news room. i did obits, obituaries, i did the hog report, sports, education, police beat, everything. and when i went around with every reporter and every person on the desk and all the people on the staff in the news room, they said, okay, you're right. we're going to assign you to city hall in springfield. and then i went on to be assigned to the courthouse and then the state legislature. so that was -- 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 was a wealth -- it gave me a wealth of knowledge that some of the kids -- i said kids, some of the people that had went on to undergrad and graduate school in journalism didn't have. it was a real world experience that i sometimes regret having not completed that degree, but, you know, at my age, i don't worry about it so much any more. >> i can't talk about first hand experience, but i can tell you from 12 years at the page school and talking to numerous pages over the years, the guys who are 70 and 80 years old, they say page experience is the most important, most formative experience in their lives and their hold on to that experience. they gain an appreciation 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 to make it better. so you give back to your community. and i saw kids transformed because of the program. wanting to become involved in the life and just changing their lives for the good and making the country a better 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. and i saw that time after time after time in addition to talking to all the other people. i look out in the audience, i see vance sitting there, it's a perfect example of someone who holds on to that experience. and thinks it's if not the most important, one of the most important experiences of their lives because it was so transformative for them. you know, i don't think the value of the program can be measured in dollars and cents. 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 audience, let me go to pick up on what daryl just concluded with. both the supreme court and the house page programs are now defunct. is this a good thing or a bad thing? is this a loss to the country? what has the page -- what system provided to 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.

whether it's -- 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 little spot in the shade away from the church and everything and was smoking my cigar, waiting on my nephew and family. and i noticed that some debris had flown over onto the church yard. 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 fruc and drove off. i'm like, where did he go, where did he go? it's not so much that i want any kind of pat on the back for picking up trash in a church i'll probably never see again, but you just do things. i coached football, junior

football, yeah, junior football, church basketball, at 22, 23 years old. i volunteered, was working for the phone company, and these kids were working on their 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 videotape, and i think if i can remember, it's been about 20-something years ago, i think they finished third or fourth nationally. it's nothing i got paid for. it was just something i felt needed to be done because it was going tew fwekt t to affect the 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 around the room and making hash marks on a piece of paper, counting the votes. how many high school student governments do you know of have their own parliament aarianparl? ours did? i can't remember the rulings, but i'm sure he did. so we left work, went to school,

and did the same thing. >> yes? >> 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, felta alluded to the legislation happening at the time. one of my starkest memories is the lock heed aircraft moment. 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 -- after everybody picked it up and 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 about it at all, which, again, i just -- i'm not sure who coached them or whether it was just good home training, but it was interesting. >> i have a favorite story. bella was one of my favorite people ever, and i can recommme being this 18-year-old standing there on the floor of the house, and here she comes in her big flowered dress sashaying down

the aisle with her big floppy hat and she turns around she delivers a speech about how it's unfair for women who are poor not to be given money for abortions. and she went through demands. it's not just about it's going to cost us $100 for this abortion. it's going to cost us $250 for the delivery, this is an unwanted child. it may cost us 18 years of support for it and money for adjudication and incarceration and all these things. i'm standing here as a kid and saying this woman is so together. she was an amazing woman to me. it was a time where the women who were there were very impressive women. she was a very important woman to me. >> my favorite story comes from joe bartlett who was a page in the mid to late '40s. he told stories of the pages would be the first one in the capitol to go to school. so they would turn the lights on

in the hallways in the basement of the capitol. at the time, it was damp there and nobody had been there overnight so they were the first ones there in the morning and got to turn the lights on and see the rats scatter. it got to a point where they had to put a page in charge of catching rats, to get rid of the rats. and he was paid by the rat, every rat he got. so they noticed after a while, he was catching lots and lots of rats and making lots and lots of money yet the population of rats was still going up and nobody could figure out what was going on until they realized he was breeding rats. so talk about mischv chif on capitol hill. on the more serious side, some of the stories that are my favorites are -- 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 in that time when elnor roosevelt was there are especially touching because the stories i heard, they remember every detail about the stories, 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 she was such a gracious lady. >> i have one more quick one. frances bolton was a congresswoman was ohio, and she was just, first of all, she was extremely wealthy. she had taken her husband's place whether he passed in congress and was repeatedly elected. she would come when they would have long debates that would run literally all night, the pages

would be just dragging, you know, the phones aren't ringing. it's 2:00 in the morning, and we're just sitting there like that. she would come in with her fur thrown over her shoulder, boys! you boys look like a motley crew. come on, sit up. we need to do deep breathing exercises. close your eyes. relax your heads, relax your neck. relax your shoulders. and we go all the way down the anatomy and back up, and it was just -- this is a member of congress telling us to do relaxation exercises with us. >> i have another quick one, too. that is the summer i was a page, it was 1973, and that was the summer that wayne hayes who is on the ethics committee was having his rumble with fay -- no, who was it?

yes, yes. elizabeth, and we were like, ah? all the scandal. that summer of everything. who knew? >> another thing i remember is 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 boys out to one of her parties, and in between bites of fried chicken, they were passing around the hope diamond looking at it and passing it along. talk about opportunities that people don't get. >> we have another question. >> i was a page in the '80s, and at that time, it was pretty clear over time, you figured it out over time, there wasn't a rule out, but the girls weren't allowed to do some jobs the boys were 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 was it --?

>> paula remembers this better than i do. the only restriction i recall is not being permitted in a place called 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 for for 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 paulette here. she was a little taller. in addition to not being able to go to the marble room, she said she couldn't stand next to senator cranston because she was taller and it wouldn't look good for her to stand next to him. >> i had to stand a step down from carl albert when they took the pictures because he's not any taller than i am. >> thank you.

>> well, 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 that it definitely does because where else are we going to get something that will produce people such as this? and i think we need to give another round of applause to our panelists. >> for more information, follow us on twitter. >> watergate was not a caper. it was about a fundamental attempt by a president of the

united states to misuse and abuse the constitution. obstruct justice, and more than anything, to try and undermine the very electoral process. >> it's been 40 years since the watergate break in. >> they tampered with everyone's vote by saying this was not something that was done to have fun or it was not just dirty tricks. it was a strategic plan aimed at getting the weakest nominee, and they did it. >> watch more from the two reporters who broke the watergate story online at the cspan video library. each week, american artifacts takes viewers into archives, museums, and historic sites around the country. uss constitution was launched in boston in