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It is said that a wise man learns from his mistakes. It is one of life’s great ironies that the wisest men may possibly be those who have screwed up the most. I am certainly a charter member of that club. But let me tell you about one page who learned an unforgettable lesson destined to earn him at the very least an honorary membership.  His name was Andre and he was a page was from Detroit.  He was a very bright, articulate and likable fellow. 

Anyway, since we had some free time on our hands that morning we decided we would have a mock debate.  Rodney Wilcox, a Republican page from Pennsylvania would be Richard Nixon, Will Burgess would be Hubert Humphrey and I would be George Wallace (but only because I had the accent down, not due to any ideological parallels). Andre would referee the debate from the Speaker’s Chair on the Rostrum and the other guys would sit in the members’ chairs and watch and judge us to see who did the best impression.

Rodney spoke first as Nixon. “I can achieve Peace in Vietnam. Peace with Honor. I will restore the personal, human element in government. Without this restoration, we cannot succeed.” He spoke of the need for law and order.  Since he was a Republican page and rich kid, I assumed his sympathies, regardless of the degree of sophistication of those sympathies, were pretty damned close to Tricky Dick’s. The rest of the pages not working in their Congressman’s office were sitting in the Members’ Chairs, cheering on their candidates and jeering their foes. 

Will had his Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Vice President of the United States of America, down pat, with the forceful delivery and populist appeal of the real thing. He was “pleased as punch” at this and that, with a barely discernible Mississippi accent that he was trying to disguise.  He called Nixon “Furtive…he’s furtive, I tell you!” (He must have read the same article I did). I wondered then if Humphrey really would triumphantly weather the political and literal blood stains of that summer’s murders of Dr. King and Senator Kennedy, so indelibly lodged in the fabric of the Johnson Administration by sheer proximity, the Administration of which he was now the torchbearer by default.

I was the last one to speak. I looked back at Andre sitting in the Speaker’s chair at the Speaker’s desk. On the desk was the coin silver inkstand. It is the oldest surviving relic of the House. The origin of the inkstand is unclear, but it appears in portraits dating from 1821 and is stamped with the mark of J. Leonard, a Georgetown silversmith. The tray contains three crystal inkwells and is adorned on both sides by eagle medallions. The feet of the tray are fasces entwined by a serpent, a classical symbol of wisdom surrounding authority. Richard had told me about this when he gave me the tour.

I really couldn’t play the part of George Wallace with any real sense of empathy, unless I pretended to be my father. I had the natural southern drawl, so to stretch it to an Alabama length was easy for me.  You just stretch one-syllable words into two-syllable ones. “Yes” becomes “Yay-ess”. And drop the ending “g”’s.  Nothin’, everythin’, somethin’. I was “tired of the gova-mint pussyfooting around” this bunch of criminals, and “tired of the other candidates pussyfooting around” that issue or this, and so on and so on.

Only after I remembered that Andre was sitting right behind me, and that Andre was black, did I remember just in time not to make a fool of myself by getting too close to Wallace’s more racist rhetoric. “I will do away with excessive foreign aid and use the savin’s on domestic programs, such as highway buildin’. And I won’t bow to the know-it-alls that don’t know it all, those newspaper edituhs that continue to attack me and my followers.”   I stuck to the demagoguery and steered clear of the idiocy, as best I understood such to be.

It wasn’t the speech I was faking that struck me as cool.  It was the idea of where I was standing.  I was standing where every President since that Chamber was built had delivered his State of the Union Address. Lincoln on the War Between the States. Teddy Roosevelt on the need to make Panama a country. Franklin Roosevelt and his “date that will live in infamy”. General Douglas MacArthur and his “Old Soldiers Never Die” speech.   John Kennedy and his promises to reach for the stars. Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society.

These were great people and they had been standing right there, where I was making an ode to the freedom for which these and other great men and women gave their lives and livelihoods in war and in peace. And I did it not by championing the virtues of tolerance, liberty, charity and freedom, but by mocking the vanishing vestiges of Southern racism and the last pathetic candidate they could find to lead them on such an unworthy and lost cause.

 I was just about finished with my senseless diatribe when I heard a little buzzer, kind of like a doorbell, go off behind me.  I didn’t think that much about it at the time and kept on finishing up my pussyfooting accusations.  All of a sudden, the doors to the galleries upstairs of the Chamber swung open as did the doors on the floor level, on both sides of the dais and well and from the cloakrooms, too. At least twenty policemen stormed in. And they were all armed with rifles or pistols, weapons drawn and ready. I even saw a machine gun! We were surrounded. 

The first thing I noticed was the sound of Andre hitting the floor behind me, knocking the Speaker’s Chair back from the desk where it sat. Whether it was because he was from Detroit and had mastered those reactions in similar situations back there, I’ll never know.  But he was unquestionably a good second ahead of the rest of us in hitting the floor.

After the Capitol Police had the Chamber “under control”, they finally figured out it was no terrorist attack from nationalist Puerto Ricans this time. Looked more like a bunch of pages hiding on the floor scared shitless. One of them went up to Andre. The Head Cop – his ID badge said Captain Howell - asked him who pushed the button.

“The what?” Andre tried to sound convincing.

“Who pushed the Sergeant of Arms button? That one right there,” Howell said, pointing to the button that was now about seven inches from Andre’s under-the-desk-hiding head.

“I thought that button would ring down there where the Parliamentarian sits. I was calling Nick,” Andre said, pointing to the lower ring of chairs at the bottom level of the dais and the seat Nick the page had just so recently vacated with haste.  Unfortunately for Andre, it wasn’t exactly the right seat. Or the right button.

“That button is for the Sergeant-at-Arms, not the Parliamentarian. That button you pushed sends a red alert to every Police Officer on Capitol Hill of an emergency in the House Chamber. They put it in after the Puerto Rican shootings in 1952. You’d better hope Mr. Miller doesn’t get wind of this. In fact, if I were you, I’d find somewhere else to be right now. I know they send the best and brightest kids to work here, but some of you guys can really cause trouble. I’ll just say it shorted out.  It happened once before.”

Captain Howell told his men to return to their posts and to consider this an “electronic malfunction”, if no one objected. No one did, though several had a hard time suppressing their giggles. He looked at Andre. “And you can get out from under there now.”  We were all reaching the doors and heading out to the cloakroom when I stopped, looked back and saw Andre get out from under the desk, stand up, brush himself off, and thank Captain Howell for not shooting him.

~ CHARLES BROWN, October, 1968

“I was a Senate Democratic page during the fall of 1963. During that time the Senate ratified the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and Haile Selasse of Ethiopia visited the chamber. But the most indelible memory is of the day that President Kennedy was assassinated.

I was sitting on the steps of the Senate rostrum when a doorkeeper entered hurriedly and walked to Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon, who was the Democratic floor manager. He told Morse, "The president has been shot."

Sen. Edward Kennedy was presiding, but he could not hear this conversation. Microphones and amplification would come to the chamber several years later. Sen. Morse immediately moved to recess subject to call of the chair, and someone went to the rostrum to tell Sen. Kennedy.

As I walked through the Senate lobby on a run to one of the office buildings, I observed Sen. Kennedy with his head bowed, a telephone to his ear. There ensued what seemed to be a long period of high anxiety as news filtered in from Dallas. One of the wire service tickers in the lobby reported that Kennedy was dead, while the other service only had him at Parkland Hospital.

Senators drifted to the chamber as it became known that the president was dead. There was no protocol as to where senators stood. I remember being near the back of the chamber when the Senate came out of recess. The chaplain, Frederick Brown Harris, delivered a moving prayer, ending it with a line borrowed from Lincoln's assassination, almost shouting: "God lives and the government at Washington stands."

A group of us had planed to go to New York City on the Eastern Air Lines shuttle that night. The landlady of our boarding house didn't think it was a good idea, but we went anyway. Manhattan was very quiet. There were pictures of Kennedy, framed with black, in department store windows.

On the following Sunday, a group of us stood at the edge of the parking lot as the caisson bearing Kennedy's casket came up the hill and his remains were taken into the Rotunda. As the family emerged in the sunlight, John, Jr., saluted. I remember seeing Richard Nixon wearing a Chesterfield coat step out of a Rolls Royce. Other eminent politicians and celebrities showed up. One of my Alabama pals came into the cloakroom to excitedly proclaim that he had just seen Billy Graham and George C. Wallace.

On the day that Kennedy's casket was removed from the Capitol, we pages walked at the back of the line of senators into the Rotunda, where we ringed the catafalque. In the chamber, Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Maine placed a rose on the desk that Kennedy had used.

In the days that ensued, there was heightened security. While delivering tickets to President Johnson's joint session, one page lost a pair of tickets. A group of us went over his path many times, trying to find them.

That joint session was highly emotional. I stood on the ledge behind the railing of the Republican side of the House chamber. From my vantage point, I could observe Sen. Richard Russell, the leader of the Southern bloc. As Johnson called for action on a number of bills, including a Civil Rights Act, Russell look downward and did not applaud.”

     ~ STEVEN A. FORRESTER, Fall, 1963

“Being Flag Page was still one of the best duties to have, and as Page #1 for the summer session, I spent a lot of time at the switch board on the Republican side of the House. We’d answer the phone “Pacaderm Page Service”. Friday’s were horrible because we’d lay out long tables in the cloak room, and collate all of the legislative material coming up the next week. Hundreds of bills and amendments that had to be put together, packaged, and delivered. We hated it. We got along great with the Dems, but at the time (Carter was in office) there were far more of them than there were of us. We would sit out on the steps of the Capitol many nights just talking, and I slept on the steps of Capitol building many times,

All in all, it was probably the greatest experience of my young life. Nothing I did in high school or college compared with the sense of duty and responsibility that I felt as a page, I was very honored to have been one of the few to make it. I still think of those days fondly.”

~ HARRY FRIEDMAN, Summer, 1978

“For any other page, we all know there are SOO many stories! But I’ll save your time and only tell one.

So a group of 24 of us planned to go to Georgetown or somewhere, so we signed out and headed to the metrostation. We take the metro we are suppose to take and we get off on time and and someone told us to take the elevator upstairs, so we did...Even though the stairs were right next to it. As other know, the elevators are glass and being kids we try and cram everybody in.

At 14 people still waiting outside, about five more get in, decided there was more room...and because there was only 4 more people out...we dragged them in. Going up was REALLY slow, we were unsure if we were going to make it...but it looked hopeful. About a foot from the normal stopping place we STOP. The girls panic and scream, buttons are being pressed trying to go back up.

People are STARING at us because we have 24 people in a SMALL elevator. People pressing the emergency button and you can hear it going off. As we see a policeman come around the corner the next thing we know the elevator goes down semi-fast...and the doors open and we all go running!

This may not be humorus to some, but for former pages, they understand the fight between human and elevator. The many times of “how many can we fit” and that normally ended up in a broken elevator!”

         ~ BRETT HICKMAN, Summer, 2001

“I was sitting in my dormitory, finishing lunch, gazing out the window at the eloquent Washington Monument.  Staring at the cherry blossoms swaying in the foreground, I noticed a clock.  It was 12:55 in the afternoon and I had to be  back at work by 1:00.  Quickly, I grabbed  my suit jacket and sprinted down Independence Avenue.  As I galloped up the Capitol Steps, I heard the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, yell to me, “Hey page!”. Turning around, I realized that  the leader of our nation’s legislative process, one of the most important people  in the world, was calling for me! He  read my nametag, gave me an envelope and said, “Jacob, run this to the Senate  Clerk’s Office.  I was in wide-eyed amazement; a 16-year-old boy was running an errand for our nation’s chief  legislator.  This is an average day as a  U.S. House of Representatives page.

As a junior in high school, you may  compete to serve as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Once selected to serve in this program, your entire life will be changed.  During the summer before my sophomore year of high school, I was rethinking my life.  I wanted to go away and seek adventure.  I wanted to leave my small town for a sprawling metropolis or an exotic country.  I wanted a unique high school experience equivalent to my sister’s experience as a Rotary Exchange student in Ecuador.  Now, I wanted to go away.

After searching, I discovered a  program that was a perfect match for my outgoing nature.  This was the page program of the U.S. House  of Representatives.  This program would allow me to spend my junior year of high school, working, going to school, and living in the most dangerous city in our nation, Washington, D.C.  I wrote a letter to my Congressman, the  Honorable Christopher H. Smith, and requested an application.  That application required letters of recommendation, essays, transcripts, a list of extracurricular activities, and many other items of information.  My  transcript was sound because I had attained the highest grade point average in my class.  My extracurricular activities included service as Party Leader of my school’s Model Congress, election as a  class officer, and participation as an active member and leader in most of my school’s clubs.

I wrote the appropriate essay  emphasizing my love of governmental affairs and my constant quest for knowledge  and learning.  I expressed that I was a hard worker, for at the time I was a busboy at two different restaurants.  My local Congressman’s staff reviewed my application and selected me from a field of eighty-four applicants as the  nominee.  Each of the 435 Members of Congress nominate a single page and only sixty-six of these nominees from across  the country are confirmed by the Speaker of the House to serve as year-long pages.  The day I received the telephone call that informed me that I was confirmed to serve as a United States House of  Representatives page was one of the happiest days of my life.

I  arrived in Washington D.C. in late August of 1997 as an idealistic young man, who thought I would change the world.  I learned this was not possible at such an early stage.  However, as a page my belief in advancing society grew stronger and more practical.  I gained the knowledge and tools that I will one day use to reach a position of influence.  In this position,  I will strive to affect policy for the betterment of humanity.

The  program, which truly transformed all my goals and gave me a desire to serve as a  public official, was divided into three aspects:  school, work, and residence hall living.  The pages attend school in the U.S. House of Representatives Page School located in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.  The school operates under time  constraints, with pages attending school from 6:30 a.m. until an hour before  Congress goes into session.  For example, if Congress went into session at 10:00 a.m., I would only attend school until  9:00 a.m.  Despite limited class time, the educational aspect of the school enhances the page program, helping to make my experience full and rewarding.  The school provides an exceptional education with a broad curriculum that effectively educates a very diverse student body -- the 1997-1998 page class included pages from over forty states.

I lived  in the O’Neill House Office Building, only one block from the U.S. Capitol.  The pages had the enlightening experience of living in a dormitory setting while just sixteen years of age.  This freedom and liberty of living with my peers and without my parents allowed me to mature to be an independent young  man.  The pages, who share this residential area for almost a year, elect their own government.  I campaigned and was elected to the student  government, which organizes and executes activities and trips. As a representative on the Page Activity  Council, I coordinated activities ranging from sports to dances.  I initiated many events including excursions to Baltimore Orioles games and hiking trips.  By planning events based on my constituents’ desires, I received another taste of what it is like to be a public servant.

The most enjoyable aspect of my one-year excursion was my employment in the House of  Representatives chamber. In this program, my fellow pages and I assisted daily in our nation’es legislative  process.  From delivering information on pending legislation from committees to congressional offices, to serving as a courier between members of Congress, pages experience the operations of our government. Cloakroom pages inform Members of Congress on times of votes and the legislative schedule, while documentarian pages raise the flag on the Capitol and summon Members of Congress to roll call votes. Witnessing history  in the making almost everyday by listening to some of the most controversial  debates ever is a memory I will always cherish.  In Congress, more than in any school, I truly received an education. From attending deliberations and committee  hearings, I gained a comprehensive understanding of our society.  Today, I use this knowledge to formulate my own ideas as to how to one day ameliorate the ills of our nation. I learned that a government must be  especially sensitive to what it regulates and controls.  A theory to improve a society in actuality may worsen it. Consequently, as I  currently serve as President of my floor and as a representative to a Pennsylvania State University student government, I  critically evaluate any governmental action to prevent any detrimental ramifications it may have.

From August  of 1997 until June of 1998, I enjoyed the rare and distinct privilege of serving  with a select group of American teenagers.  The job required hard work and genuine responsibility, but offered me an  unparalleled experience.  Pages make  friends and connections on Capitol Hill that will last their entire life.  By living with my peers, I made very close  friendships, and I still communicate and visit with many of my fellow former  pages.  By working in Congress, I made many professional relationships that will also last in perpetuity.  For example, I recently assisted my Member of Congress, the Honorable Christopher H. Smith, in his political campaign and he has assisted me with letters of recommendation for scholarship and college applications.

My service in the federal government inspired me to become a diligent public  servant at all levels of government. After returning from Washington, I was appointed by the Mayor of Burlington Township and approved by the Town Council to serve as the youngest  Committeeman ever.  I quickly earned the respect of my committee peers and was elected to vice-chair the Burlington Township Mayor’s Advisory Committee.  I sincerely believe that mayoral and youth partnerships are integral in fostering prosperity and establishing profitable relationships - across generations and  social barriers.  Then, due to my strong  desire to help the community, I was selected as a delegate to the American Legion Jersey Boys’ State.  In actuality,  I was able to represent my community for two consecutive years in this simulation of our state democratic process.  Overall, the page program opened avenues for advancement and allowed me to flourish in our world of opportunity. 

The  United States House of Representatives page program, including school, work, and  residence hall living provides a unique opportunity for young people to become a part of history in an institution with a long and honorable tradition.  This program was the most profound experience  of my young life.”

~ JACOB KOSOFF, Entire School Year, 1997-98

“I had a great time as a page in the Spring of 2001. I sat behind the desk as overseer, but it was much more fun doing runs. One time I was taking a nap in the crowded page cloak room, and I woke up to find it almost completely empty. I asked someone where everyone was and they said that Bill Gates was testifying in the building. I went out to see if I could find everybody, and ended up meeting Bill Gates and hearing him tell us about when he was a page. The next day I had a color picture in the Washington Post. That was probably the coolest famous person encounter I had while I was there.”

           ~ BRADFORD TAYLOR LYMEN, Spring 2000

I will always remember the time a group of about 10 of us pages went to Union Station for lunch. It was a Saturday, and we used our complimentary vouchers for a free lunch, compliments of the page dorm. We were done eating lunch, and decided to go back to the dorm, via the Metro, because we were too lazy to walk and it was simply to hot anyway. Well, we bought our passes and as we were going through the gate to go down to wait for the metro, we saw it arrive at the stop. We all quickly ran to get on to the car, not wanting to miss it, or wait another five minutes for the next one. Well after we were on the train, we realized that one from our group was missing. Walto, as we liked to call him, had not gotten on the train with us. We decided, to wait for him at the transfer station to the Orange Line, and we split up into four groups to try and catch him as he got off the next train. As it turned out, he never got off the next train, and the one after that. We decided to go back to the dorm and wait for him there. We got off at the Capital South Metro Station and formed 3 groups, or search parties, to look for Walto, in the hopes that we would catch him before he got to the dorm so that we wouldnt get in trouble by a Proctor, or Officer Rudd. We formed three groups, each with three people and a cell phone, to keep each of the groups up to date on the search. One group stayed at the station, hopefully to catch him getting off of a train, or walking back. One group stayed outside the dorm, to catch Walto before he went inside, and one group was to go into the dorm and search for Walto. Luckily, when the third group got to the dorm, he was already there, preventing the search of all of DC for Walto the Page. I will always remember this story because it was hilarious the way it worked out, and the way nine of us formed groups to look for him. Operation Where's Walto, was successful.

         ~ MICHAEL MERZ, Summer Session I, 2002

It was our last day of being a Page. Congress was not in session that day so it was fairly slow. There were only about 10 of us on the House Floor because most people were either in the Page Cage or were sent home because they worked late the night before. Since it was our last day we were feeling pretty silly and started doing things we would have dared to do earlier in our term as Pages. I'll refrain from detailing exactly what we were doing in fear of incriminating myself as well as others, but we were having lots of fun! We only had about an hour and a half left of work when all of a sudden this alarm starts going off! We were all pretty confused when Miss Sampson came out of her office and told us to leave the building immediately! So we try and camly walk out of the building even though we are a little nervous. When we get outside we start to hear rumors of a possible fire on the fourth floor. The next thing we see is a fire truck pulling up by the Capitol Building! None of us were really sure what we were supposed to do until we were told to go back to the dorm. After getting back to the dorm we decided to turm on CNN to see what was going on. It was not even a minute later when what do we see? We see ourselves on the Breaking News of CNN!! We all were screaming in excitement when we realized that they were reporting that there was smoke spotted in the Capitol Building. However, it later develops that it was dust being blown around by a fan! Even though it turned out to be nothing, it got some of us Pages on CNN and it definitely made for a memorable last day of work as a Page for the U.S. House of Representatives.

~ ALAINA SCHROEDER, Summer Session I, 2002

I have many memories for my three weeks. They all start when I met the kids in the next room who like to play frisbee at 1 in the morning, soon to be a nightly ritual by both rooms. That was always a great time! Also Operation Where's Walto! Of Course, one of my favorite had to be some great milk chugging. One gallon in an hour...which no one could do! Since I was the only ninja there I had to show everyone how to do some Kung-Fu Fighting at the dance. If you were a guy in the long wing on the last night you can remember the full moons that were shown to the people who were leaving. I still laugh when we mooned the proctor. Wow! Was it I or did everyone become the fastest runners when she finally noticed.

~ IAN TANNER, Summer Session I, 2002

"It was the odd Friday afternoon towards the end of the first summer session in 1989, one where thoughts turned to volleyball on the Mall and the distinct, expressed hope that Whip notices wouldn't be called in for delivery. The House wasn't in session, calls weren't coming in with any regularity to the Overseers, even Mrs. Donneley (our Page Supervisor) in a rare instance was in fact sending some pages home early.

That being said there was the ever-present stream of tourists filing through the visitors gallery, no doubt disappointed to some degree that they couldn't see James Trafficant offering up some thundering diatribe about the evils of aluminum baseball bats.*

Out of the workday doldrums something caught our attention in the visitor's gallery immediately up and to the right of the Democratic Overseer's desk. It would seem that a tourist had accidentally dropped a bag or two of souvenirs that fell onto the walkway between the two page desks at the rear of the chamber. A page was immediately dispatched to pick up and return the items to the group, and upon her return, she explained that the visitors were in fact a group of some fifteen to twenty high school students and their chaperones from the old U.S.S.R. Apparently they were taking in a quick visit to the Capitol (having initially met up in New York I believe) before breaking up the very next day, heading to different cities & towns all over the United States on a year-long exchange program.

This being understood, we asked if it were possible to grab a couple of additional "souvenirs" that the students might like. We weren't entirely impressed by what they'd purchased at the gift shop, so about four of us took about ten minutes to round up whatever looked interesting: spare H.R. reports, pens & pencils from the Cloak Room with the House seal, etc. We even sent a runner flying out to the store in Longworth to buy a number of postcards, keychains, and other knick-knacks, first returning to the gallery to tell the group to stick around for a bit.

We eventually compiled the items in a few bags and made the short trip upstairs to meet the students, probably about our age from the look of things. We spent the next twenty minutes talking to them about our role as Pages, where we were from, how'd we get the opportunity, etc.

You have to remember that this was only months before the Berlin Wall came down, this while Gorbachev worked to espouse the virtues of perestroika and glasnost. So here you have two groups of teenagers, representing two countries with historically different political ideologies, meeting on what turned out to be the cusp of a historical moment. But teenagers are teenagers whether you live in Washington, D.C. or Moscow. We thought it was pretty cool that this group would be leaving town the next day to head all over the country, likewise they thought our responsibilities and job on the Hill was pretty cool.

An hour or so later as some of us were leaving (no Whip notices thank God!) we bumped into some of the same group on the Capitol steps. We chatted with a few of them (their English was pretty good,) while one of our fellow pages, a gentleman from Illinois named Michael Peil, spoke a few words to them in Russian. If memory serves me correctly, a photographer from the Washington Post caught the moment and ran the photo and caption the next day. From what we could gather it was a pretty whirlwind trip to this point, leaving the very next day, so one of the pages came up with a gem of an idea: why not try to meet up in Georgetown later that evening for something akin to a night on the town? So later that night a number of pages along with a number of the Soviet students met up for a few hours to have some dinner, check out the shops, etc. It'll sound the cliché, but apparently what impressed them the most was a visit to buy jeans at Banana Republic.

I think it's fair to say that any number of memories that punctuate the page experience are completely random and unexpected, deriving from circumstance as much as anything.

· Author's note: there was in fact an instance during the summer of 1989 where a House member did comment as such, although whether it was Trafficant or another representative is subject for debate."

~ EVAN WHITNEY, Summer, 1989

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