E 1186 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks June 8, 1995

particularly because it prevents untold human

suffering and millions of health care dollars.

We cannot wait to take action; unintentional

injuries are the No. 1 killer of children under

age 14.

Sharon Kitzhaber is to be commended for

her work with the National Safe Kids campaign. Safe Kids is all about getting children

buckled up or getting bike helmets on their

heads. Oregon’s First Lady has been working

to spread the word throughout the State that

by working together, we can save lives and

money. In fact, according the National Safe

Kids campaign, every dollar spent on prevention saves up to $70. In terms of injuries, for

example, universal bike helmet use by children ages 4 to 15 would prevent 45,000 head

inquires a year.

I join with National Safe Kids to protest recent attempts in Congress to eliminate funding

for the National Center for Injury Prevention

and Control [NCIPC]. NCIPC has been instrumental in highlighting the important role that

prevention can play in saving money and lives

in America. In fact, NCIPC is the lead Federal

agency for the prevention of injuries outside

the workplace and has developed an impressive partnership with private and public institutions to carry out their vital mission.

I pay special tribute to the efforts of Oregon’s First Lady, Sharon Kitzhaber, and urge

all my colleagues to get involved in the National Safe Kids campaign.

WALDEN POND RED MAPLE

fHON. DAVID E. BONIOR OF MICHIGAN

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, June 7, 1995

Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, whenever I return home to Michigan, I am always grateful to

spend time with the people I have the privilege

to represent in the U.S. House of Representatives. I am fortunate to have been raised in a

district where people are community oriented

and dedicated to creating organizations that

better our lives.

Last month, on May 6, 1995, I was pleased

to have the opportunity to join the members of

a group that epitomizes pride in our community—the Friends of the Roseville Public Library. An organization dedicated to improving

the city’s library, they gathered to commemorate the 20th anniversity of the founding of the

group.

The guest speaker at the anniversary celebration was Mr. Robert Selwa. Bob recently

celebrated his 25th anniversary with our local

paper, the Macomb Daily, where he specializes in community journalism. Bob relishes

covering what he calls ‘‘the heart of life in

America—people in their homes, with their

families, friends, and neighbors; in their

schools and in their churches, patriotic folks

who believe in this country and the values of

life.’’ For 25 years, he has done a fine job covering ‘‘the heart of life in America’’ and the

people of Macomb County know they can

count on him.

Bob has been a friend for many years and

I was pleased to share the podium with him at

the Roseville event. His remarks were enjoyed

by everyone in attendance and I wish to share

them with a large audience. Bob reminds us

all of our literary heritage from Thoreau’s Walden Pond to the American writers of todays. I

am pleased to submit his speech as part of

the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD and hope that my

colleagues and their constituents find it as inspiring as I did.

OUR LITERARY HERITAGE: BOOKS AND

LIBRARIES BRING AMERICA TOGETHER

(By Bob Selwa)

Our thanks for this celebration go to Rose

Kollmorgen, our outstanding library director

in Roseville, and to the Friends of the Roseville Library, and to all our students and patrons, supporters and friends, including Congressman Dave Bonior.

Beginning today it will be said that a tree

grows in Roseville—a special tree—a tree

representing our literary heritage in America.

We dedicate this special tree today to

mark the 20th anniversary of the Friends of

the Roseville Library, a dedicated group of

volunteers, and of the Roseville Civic Center,

a magnificent facility.

The tree we dedicate is a red maple grown

from a seed from one of the trees in the

woods by Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.

The maple tree is a proud member of our

woodlands from New England across the

northern Appalachians and throughout the

Midwest. The maple is one of the favorites at

home and in our neighborhoods, in our yards

and of our streets. The red maple is honored

as the state tree of Rhode Island, and its

cousin the sugar maple as the state tree of

Vermont, West Virginia, New York and Wisconsin.

Our Walden Pond red maple will be a reminder of the wonderful work for 20 years of

the Friends of the Roseville Library. This organization has funded 180 speaker programs

at the Roseville Civic Center, hosted an annual Children’s Christmas party, and provided bus tours for the public. The Friends

have given computerized databases, historical books and display items, a 55-gallon

aquarium, the compact disk collection, video

shelving, the ‘‘Books on Tape’’ collection, library seasonal decorations, and other donation totalling an estimated $140,000.

Thanks to both our civic leaders and our

volunteers, the Roseville Public Library

today has 110,000 books, 4,000 videos, and a

variety of other materials including records,

computer software, and books on tape.

Today the Walden Pond Reservation of

Massachusetts is a 300-acre wilderness forever wild. It includes a 64-acre lake. But New

England typically saves the word lake for

only the largest inland bodies of water, and

names its smaller lakes as ponds, and so we

have the name Walden Pond.

In 1845 the woods by Walden Pond were

owned by the great author, poet, philosopher

and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803–1882,

one of our foremost transcendentalists and

one of many great literary figures of Concord, Massachusetts.

One of Emerson’s followers and friends was

Henry David Thoreau, 1817–1862. Thoreau was

born in Concord and graduated from Harvard

University in 1837. Though he could have

pursued any profession he wished, he chose

to do odd jobs, such as work as a gardener

and handyman and housekeeper for his

friend Emerson.

One day Thoreau approached Emerson with

the idea of building a cabin in the woods by

Walden Pond and going there to live to see

what life in harmony with nature would really be like.

Both cherished nature and both encouraged and practiced individualism, and so it

was natural for Thoreau to want to go off

into the woods by himself, and natural for

Emerson to support the idea.

On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved to the

woods by Walden Pond. With his own hands

he built a simple wooden cabin, just enough

to shelter him from the occasional rain of

the Massachusetts springs, summers and autumns and the cold and the snow of the Massachusetts winters.

And so the seasons passed by at Walden

Pond—the summer and autumn of 1845, the

winter, spring, summer and autumn of 1846,

and the winter, spring and summer of 1847.

Occasionally Emerson checked on his friend

in the woods. Occasionally Thoreau came to

town. But essentially Thoreau was there by

himself in his cabin in the woods, wandering

those woods and the shore of that beautiful

lake, with the birds and the deer as his company.

Emerson attained great fame in his time,

but Thoreau attained even greater enduring

fame, when many years later, he reflected on

those times in the woods, and wrote the classic, ‘‘Walden.’’

Transcendentalists such as Emerson and

Thoreau believed in the harmony of man and

nature, in the importance of the individual,

and in the idea of passive resistance to civil

wrongs. When Thoreau went to jail rather

than pay a federal tax in protest of the federal government’s support of slavery and of

war with Mexico, and Emerson came to visit

him, the exchange was memorable.

‘‘What are you doing in there?’’ asked Emerson.

To which Thoreau asked, ‘‘What are you

doing out there?’’

Thoreau’s ‘‘On Civic Disobedience’’ written

from that experience in jail profoundly

changed the course of civilization, impacting

Mohandas Gandhi of India and Dr. Martin

Luther King of America. The writings and

lectures of Emerson and the writings of Thoreau created the American literary revolution. And they impacted our literature all

through the generations including the great

20th Century New England poet Robert

Frost.

From Emerson and Thoreau, to Laura

Ingalls Wilder’s beautiful and poetic prose

showing life on the frontier as it really was

for settlers, to the touching plays of Thornton Wilder especially ‘‘Our Town,’’ to the poetry of Frost, and to the sweeping historical

novels today of James Michener, we have a

literary heritage in America to cherish.

And today, in the wake of the terrorism

that occurred in Oklahoma City, as we struggle to build a national community and define

what our country is all about, we reflect on

what our literary heritage provides us and

what our libraries such as this excellent facility in Roseville mean to us.

Our literary heritage began with the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution when letters

and pamphlets and newspapers brought 13

separate colonies into one united nation.

Our literary heritage today is two centuries rich of a vast land. The heritage of

America is full and fascinating in the charms

of our 50 unique states. Our literary heritage

bonds a diverse people, as books and libraries

bring America together.

So today, when we dedicate the red maple

from the Walden Pond woods, let us reflect

on the writings of our American masters

such as Henry David Thoreau and Robert

Frost.

Here is a little taste of what Thoreau

wrote in ‘‘Walden’’:

‘‘I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from

any neighbor, in a house which I had built

myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts. . . .

‘‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. . . . But alert and healthy natures

remember that the sun rose clear. It is never

too late to give up our prejudices. No way of
June 8, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks E 1187

thinking or doing, however ancient, can be

trusted without proof. What everybody

echoes or in silence passes by as true today

may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow. . . .

‘‘I went to the woods because I wished to

live deliberately, to front only the essential

facts of life, and see if I could not learn what

it had to teach. . . . I wanted to live deep and

suck out the marrow of life. . . .

‘‘Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . I

say, let your affairs be as two or three, and

not a hundred or a thousand. . . .

‘‘Why should we be in such desperate haste

to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his

companions, perhaps it is because he hears a

different drummer. Let him step to the

music which he hears. . . .

‘‘Love your life, poor as it is. . . . The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the

almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s

abode. . . .

‘‘Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like

sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get

new things. . . . Turn the old; return to

them. . . .

‘‘Only that day dawns to which we are

awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun

is but a morning star.’’

Such is the philosophy of Henry David

Thoreau from ‘‘Walden’’ represented in the

red maple tree we dedicate today.

Robert Frost’s deep, stirring poetry builds

upon that philosophy, as with ‘‘The Road

Not Taken.’’

‘‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

‘‘And sorry I could not travel both

‘‘And be one traveler, long I stood

‘‘And looked down one as far as I could

‘‘To where it bent in the undergrowth.

‘‘Then took the other, as just as fair

‘‘And having perhaps the better claim,

‘‘Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

‘‘Though as for that, the passing there

‘‘Had worn them really about the same.

‘‘And both that morning equally lay

‘‘In leaves no step had trodden black.

‘‘Oh, I kept the first for another day!

‘‘Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

‘‘I doubted if I should ever come back.

‘‘I shall be telling this with a sigh

‘‘Somewhere ages and ages hence;

‘‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

‘‘I took the one less traveled by,

‘‘And that has made all the difference.’’

With these thoughts we dedicate a red

maple, one of the most beautiful and

sturdiest of all trees. The red maple buds

magnificently in spring, shades us well in

summer, comes to full glory in autumn, and

then promises us new hope in winter.

It reminds us of Robert Frost, and Henry

David Thoreau, and so many of the authors

who have given us a great American literary

heritage. Thanks to that heritage, we come

together as Americans, linked by a common

love of books and of libraries and of our

country.

TRIBUTE IN HONOR OF MAXINE

COHEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

fOF SAN ANTONIO COMMUNITY

RELATIONS COUNCIL

HON. FRANK TEJEDA OF TEXAS

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, June 7, 1995

Mr. TEJEDA. Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to honor an outstanding woman in San

Antonio, TX, a woman who in words and deed

has built bridges between diverse communities

and fought with uncompromising dedication for

her values. Maxine Cohen, the executive director of San Antonio’s community relations

council, is a woman of action, giving new

meaning to the words of Oliver Wendell

Holmes when he said: ‘‘To reach the port of

heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind

and sometimes against it,—but we must sail,

and not drift, nor lie at anchor.’’

The Jewish community in San Antonio earlier this week honored Maxine Cohen in a

beautiful and moving tribute. Diverse community leaders, one after the other, stood up to

praise her and highlight for all to hear the

positive impact that one person has made.

Ms. Cohen has spearheaded holocaust education programs in San Antonio schools,

founded the San Antonio Holocaust Memorial

and Museum, responded to attacks on the

Jewish community in various media, and

fought for the security and well-being of Israel.

She has reached out to others. Recognizing

the value of shared experience and personal

relationships, Ms. Cohen established an organized dialogue with local Catholics to break

through old barriers and emerge with lifetime

friendships. Her work concretized what we already knew: that we as humans share fundamental values and bonds that emerge from

and at the same time transcend religious lines.

Maxine Cohen combines inner strength, personal conviction, and unlimited spirit. One

after the other, her admirers recalled instances

of her selflessness and dedication, her love

and caring for her fellow Jews and for the entire San Antonio community. She inspires others to become involved in politics, in community, in our schools, teaching all of us time and

again the virtues of involvement and activism.

Senator Robert Kennedy must have envisioned Maxine Cohen when he uttered the following words in a 1966 address at the University of Capetown, now inscribed at his

gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery:

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or

acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes

out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny

ripple of hope, and crossing each other from

a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can

sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression

and resistance.

Maxine Cohen contributes far more than her

share of ripples of hope, and with her setting

the example for us, we can hope for a future

in which we stand proud for ourselves, whatever our background or race, and appreciate

each other for our unique contributions to our

great Nation and the entire world.

CHAPLAIN PRECIADO AND THE

fVFSC

HON. MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ OF CALIFORNIA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, June 7, 1995

Mr. MARTINEZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to

praise the laudable work of a nonprofit, charitable organization in my congressional district,

the Veteran Family Service Corp. [VFSC].

Started 4 years ago during the Persian Gulf

war, the VFSC has helped thousands of veterans find food, clothing, shelter, and drug and

alcohol treatment.

Through the tireless work of Chaplain Robert Preciado, the founder and president of the

Veteran Family Service Corp., hundreds of indigent veterans and their dependents in the

San Gabriel Valley receive moral and material

support every other Wednesday. The VFSC

provides 9 to 12 tons of food monthly, directly

to veterans, homeless shelters, and food pantries in the community.

The VFSC, through its food bank, gives veterans who are down and out a helping hand.

Chaplain Preciado offers hope to people who

have run out of hope. I have stood with Chaplain Preciado and seen first hand the admirable work he does.

During natural disasters, the Veteran Family

Service Corp. has extended its services to

nonveterans. The VFSC, for example, provided much-needed relief to victims of the

Northridge earthquake. With the help of countless volunteers, the cities of Baldwin Park,

Irwindale, and Azusa, as well as the California

Army National Guard 40th Infantry Division,

the VFSC provided over 27 truckloads of provisions to earthquake victims. The VFSC has

also provided help to flood victims in the

South Bay area in January 1995.

In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I salute Chaplain Preciado and the Veteran Family Service

Corp. for providing food, clothing, assistance,

and hope to veterans and their families in

need.

COMMEMORATION OF THE RETIREMENT OF ALBERT M. DREYFUSS

f

HON. ROBERT T. MATSUI OF CALIFORNIA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, June 7, 1995

Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to

take this opportunity to call to the attention of

the House of Representatives the retirement

of one of the most distinguished business and

civic leaders in my home town of Sacramento,

Mr. Albert M. Dreyfuss.

For nearly 50 years, Al has made Sacramento a better place to live, both through

his landmark building designs and through his

service to the community.

As an architect, I can think of no one who

has made a greater impact on the Sacramento

area than Al. From our airport, to our leading

hotels, to some of the finest, most modern office buildings that grace our skyline, Al has

been a true innovator in creating facilities that

have made our city more attractive, and our

businesses more efficient.

As a community leader, Al has taken his

abilities as an architect and literally donated

them to our community’s governments and

civic organizations. He was a founding member of the Capitol Area Plan Committee in

1959, and served as its chairman from 1959

to 1967. Under Al’s leadership, CAP led our

region through some important transitions as

Sacramento grew into a major metropolitan

area. But he also made sure that, as Sacramento developed, it did so responsibly while

preserving its rich historical heritage.

Mr. Speaker, as Al undoubtedly is aware, I,

at one time, aspired to be an architect. When

I look at all Al has accomplished in his career,

I cannot help but wonder what would be left

for me to achieve as an aspiring architect, had

I followed that path. As he leaves the firm he