The Columbus Dispatch...
Ex-pages say House jobs were inspiring
By  Jessica Wehrman
Monday August 15, 2011 

This plaque commemorates the service of Jeanine Hummer as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

When Upper Arlington City Attorney Jeanine Hummer graduated from high school in 1978, she received her diploma from then-President Jimmy Carter in the White House Rose Garden. 

Hummer, then Jeanine Amid of Toledo, was a U.S. House page — part of a high-achieving group of high-schoolers in one of the world’s most rarefied atmospheres. 

Alumni in that program soon will become even more rare. House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced last week that they are eliminating the House page program. In a joint statement, they cited cost — the annual tab exceeds $5 million — as well as advances in technology in their decision to eliminate the program. 

The news stunned and saddened Hummer. 

“I feel like that experience, everything that happened back then, set a path for what I became later in life,” she said. “It was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.” 

The House page program, which began informally in 1774 and formally in 1827, sent teens — originally mostly orphans or destitute youths, but later high-achieving high-schoolers — to Washington to help members, either by serving as gofers or messengers. 

The program was not without occasional scandal. In 1983, the House censured two lawmakers — Republican Dan Crane of Illinois and Democrat Gerry Studds of Massachusetts — for having sexual relationships with two pages, a female and male, respectively. Then, in late September 2006, Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned after exchanging sexually suggestive emails and instant messages with former congressional pages. 

But for Hummer, 50, the experience was more than positive. It “altered the direction of my life,” she said. 

She was appointed after volunteering for her local House member’s re-election campaign. Impressed by her work ethic, the congressman, Thomas “Lud” Ashley, tapped her to serve. 

For years afterward, until Ashley’s death last year, she wrote him letters thanking him for the opportunity. 

“I was a nobody, an absolute nobody,” she said. “And he gave me that opportunity, and I’m forever grateful to him.” 

She showed up in Washington with $50 in her wallet, a suitcase and an address for where she’d be staying. And before long, she fell in love with public service. 

As a page, she spent long days on Capitol Hill, going to school in the wee hours of the morning at the Library of Congress and working from 8:30 or 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. many days. Surrounded by like-minded high-schoolers who were also captivated by politics, Hummer found her calling 

“I decided to go into public service because of that experience,” she said. 

Dan Harkins, a Springfield lawyer who served as a page in 1976 and 1977, still remembers when House Speaker Carl Albert visited Page School to address his class. Albert advised class members to move to small towns, get established and run for Congress. Harkins did exactly that, running in the Republican primary for the 7th Congressional District seat in 2008. He lost to Rep. Steve Austria, R-Beavercreek. 

Harkins, who spent part of his childhood in Upper Arlington, remembers meeting students from across the country, including one who had never seen snow before. And he remembers the shenanigans that a bunch of high-schoolers engaged in — games of hide-and-seek in Statuary Hall, pranks on the more gullible members of their page class. 

It was a different Washington then, one where you could approach and chat easily with the speaker of the House, security was minimal and pages had “free rein” to wander about. 

“To me, the value of the page program was getting younger people interested in government,” Harkins said. 

It also encouraged civility. The presence of a group of high-schoolers, he said, largely encouraged members of Congress to “engage in proper decorum,” because they needed to set a good example. 

Lakshmi Satyanarayana, 25, a former Ohio Democratic Party staff member now studying law at Capital University, served as a page for Boehner in the summer of 2002. That year, she watched from the floor of the House as Rep. Jim Traficant, D-Youngstown, was expelled from Congress. 

The Celina, Ohio, native talked about the best chicken salad on Capitol Hill with then-Rep. J.C. Watts, an Oklahoma Republican. 

And she met a group of friends whom she keeps in touch with — friends who also went on to start careers in public service. 

Satyanarayana had considered being a doctor. But her experience as a page ultimately guided her down a different path, she said. Besides her work with the Ohio Democratic Party, she also has done stints at the Ohio Department of Commerce and the state treasurer’s office. 

“Out of all internships I did, it was the one experience that helped me feel like I was learning and actively seeing how a difference in America was made. It really was an opportunity to see the process of government,” she said. 

“It made me realize I wanted to be a part of that process somehow.” 

Read it at the Columbus Dispatch