 |
| The young people of the Hill... |
October 19, 2001 |
| |
Dear Friends,
Most of the people who work on Capitol Hill are young. The hours are long and the pay isn`t great, but young people called to public service and eager to make a difference come to Washington. It`s no different in our office.
Usually, the first job a young person gets is answering the phones and opening the mail. We get a lot of it. Last year I got over 30,000 letters and e-mails just from New Mexicans.
The first batch of mail, sorted and strapped together and delivered by the House mail room, arrives outside our door at the Cannon Office Building early in the morning. Then John, Matt, Maggie, and Sean go to work opening and sorting. In New Mexico, Katherine takes on that job.
Sean is our intern this semester. He`s a tall, lean kid who grew up in Albuquerque and attends Texas Tech. His Dad is in the New Mexico Air Guard and his Grand Dad was a submariner in World War II. He joined our crew shortly before the September 11th attack and has been reliable and helpful every day.
Maggie takes care of the front desk. She`s the one likely to answer the phone when you call. A recent NMSU graduate and one of the friendliest people you`ll ever meet, she worked for the Albuquerque Solid Waste Department in their customer service section. We figured that if she could handle people upset about their garbage, she could handle just about anything that could happen in our front office.
Matt just moved up from the front desk to be the main mail guy. Matt graduated from college about a year ago, put all his stuff in his car and drove east to find a job on Capitol Hill. He just walked into our office with his resume and asked for a job. I liked his gumption. And I liked something else. He had volunteered in a youth prison to help boys not much younger than himself get their lives back on track. Matt has a compassionate heart.
John has technically graduated from mail duty to more legislative work, but he is still my utility in-fielder. Another UNM graduate, I first met him when he volunteered on my campaign while still in college in 1998. He`s a quiet can-do guy who not only can fix the computers when they crash but finds his way through the FAA bureaucracy to get the Balloons approved to fly for the Fiesta. John knows the mail and helps out to make sure it gets done.
Back in Albuquerque, Katherine is the keeper-of-my-life. There`s no good training for schedulers, although air traffic control or circus juggling experience helps. Katherine is very good at it and opens the mail that comes to the Albuquerque office too.
So, when I heard on the car radio about the letter with anthrax in Senator Daschle`s office, I called our intern Sean. He already knew what he was supposed to do with our mail and any courrier packages that arrived and he`d done it. John had gone to a meeting with the House Sergeant at Arms and told everybody on the team what the plan was. Katherine had been in on a conference call for district offices and briefed everyone in Albuquerque. They had done what needed to be done without being told.
One of the great things about American young people is that so many of them innovate and take initiative. They organize themselves, figure things out and take on responsibility. The mail problem was a little thing, perhaps. But I`ve seen it in a dozen other little ways over the last six weeks.
So far, this generation is doing just fine.
Wish you were here,
P.S. For the time being, it would be easier if you use e-mail rather than snail mail to reach us in the Washington office. |
|
|
|