The publication is reproduced in full below:
MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP PUBLIC LIBRARY IS AN OASIS OF LEARNING, KNOWLEDGE,
WISDOM, AND KNOWHOW
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HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH
of new jersey
in the house of representatives
Thursday, October 28, 2021
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, a hundred years ago, two independent library associations merged into one amazing library--the Middletown Township Public Library.
Congratulations to Library Director Heather Andolsen and Board President Bill Bucco--and library staff and board members past and present--for this remarkable achievement.
A hundred years ago: Warren Harding was in the White House; New Jerseyans Joseph Frelinghuysen and Walter Evans Edge were in the U.S. Senate; Theodore Appleby was Monmouth County's Member of Congress; and the Freeholder Director was Bryant Newcomb.
America and the world in 1921 were still reeling and recovering from WWI and from the 1918 H1N1 Flu Pandemic that infected a third of the world's population and killed 50 million people.
That same year--1921--my favorite baseball team bought land to build Yankee Stadium (I was there in the stands in 1969 for Mickey Mantle Day); the treatment of diabetes was significantly advanced with the isolation of insulin and Albert Einstein got the Nobel Prize for Physics for his many contributions to theoretical physics including his 1905 theory of relativity.
And it was Albert Einstein who famously said ``the only thing you absolutely need to know is the location of the library'' which in the early years of MTPL perhaps begged the question, where is Dorothy Norton and her Ford Model T library on wheels?
Today, the Library is an important cultural and meeting center and a venue for assistance when disasters hit like Superstorm Sandy.
MTPL is an oasis of learning, knowledge, wisdom, and knowhow.
As food nurtures the body, the availability and accessibility of books and other literary works feeds the mind and soul.
A few weeks ago, I introduced an anti-human trafficking bill named after the great abolitionist, author, orator, and former slave Frederick Douglass.
I was joined at the press conference by Frederick Douglass' great, great, great grandson Ken Morris, who quoted his famous ancestor who said, ``knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave'' and ``Once you learn to read you will be forever free.''
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 190
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