The first Jewish school girl to be a page in the House of Representatives is 16-year-old Heidi Stam of Brooklyn. N.Y. The daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Jacob J. Stam of 15 Mathews Pl., Heidi was appointed by Rep. Bertram L. Podell (D.N.Y.) in whose district she lived. Contacted by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in New York, Dr. Stam, a Brooklyn ophthalmologist, said she started working as a page last Friday and told her parents “she was crazy” about the job.
Dr. Stam said his daughter was scheduled to be the first girl page but House Speaker Carl Albert (D.Okla.) appointed another girl earlier who will serve through the summer. He said Heidi was always very interested in government and during a school trip to Washington last year she stopped into Podell’s office and asked him about the possibility of becoming a page. He asked her to write him a letter and she was accepted.
Heidi, who would have been a senior at Packer Collegiate Institute, a private school in Brooklyn, will attend the United States Capitol Page School in Washington next Autumn. The Senate and the Supreme Court first employed girl pages two years ago. The House delayed naming girls because of the problem of housing. Dr. Stam said. He said Heidi would live at the YWCA on Capitol Hill along with the other girl pages.
Housing for pages has to be close to the Capitol, Dr. Stam explained, because the pages attend school in the Library of Congress building from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and then go to work in Congress which sometimes stays in session until late in the evening.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
