Robert J. Mrazek
Encyclopedia
Robert Jan Mrazek was a Democratic
member of the United States House of Representatives
, representing New York's 3rd congressional district
on Long Island
for most of the 1980s. Also an author, he has written works of military fiction and non-fiction, set in the time periods of the American Civil War
and World War II
.
, graduating from Cornell University
(1967). He joined the United States Navy
to serve in the Vietnam War
, but was disabled by a training injury at Officer Candidate School
in Newport. After a period of hospitalization with wounded Marines, he turned against the war. After his 1968 discharge, he was an aide to U.S. Senator Vance Hartke
(1969–1971).
He was elected to the Suffolk County
Legislature, 1975–1982 and became its minority leader
. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention
in 1980, 1988, and 1992.
Democrat Mrazek was first elected in 1982 to the 98th United States Congress
, defeating John LeBoutillier
, a one-term Conservative
Republican
Congressman in the 3rd district
. (The districts had been redrawn
to reflect the 1980 U.S. Census.)
Freshman members usually do not sit on the House Appropriations Committee, but Mrazek persuaded Speaker of the House of Representatives
Tip O'Neill
to make an exception for him.
After being elected to his fifth term in Congress, Mrazek announced that he would not stand for re-election, choosing instead to explore a run for the United States Senate in 1992. He abandoned this race after being swept up along with hundreds of other members of Congress implicated in the House banking scandal
. Mrazek served in the United States House of Representatives
from 1983 until he retired in 1993.
Edwards Substitute Amendment to Title II, HR 5052 regarding Nicaragua was passed in June 1986; it limited the Reagan Administration's use of one hundred million dollars Congress had approved for military assistance to Contras seeking to overthrow the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Four amendments were proposed to put restrictions on the aid; in offering his, Mrazek raised concern that a Gulf of Tonkin type of incident could be exploited by the Reagan Administration to widen the course of the war, since the Contra camps were located along the border between Honduras and Nicaragua, and firefights between the Contras and the Sandanistas erupted regularly along the border. Mrazek argued that if American troops were killed in one of the camps, the Reagan Administration might send American forces into Nicaragua itself. Eventual declassification of secret White House memoranda revealed Mrazek’s concerns were justified.[6] Of the four amendments being considered in the House of Representatives to put restrictions on the aid, the only one to win passage was the Mrazek amendment, which banned all U.S. personnel involved in training Contras from coming within 20 miles (32 km) of the Nicaraguan border.{http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h1986-620}
Amerasian Homecoming Act became law in December 1987. In the wake of its passage, approximately 25,000 children fathered by American servicemen during the Vietnam War were brought to the United States. Called "bui doi" ("children of the dust") by the Vietnamese because their faces and skin color were painful reminders of the war, they faced terrible discrimination in their homeland; often they were even prevented from going to school. {http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issue/June_2009.html} By the mid-1980s, thousands were living in the streets. The USA at first refused to take responsibility for them, but in 1987, at the behest of high school students in his Congressional District who wrote a diplomatically- worded letter to the Vietnamese mission in NYC, Mrazek went to Vietnam and brought out an American-Vietnamese child named Le Van Minh, who was a beggar in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) (Asia Magazine, September 20, 1987). While in Vietnam, he met dozens of other Amerasian children, many of whom begged to "go to the land of my father." As a result, Mrazek authored the bill, which became law. Since its passage, many of the Amerasians brought to the USA by the bill have found success after graduation from college, as teachers, entrepreneurs, and business people. {http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/06/02/vietnam.stories.irpt/index.html?hpt=C11, Asia Magazine (Ibid.), and http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Children-of-the-Dust.html}
Manassas Battlefield Protection Act: With Representative Michael Andrews (D-TX), Mrazek led the fight in the House of Representatives to prevent the Civil War battlefield at Manassas, Virginia, from being turned into a shopping mall. In April, 1988, he inserted an amendment into an appropriations bill that prohibited federal funds from being used to plan and design a needed interchange near the 452-acre (1.83 km2) tract of land. (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1988-09-11/news/0070010135_1_manassas-national-battlefield-conference-committee-acre} He and Andrews then introduced H.R. 4526, which authorized the federal government to acquire the land and add it to the battlefield park. In the contentious battle over the legislation, Donald Hodel, President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, launched personal attacks on Mrazek and Andrews, accusing them of "playing politics" with the battlefield. {http://articles.latimes.com/1988-07-08/news/mn-6901_1_house-democrats} Nevertheless, the bill drafted by Mrazek was signed into law by President Reagan in November, 1988. {http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/mana/ADHIA4.HTM}
National Film Preservation Act: In 1988, as classic films like High Noon and Casablanca were being colorized and other early films were being "time-compressed" by television broadcasters to allow the insertion of more commercials, Mrazek introduced a proposal to protect classic American films from significant alteration without the permission of the films' creators. While the proposal was being considered, the "Mrazek Amendment" generated an intense lobbying campaign against its passage, led on behalf of the major film studios by Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association. (http://www.loc.gov/film/pdfs/schwartzcopsocietyjournal.pdf) At one point, Valenti said the proposal "...puts a spike in the eye of normal House procedure and creates a group which is something out of 1984." ("Jimmy Stewart goes to Washington" NYTimes, June 16, 1988) The legislation was backed by many members of Hollywood's creative community, including actors Burt Lancaster and James Stewart, directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, all of whom wanted to see the integrity of their work preserved without alteration. (NYTimes, Ibid.) Ultimately the Mrazek amendment prevailed in Congress; its final provisions included the establishment of the National Film Registry, in which 25 films per year deemed "culturally, historically, or esthetically significant" are protected by the Library of Congress. The law also set up the National Film Preservation Board to explore new approaches to saving endangered work. It was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on September 27, 1988. (http://www.dga.org/thedga/bas_history.php3)
The Tongass Timber Reform Act, which affected logging operations in the nation's largest national forest, was signed into law by President George H. Bush in 1990. First introduced by Mrazek in 1986, the proposed law was the subject of several years of contentious debate between its author and members of the Alaska Congressional delegation, including Representative Don Young (R-AK). After being defeated in a House vote on a Mrazek amendment in 1990, Young allegedly "went berserk," tracked Mrazek down in a House corridor and threatened him with a knife. (Ouside Magazine, November 1995 {http://outsideonline.com/magazine/1195/11f_out.html}). Mrazek's landmark conservation law revoked the artificially high timber cutting targets, protecting over two million acres (8,000 km²) of Tongaas old-growth forest and watershed acreage, mandating broad buffers for all salmon and resident fishing streams. {http://seacc.org/successes/tongaas-history}
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
member of the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
, representing New York's 3rd congressional district
New York's 3rd congressional district
The 3rd District of New York is generally the eastern half of Nassau County, with some parts as far west as Island Park and Long Beach. The Nassau portion contains suburban communities such as Bellmore, Bethpage, Farmingdale, Hicksville, Levittown, Massapequa, Massapequa Park, Merrick, North...
on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
for most of the 1980s. Also an author, he has written works of military fiction and non-fiction, set in the time periods of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Biography
Mrazek grew up in Huntington, New YorkHuntington, New York
The Town of Huntington is one of ten towns in Suffolk County, New York, USA. Founded in 1653, it is located on the north shore of Long Island in northwestern Suffolk County, with Long Island Sound to its north and Nassau County adjacent to the west. Huntington is part of the New York metropolitan...
, graduating from Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
(1967). He joined the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
to serve in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, but was disabled by a training injury at Officer Candidate School
Officer Candidate School
Officer Candidate School or Officer Cadet School are institutions which train civilians and enlisted personnel in order for them to gain a commission as officers in the armed forces of a country....
in Newport. After a period of hospitalization with wounded Marines, he turned against the war. After his 1968 discharge, he was an aide to U.S. Senator Vance Hartke
Vance Hartke
Rupert Vance Hartke was a Democratic United States Senator from Indiana from 1959 until 1977.-Early life, education, military service:...
(1969–1971).
He was elected to the Suffolk County
Suffolk County, New York
Suffolk County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York on the eastern portion of Long Island. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,493,350. It was named for the county of Suffolk in England, from which its earliest settlers came...
Legislature, 1975–1982 and became its minority leader
Minority leader
In U.S. politics, the minority leader is the floor leader of the second largest caucus in a legislative body. Given the two-party nature of the U.S. system, the minority leader is almost inevitably either a Republican or a Democrat, with their counterpart being of the opposite party. The position...
. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention
Democratic National Convention
The Democratic National Convention is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1832 by the United States Democratic Party. They have been administered by the Democratic National Committee since the 1852 national convention...
in 1980, 1988, and 1992.
Democrat Mrazek was first elected in 1982 to the 98th United States Congress
98th United States Congress
The Ninety-eighth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from January 3, 1983 to January 3, 1985, during the third and...
, defeating John LeBoutillier
John LeBoutillier
John LeBoutillier is an American political columnist, pundit, and former Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from New York.-Education:...
, a one-term Conservative
Conservative Party of New York
The Conservative Party of New York State is an American political party active in the state of New York. It is not part of any nationwide party, nor is it affiliated with the American Conservative Party, which it predates by over 40 years....
Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
Congressman in the 3rd district
New York's 6th congressional district
New York's Sixth Congressional District is a congressional district for the United States House of Representatives in New York City. It includes most of Southeastern Queens including the neighborhoods of Cambria Heights, Edgemere, Far Rockaway, Hollis, Jamaica, Laurelton, Queens Village, Rosedale,...
. (The districts had been redrawn
United States congressional apportionment
United States congressional apportionment is the process by which seats in the United States House of Representatives are redistributed amongst the 50 states following each constitutionally mandated decennial census. Each state is apportioned a number of seats which approximately corresponds to its...
to reflect the 1980 U.S. Census.)
Freshman members usually do not sit on the House Appropriations Committee, but Mrazek persuaded Speaker of the House of Representatives
Speaker of the House of Representatives
-National governments:* Speaker of the House of Representatives of Antigua and Barbuda* Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives* Speaker of the House of Representatives of Belize* Speaker of the House of Representatives...
Tip O'Neill
Tip O'Neill
Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill, Jr. was an American politician. O'Neill was an outspoken liberal Democrat and influential member of the U.S. Congress, serving in the House of Representatives for 34 years and representing two congressional districts in Massachusetts...
to make an exception for him.
After being elected to his fifth term in Congress, Mrazek announced that he would not stand for re-election, choosing instead to explore a run for the United States Senate in 1992. He abandoned this race after being swept up along with hundreds of other members of Congress implicated in the House banking scandal
House banking scandal
The House banking scandal broke in early 1992, when it was revealed that the United States House of Representatives allowed members to overdraw their House checking accounts without risk of being penalized by the House bank ....
. Mrazek served in the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
from 1983 until he retired in 1993.
Legislation
Mrazek wrote laws to preserve 3,000,000 acres (12,000 km2) of old-growth forest in Alaska's Tongass National Forest; to protect the Manassas Civil War battlefield in Virginia; to hamper the U.S. Government's ability to intervene in Nicaragua.[5] He also wrote the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which brought the children of American military personnel from Vietnam home to the USA, and the National Film Preservation Act, which established the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress.http://www.loc.gov/film/Edwards Substitute Amendment to Title II, HR 5052 regarding Nicaragua was passed in June 1986; it limited the Reagan Administration's use of one hundred million dollars Congress had approved for military assistance to Contras seeking to overthrow the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Four amendments were proposed to put restrictions on the aid; in offering his, Mrazek raised concern that a Gulf of Tonkin type of incident could be exploited by the Reagan Administration to widen the course of the war, since the Contra camps were located along the border between Honduras and Nicaragua, and firefights between the Contras and the Sandanistas erupted regularly along the border. Mrazek argued that if American troops were killed in one of the camps, the Reagan Administration might send American forces into Nicaragua itself. Eventual declassification of secret White House memoranda revealed Mrazek’s concerns were justified.[6] Of the four amendments being considered in the House of Representatives to put restrictions on the aid, the only one to win passage was the Mrazek amendment, which banned all U.S. personnel involved in training Contras from coming within 20 miles (32 km) of the Nicaraguan border.{http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h1986-620}
Amerasian Homecoming Act became law in December 1987. In the wake of its passage, approximately 25,000 children fathered by American servicemen during the Vietnam War were brought to the United States. Called "bui doi" ("children of the dust") by the Vietnamese because their faces and skin color were painful reminders of the war, they faced terrible discrimination in their homeland; often they were even prevented from going to school. {http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issue/June_2009.html} By the mid-1980s, thousands were living in the streets. The USA at first refused to take responsibility for them, but in 1987, at the behest of high school students in his Congressional District who wrote a diplomatically- worded letter to the Vietnamese mission in NYC, Mrazek went to Vietnam and brought out an American-Vietnamese child named Le Van Minh, who was a beggar in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) (Asia Magazine, September 20, 1987). While in Vietnam, he met dozens of other Amerasian children, many of whom begged to "go to the land of my father." As a result, Mrazek authored the bill, which became law. Since its passage, many of the Amerasians brought to the USA by the bill have found success after graduation from college, as teachers, entrepreneurs, and business people. {http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/06/02/vietnam.stories.irpt/index.html?hpt=C11, Asia Magazine (Ibid.), and http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Children-of-the-Dust.html}
Manassas Battlefield Protection Act: With Representative Michael Andrews (D-TX), Mrazek led the fight in the House of Representatives to prevent the Civil War battlefield at Manassas, Virginia, from being turned into a shopping mall. In April, 1988, he inserted an amendment into an appropriations bill that prohibited federal funds from being used to plan and design a needed interchange near the 452-acre (1.83 km2) tract of land. (http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1988-09-11/news/0070010135_1_manassas-national-battlefield-conference-committee-acre} He and Andrews then introduced H.R. 4526, which authorized the federal government to acquire the land and add it to the battlefield park. In the contentious battle over the legislation, Donald Hodel, President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, launched personal attacks on Mrazek and Andrews, accusing them of "playing politics" with the battlefield. {http://articles.latimes.com/1988-07-08/news/mn-6901_1_house-democrats} Nevertheless, the bill drafted by Mrazek was signed into law by President Reagan in November, 1988. {http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/mana/ADHIA4.HTM}
National Film Preservation Act: In 1988, as classic films like High Noon and Casablanca were being colorized and other early films were being "time-compressed" by television broadcasters to allow the insertion of more commercials, Mrazek introduced a proposal to protect classic American films from significant alteration without the permission of the films' creators. While the proposal was being considered, the "Mrazek Amendment" generated an intense lobbying campaign against its passage, led on behalf of the major film studios by Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association. (http://www.loc.gov/film/pdfs/schwartzcopsocietyjournal.pdf) At one point, Valenti said the proposal "...puts a spike in the eye of normal House procedure and creates a group which is something out of 1984." ("Jimmy Stewart goes to Washington" NYTimes, June 16, 1988) The legislation was backed by many members of Hollywood's creative community, including actors Burt Lancaster and James Stewart, directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, all of whom wanted to see the integrity of their work preserved without alteration. (NYTimes, Ibid.) Ultimately the Mrazek amendment prevailed in Congress; its final provisions included the establishment of the National Film Registry, in which 25 films per year deemed "culturally, historically, or esthetically significant" are protected by the Library of Congress. The law also set up the National Film Preservation Board to explore new approaches to saving endangered work. It was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on September 27, 1988. (http://www.dga.org/thedga/bas_history.php3)
The Tongass Timber Reform Act, which affected logging operations in the nation's largest national forest, was signed into law by President George H. Bush in 1990. First introduced by Mrazek in 1986, the proposed law was the subject of several years of contentious debate between its author and members of the Alaska Congressional delegation, including Representative Don Young (R-AK). After being defeated in a House vote on a Mrazek amendment in 1990, Young allegedly "went berserk," tracked Mrazek down in a House corridor and threatened him with a knife. (Ouside Magazine, November 1995 {http://outsideonline.com/magazine/1195/11f_out.html}). Mrazek's landmark conservation law revoked the artificially high timber cutting targets, protecting over two million acres (8,000 km²) of Tongaas old-growth forest and watershed acreage, mandating broad buffers for all salmon and resident fishing streams. {http://seacc.org/successes/tongaas-history}
Awards
For his conservation and preservation work, the Director’s Guild of America awarded Mrazek its first Legislative Achievement Award in 1987; in 1988, Mrazek, along with Andrews, was named a Conservationist of the Year by the NPCA, the National Parks Conservation Association, for their efforts to protect Manassas National Battlefield from adjacent land development. {http://www.npca.org/who_we_are/contact_us.html} The Governor of New York gave Mrazek the Commissioner’s Preservationist Award in 1990. {http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780316021395_AboutAuthor.htm}Author
Since retiring from Congress, Mrazek has published five books, including three novels and two works of non-fiction.- Stonewall's Gold was published by St. Martin's Press in 1999. It won the 1999 Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War FictionMichael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War FictionThe Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction is an annual literary award awarded to the writer of a work of fiction related to the American Civil War. The award was started by Jeffrey Shaara and named for his father, the writer of historical fiction Michael Shaara.The $5000 was...
.
- Unholy Fire, Mrazek's second Civil War novel, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2003.
- The Deadly Embrace was Mrazek's third novel, a World War II murder/mystery published by Viking Press in 2006. In 2007, The Deadly Embrace earned the W.Y. Boyd Literary Award from the American Library Association as the best military fiction of 2006.
- A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight, Mrazek's first non-fiction work, was published by Little, Brown & Co., in 2008. A Dawn Like Thunder was named as a "Best Book of 2009 (American History)" by the Washington Post.
- To Kingdom Come: An Epic Saga of Survival in the Air War Over Germany, published by NAL-Penguin in 2011, is an account of the ill-fated bombing mission of the American Air Force "Flying Fortress" team sent to raid Stuttgart in September, 1943. It was chosen as a main selection of the Military and History Book Club.
Publications
- Adapted for audio (six cassettes), read by Jeff Woodman, Recorded Books, 1999.
External links
- http://www.robertjmrazek.com/index.html
- Biography at his book's website
- Mrazek entry in Political Graveyard