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Show V ' li tAY.v. k4i MARIA ELENA RAMIREZ Eighth-grader to meet Reagan By JUDY JENSEN . NORTH SALT LAKE The last thing on Maria Elena Ramirez's mind when she was struggling over the last draft of her assignment to write about the Constitution, Con-stitution, was the possibility that she would be meeting the President of the United States as a result of Continued Page 2 Eighth grader to meet Continued from Pago 1 her efforts, but that is exactly what happened. Maria, an eighth grade student at St. Olafs, will travel with her parents pa-rents to Washington D.C. on Satur-day Satur-day and meet with President Reagan on Monday. The honor comes as a result of Maria's essay being chosen a winner out of over one million entries in the contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. She will join the other 149 winners in Washington for a celebration on Sunday. The winning essays will be published in a book commemorating the bicentennial bicen-tennial of the Constitution entitled, "Children of the Constitution." The students were asked to write an essay entitled "What the Constitution Con-stitution Means to Me and Our Country." Maria credits her win to her history teacher Mrs. Momm-son Momm-son and her parents, Rudolfo and Maria Ramirez. Maria said Mrs. Mommson's teaching helped her to understand the Constitution better and as a result of this teaching Maria was able to help her parents study for their citizenship test. Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez have been residents of the United States for many years. Mr. Ramirez came to the U.S. 26 years ago and his wife 19 years ago. "Now we feel like we really belong to this country," said Mrs. Ramirez and they are very excited about becoming citizens. With the help of their children, 17 year-old Antonio and Maria, they made preparation for the citizenship citizen-ship test a family affair. "Every night after dinner we would spend time studying. Antonio would ask us questions and Maria would always al-ways want to answer," laughed Mrs. Ramirez. Their efforts paid off and both Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez passed the citizenship test with flying colors and will be sworn in as American citizens at a ceremony in June. All of this additional study and watching her parents struggle to learn about the freedoms guaranteed guaran-teed them by the Constitution gave Maria the inspiration to write her winning essay. "I compared the Constitution to a product," said Maria. If you find a product that works you keep buying it and using it. That is like our Constitution, other countries have revolts and governments are overthrown, but the U.S. Constitution works and we have no need to change it." Mrs. Ramirez said she had a difficult dif-ficult decision to make when they were notified of Maria's win. The win did not include transportation to the awards ceremony and the family had been saving money for several years to finance a visit to Mexico to visit Mrs. Ramirez's family. "Do I Want to see the President Pres-ident or my Mother?" said Mrs. Ramirez. I knew this was a very important thing for my whole family, fami-ly, but it was a hard decision." She said that thanks to the support of the members of St. Olafs Parrish, and various parrish organizations that have helped to raise funds for the Washington, D.C. trip, that the family may be able to see the President Presi-dent and her Mother this year. Maria said she still can't believe that she won. She said that in the past she and her parents have only traveled to California and Mexico ; so this will be a new experience for all of them. Maria said if she were asked to give advice to the young people in America about the Constitution that she, "would tell them to think about it more and realize what these freedoms mean to them. Many people take it for granted until un-til it is taken away from them." |
