WASHINGTON — As President Bill Clinton’s impeachment was brewing, a North Side father, Bobby Summers, made his third grade son write a letter to Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., as punishment for lying.

The words of the then-8-year-old student who attended Chase Elementary School about the importance of telling the truth are worth recalling as the House this week gets closer to impeaching President Donald Trump. Trump’s tenure is already stained by his thousands of misleading claims and downright lies about matters big and small.

Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on Dec. 19, 1998.

As the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Hyde was managing Clinton’s impeachment and read the letter from William Preston Summers on Jan. 16, 1999, during Clinton’s Senate trial.

Hyde, who died in 2007, used William’s letter as he discussed how “the president is the trustee of the national conscience.”

To underscore his points, Hyde quoted William, who wrote, “It is important to believe the president because he is a important person. If you cannot believe the president who can you believe. If you have no one to believe in then how do you run your life. I do not believe the president tells the truth anymore right now.”

Hyde also read the P.S. from Bobby Summers: “I made my son William either write you a letter or an essay as a punishment for lying. Part of his defense for his lying was the President lied. He is still having difficulty understanding why the President can lie and not be punished.”

I wrote about William’s letter in 1999. On Sunday, I tracked down William’s father.

Twenty years later, it’s Professor Bobby Summers, on the political science faculty at Harper College in Palatine, a northwest Chicago suburb.

He teaches courses on American government and world politics. Given the historic events unfolding — the House Judiciary Committee has an impeachment inquiry hearing Wednesday — Summers, 52, is discussing the Trump impeachment with students taking his American government course.

The family in 1999 lived on North Fairfield Avenue just south of Armitage Avenue and later moved to Wonder Lake. Bobby and his wife, April, — in 1999 a law student at DePaul and today a lawyer — later moved back to the city, a few miles from where they were 20 years ago.

William is now 29. After high school, William ended up joining the Air Force, becoming an airline mechanic working on fighter jets. He lives in Phoenix and is currently unemployed.

The letter briefly thrust William into the national spotlight; the experience helped him be more truthful, his father said, and “kept him interested in politics.”

Impeachment “has to be a grievous act against the foundations of American government and the Constitution. It cannot be personal. It cannot be political,” Summers said.

As for letter writing, Summers is still giving assignments 20 years later.

“One of the assignments I still have my students do is to write letters to politicians.

“…The assignment is open. They have to write two letters to any politician covering any subject of public policy. They can ask questions, they can ask for information; they can encourage their mayor, representative, president, whoever, to vote a certain way or take a certain stand.

“I mean it to be pretty open so that they can write things that are really relevant to them rather than relevant to me.”

I asked him about lessons learned from Hyde reading his son’s letter — either as a father or, years later, as a political science professor.

Said Summers, “It was very encouraging that someone read his letter and was willing to take him seriously ... That’s a good lesson I like to share with my students. They can be heard if they put their voices out there. ... Citizens can have an impact, can be heard, if they are willing to get out there. So everyone has to get out there and make their voices heard.”