[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 18 (Friday, February 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                TRIBUTE TO INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE DOCTORS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I appreciate very much the courtesy of my 
colleague. I will be very brief.
  I wanted to take the floor today to offer some honor to the memory of 
three people who were killed yesterday afternoon, and I do this only 
because this is at a time when public service is so often ridiculed by 
so many. I wanted to point out there are a lot of people in our 
Government who perform public service of an extraordinary nature around 
this country every day, day and night, often risking their lives to do 
so.
  Yesterday afternoon, tragically a plane crashed in Minot, ND. 
Actually yesterday morning a plane crashed, a Cessna 401 crashed. It 
was actually on the airport property landing at Minot Airport in the 
snowstorm. It was carrying three Indian Health Service doctors who, on 
their regular round, were flying up from Rapid City to go to several 
reservations in North Dakota. Ruggles Stahn, Arvo Oopik, and 
Christopher Krogh were on their way and would have been this morning 
treating Indian patients at the Fort Berthold Indian Health Center in 
New Town, ND. Dr. Stahn was a control officer dealing with the subject 
of diabetes.
  My late colleague, Congressman Lyland, and I had been to the New Town 
Reservation in North Dakota and had a hearing about the chronic, 
difficult problem of diabetes. They have diabetes 12 times the rate of 
the national average, not double, not quadruple, 12 times the rate of 
the national average on that Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
  As a result of that hearing, we got a model program on the Fort 
Berthold Indian Reservation, and Dr. Stahn would have been at that 
location this morning treating Indian patients had that airplane not 
tragically crashed.
  I would just say, and I wanted to point out today, that these three 
doctors were flying in a snowstorm yesterday to perform their duties to 
provide health care to people who live often in difficult circumstances 
and do not always have the best health care. These three doctors are 
examples of public service that is performed by many in our Government 
on the streets in police forces, in fire departments, yes, in the 
Indian Health Service, and especially by these three doctors. I today 
wanted to pay tribute to their memory and say that many of us 
understand the commitment that many public servants make around this 
country, and I hope that the good work of Dr. Stahn, Dr. Oopik, and Dr. 
Krogh is work that will live in the memory forever of so many people 
they have helped for a long while.

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