[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 85 (Monday, May 22, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H5370]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              TRIBUTE TO A GOOD FRIEND AND GREAT AMERICAN

  (Mrs. SCHROEDER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I, too, rise to pay tribute to my good 
friend Les Aspin. This is a man who was never about power or never 
about pretense. He was about public service and the highest quality of 
public service. He truly gave it his all, every single day he got out 
of bed. No taxpayer could ever complain that Les Aspin did not put his 
whole self into what he was doing, no matter what it was.
  We have really, indeed, lost a great mind, a very energetic person, 
and a person who did not come with a certain ideology but came, 
instead, to listen to the facts and try and do what was right.
  One of the things that he did as Secretary of Defense that probably 
will go unnoticed but should not go unnoticed is he was brave enough to 
start putting some of the rhetoric aside and open the doors for many of 
America's young women who had been waiting outside that door to serve 
more fully in the armed services. Les was the kind of guy who would 
look at the studies, who would look at the performance ratings, who 
would look at the tests, and who would say, of course, they can.
  There is absolutely no reason except bias and prejudice that they 
cannot move forward. He opened those doors, and many of the young women 
proudly serving today in America's military can be looking to Les Aspin 
and saying, thank you, because he was the one who put aside many of 
those superstitions and moved that forward.
  But that was the kind of person who he was. We will miss that kind of 
person very desperately and I will miss him as a friend.


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