[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 127 (Wednesday, August 2, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S11185]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CONGRATULATIONS TO DARIUS JAMES FATEMI, Ph.D.

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, Plato thanked the gods for having been born 
a man and for having been born a Greek and for having been born during 
the age of Sophocles. I thank the benign hand of destiny for allowing 
me to live to see one of my grandsons become a Ph.D. in physics.
  On yesterday, Darius James Fatemi was given his Ph.D. in physics. 
Seneca is reported to have said that a good mind possesses a kingdom. 
Disraeli said, upon the education of our youth, the fate of the country 
depends. Emerson said that the true test of civilization is not the 
census nor the size of cities nor the crops--no, but the kind of man 
the country turns out.
  You can imagine, those of you who are grandparents, and those of you 
who may not yet be grandparents, the pride which I share with my wife, 
Erma, in feeling that we have, indeed, contributed to this great 
country a new physicist, a doctor of physics.
  Darius was named after Darius the Great, who became King of Persia 
upon the neigh of a horse. Darius James Fatemi did not get his 
doctorate by the neigh of a horse.
  We are grateful that the good Lord has blessed us with wonderful 
grandchildren, and this is the first Ph.D. in our line. I suppose if we 
all look back far enough, may I say to the distinguished majority 
leader and to my colleagues, we would find somewhere in our ancestry a 
slave--the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, other peoples of antiquity 
owned slaves. And so we may have an ancestor who was a slave. At the 
same time, we may have an ancestor who was a king. But as far as I 
know, this is the first Ph.D. in my line, and I thank the good Lord for 
that.
  I thank all Senators for listening.

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