[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 59 (Thursday, May 2, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4633-S4634]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO DAVID IFSHIN

 Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, today, we laid to rest a dear 
friend of mine, and of many of my colleagues, David Ifshin. His family 
honored me by inviting me to be among the eulogists at David's funeral. 
I want to include in the Record a copy of my remarks so that those many 
Americans who review our proceedings will know that a good and much 
loved man and an authentic American patriot has been lost to us.
  I ask that those remarks be printed in the Record.
  The remarks follow:

             Eulogy for David Ifshin by Senator John McCain

       It has become a common appeal of eulogists for the bereaved 
     to celebrate the life rather than mourn the passing of the 
     loved one to whom we bid goodbye. It is a hopeful and well-
     intended appeal. Gathering in sorrow is not, I suspect, what 
     David Ifshin would have us do on this occasion. But he was 
     such a lovely guy, and his company such a blessing, that the 
     loss of him is a great weight which only a word from David 
     could lift from my heart today.
       Yet, the sadness of this day will not long intrude on our 
     memories of David; memories which illuminate for me a way to 
     live my own life. As we grow older, we all learn how brief a 
     moment life is. David's was far too brief, but he filled his 
     moment with so much passion and love and with such a 
     ceaseless striving for grace that it would exhaust the lives 
     of lesser men who manage to stay among us for more years than 
     David could. Few people, having reached the end of a long 
     life, will have done as much good, lived with grater dignity, 
     deserved more honor, bestowed more love, traveled as far as 
     David Ifshin did in his forty-seven years.
       David had an uncommon capacity for personal growth. When I 
     was in his company, I always had a sense that David derived 
     much of his own happiness from discovering virtue in others. 
     And I believe those discoveries made him grow. They nourished 
     his own humanity.
       David was a patriot because he found, as all patriots must, 
     virtue in his country's cause. He always felt passionate 
     about his country. But when we are young our passion is not 
     always governed by wisdom gained from long experience, and, 
     thus, is often indiscriminate in the emotions it animates. 
     While living in Israel David discovered his country's virtue, 
     and his love of country became the object of his enlightened 
     passion.
       David also possessed an animating love of justice. He 
     worked to make our society more just, and he sought justice 
     for those who were not blessed to live in this country. Even 
     more importantly, he always tried in his personal 
     relationships to do justice to others. And that explains why, 
     no matter where his reason and his love took him, David never 
     left a friend behind.
       We friends of David are cast across the spectrum of 
     contemporary American politics. Some may think that David and 
     I became friends because David's political views became more 
     compatible with my own. That is not really true. My regard 
     for David is more personal then political affinity. We 
     remained partisans in different camps. What David taught me, 
     and, I suspect, what he taught a great many people, was how 
     narrow are the differences that separate us in a society 
     united in its regard for justice, in a country in love with 
     liberty.
       In this town, we accentuate our political differences to 
     advance our respective agendas and our professional 
     ambitions. David kept such things in perspective. He was 
     loyal to his political beliefs, but he pledged a greater 
     devotion to the bonds of friendship and love that connected 
     him to so many people of diverse backgrounds, creeds and 
     aspirations.
       He was extraordinarily generous in his regard for others' 
     virtues, and self-effacing in considering his own attributes. 
     Because of that capacity, I always felt in David's company 
     that I was in the presence of a better man.
       Regrettably, it was not human virtue, but human weakness 
     which created the occasion for me to publicly declare my 
     personal regard for David. Some people who did not know David 
     based their judgment of his character in their resentment 
     over one brief episode in David's life. I am ashamed to admit 
     that I once made the same mistake. My subsequent discovery of 
     David's true character taught me to refrain in future from 
     using snapshots of another's life as the full measure of a 
     person's value. That was a valuable lesson to learn, and I am 
     indebted to David for having taught it to me.
       To honor that debt, I tried to impart the lesson to others 
     who had rushed to a wrong judgment of David. Three years ago, 
     I went to the Senate floor to respond to a protest at the 
     Vietnam War Memorial. One of the protestors had held up a 
     sign questioning David's patriotism and his association with 
     the President. I wanted the protestors to know that they were 
     bearing false witness against a good man. That this small 
     gesture meant so much to David meant even more to me. David 
     Ifshin was my friend, and his friendship honored me, and 
     honors me still.
       Most of the important and lasting friendships I have made 
     in my life were formed in the shared experience of war. David 
     and I did not fight a war together, but neither did we fight 
     a war against each other. We chose instead to make a peace 
     together.
       I found little to differentiate the quality of our 
     friendship from the quality of those that were begun in 
     Vietnam. I learned about courage, honor and kindness from all 
     my friendships. From David, I learned to look for virtue in 
     others, and I also learned the futility

[[Page S4634]]

     of looking back in anger. I'm a better man for the 
     experience.
       I think that as David approached the closing of his life he 
     could look back with pride, and with gratitude, that his life 
     was not distinguished by its brevity, but by its richness, by 
     the love of his beautiful family, and by the tender regard in 
     which he was held by so many people who knew a good man when 
     they saw him. We are all better people for having been 
     blessed by David Ifshin's friendship.
       Gail, Jake, Ben and Chloe, Mr. and Mrs. Ifshin, thank you 
     for so generously sharing David with the rest of us. Please 
     know that the day will arrive when your deep hurt subsides, 
     when the memory of David, and the bright and gentle moments 
     you shared with him lifts your hearts again. He will be with 
     you always.

                          ____________________