[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 35 (Tuesday, March 18, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E497-E498]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           RALPH SANTIAGO ABASCAL: A LAWYER'S LAWYER'S LAWYER

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 18, 1997

  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise to report sadly to the 
House of the passing yesterday of Ralph Santiago Abascal, one of the 
giants of the American legal profession, and a man I have been honored 
to call a close personal friend for three decades.
  Both in California and throughout the Nation, among those who 
advocate for the poor and within the Hispanic community, among 
environmentalists and farm workers, welfare recipients and the 
malnourished, Ralph Absacal will be remembered as a man of consummate 
legal skill, boundless optimism and formidable intellect.
  In a lifetime of advocacy for the financially destitute, the 
politically marginal, and the socially outcast, Ralph nevertheless 
displayed an expert's knowledge of the intricacies of the political 
world. I knew him first in Sacramento,

[[Page E498]]

when I was a staff person in the California State Senate and he was an 
activist attorney fighting for farm workers, the disabled and children. 
Our close relationship continued when I came to Congress in 1975 and we 
fought many of the same battles at the Federal level.
  Ralph was a valued and creative advisor. Our efforts to enforce 
reclamation law and end unjustified water subsidies in California's 
Central Valley laid the groundwork for massive reforms like the Central 
Valley Project Improvement Act and the Bay-Delta process that, at long 
last, are rearranging California's water priorities and restore our 
State's decimated environment.
  Ralph was the early leader in the fight against unsafe pesticides 
that endangered consumers and farm workers, too. His pioneering legal 
work paved the way for the prohibition of DDT and the protection of 
groundwater from chemical contamination. His work on behalf of children 
guaranteed nutrition assistance, educational opportunities and equal 
access without regard to disability or ethnicity.
  For some, I suspect, Ralph Absacal's career was about chasing 
rainbows. But Ralph caught a fair number of those rainbows, and ours is 
a far safer, far more just, and far cleaner world because of his 
tireless efforts.
  He stands as a giant in terms of his fight for the poor and the 
disenfranchised people of America. It is perhaps his greatest legacy 
that millions of those whose lives will be forever improved by his 
life's labors never even heard his name, never knew that he spent 
decades arguing on their behalf in the courtrooms, in the legislative 
chambers and in the streets.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that all Members of the House of Representatives 
join me in mourning the loss of one of America's great advocates and 
attorneys, and extend to his widow, Beatrice Moulton, and their 
daughter Pilar.

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