[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 56 (Thursday, May 7, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S4548]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           L.F. ``TOW'' DIEHM

 Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today and ask my 
colleagues to join me in extending condolences to the family and loved 
ones of one of New Mexico's most outstanding citizens, L.F. ``Tow'' 
Diehm, who died last week. Mr. Diehm leaves a proud and indelible 
legacy for his family, profession, and community. He spent his 
professional life dedicated to athletics in New Mexico, and while he 
will be missed, his reputation will live on.
  Tow came to the University of New Mexico in 1957 and held the job of 
athletic trainer for 31 years. As friends and family will attest, Tow 
was a man who never forgot that the young student athletes in his 
charge were people. Throughout his 31 years, not a day went by when Tow 
did not touch the lives of the people around him. As a gesture to Tow 
of respect and affection, the University of New Mexico named its new 
athletic complex after him when it was completed in 1997. Indeed, the 
honors that were bestowed on Tow throughout his life were numerous: he 
is a member of the University of New Mexico Athletic Hall of Honor, the 
Helms Trainers Hall of fame, and in 1980, he became the first person, 
who was not an athlete or a coach, ever inducted into the Albuquerque 
Hall of Fame.
  Whether generating funding for the athletic department or acting as a 
confidante to the many student athletes he helped every day, Mr. Diehm 
did everything in his life, personal and professional, with honor and 
integrity. His influence on athletes, his colleagues and friends, to 
say nothing of his family, is immeasurable. The standard of excellence 
that he embodied will live on in each life that he touched.

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