[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 24, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E280-E281]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      A TRIBUTE FOR FORMER MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL FRANK KELLEY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. BART STUPAK

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 24, 1999

  Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, a distinguished public servant recently 
stepped down from a lifetime working on behalf of the people of 
Michigan. In fact, Mr. Speaker, when one considers the fact that Frank 
Kelley served 37 years as Michigan's attorney general, one might almost 
say it was two lifetimes worth of work, not one, that Kelley spent in 
his effort to bring economic and environmental justice to the lives of 
the working men and women of Michigan.
  A Democrat, Frank Kelley served with five Michigan governors, 
Republicans George Romney, Bill Milliken and John Engler, and fellow 
Democrats John Swainson, who originally appointed Kelley to fill a 
vacancy, and Jim Blanchard, who gave him the nickname the Eternal 
General.
  Let me quote from a Detroit Free Press editorial of December 27, 
which spotlighted the fighting spirit of Frank Kelley and summed up--if 
such a summation is really possible--the 37-year career of this law 
enforcement legend.
  ``Kelley likes to say that he was a consumer champion before anyone 
heard of Ralph Nader, and that he had an environmental division, `when 
most people didn't know whether it was spelled with an e or an i.' He 
regularly went after Michigan utilities in rate-hike cases like a pit 
bull after sirloin.
  ``He was outraged by charities that pocketed more money than they 
spent on good works, by retailers whose price at the scanner didn't 
match the price on the shelf, and by all the quick-buck ways 
unscrupulous and uncaring promoters could scam the poor and the unwary.
  ``He understood that the small ways in which people are cheated, 
stiffed, disappointed and betrayed add up to something big and 
corrosive. He knew that by protecting the common folk against such 
frauds, maybe you could keep people believing in the possibilities of 
justice and good government.''
  That is a powerful theme for a life's work, Mr. Speaker. We can 
glimpse in a few words a man who understood the deceptions that can be 
perpetrated on the elderly in their homes with fraudulent mailings or 
on housewives in grocery stores, and he claimed that consumer fraud 
cost Michigan residents more money than other crime.
  Public service certainly isn't over for Frank Kelley. He has already 
joined a new law firm in Lansing, that of Kelley, Cawthorne and Ralls, 
and he has been appointed by Governor John Engler to a post on the 
Mackinac Island State Park Commission.
  This 103-year-old civic body oversees the park land and the historic 
attractions on Mackinac Island, which make up about 83 percent of the 
island. The commission also oversees Colonial Michilimackinac in nearby 
Mackinaw City and Historic Mill Creek near Cheboygan on the Lake Huron 
shore.

[[Page E281]]

  Frank Kelley's love for this beautiful island is made clear by the 
fact that he has already purchased his burial site there, right next to 
the burial site of the late Sen. Phil Hart and across the road from the 
grave of the late Gov. G. Mennen ``Soapy'' Williams.
  But that's in the future as far as a re-energized Frank Kelley, fresh 
from heart bypass surgery, is concerned. Right now there is new work, 
new challenges, in fact, new careers.
  Whatever he undertakes, it's certain the people of Michigan will 
benefit from his endeavors.
  I am proud to call him a friend, a constituent, a mentor and--most of 
all--the ``Eternal General.''

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