[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 157 (Tuesday, November 9, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H11842]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                TRIBUTE TO THE LATE GEORGE E. BROWN, JR.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I am not going to use 5 minutes, because my 
colleagues have spoken much more eloquently than I could, and I also 
want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) for delaying his 
long awaited special order to allow us to complete this California 
memory of George Brown.
  I think that the centerpiece and the trademark of our democracy in 
this House of Representatives is civility. The ability of the Members 
of the House to have close quarters combat on values and on philosophy 
and yet remain civil to each other. And I think if there was anything 
that George Brown taught not only the delegation but the rest of the 
House it was civility.
  He did all the things that my colleagues have mentioned. When we on 
the Republican side ran strong, tough races against him, the next time 
we saw him, he would be smiling, he would be beaming, he would be 
winning, and he would not hold it against you. It was an amazing 
lesson. I think it was a lesson that we all ourselves tried to emulate, 
and in that sense he threw a rock into the pond and caused a lot of 
ripples of civility. He helped us to be better to each other.
  He was a guy with a great good sense of humor. I recall when we were 
working the Salton Sea project, which he was a real champion of, and he 
worked with the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Bono), the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. 
Bono), the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), and myself on that 
project, and one day, on an extremely windy day, we went to the Salton 
Sea, which is fed by the most polluted river in North America, the New 
River, when the waves were about two feet high and had whitecaps, and 
we were to go out with the Secretary of the Interior Mr. Babbitt on 
these air boats and tour the Salton Sea.
  As George and I walked down to our air boat, I noticed that our two 
seats were extremely low to the water. And I looked over at the 
Secretary of the Interior's air boat and he had a high seat that was 
about five feet off the water. And I asked a friend of mine, who was a 
native there in Imperial Valley, and George Brown was born in Imperial 
Valley, in Holtville, he was really a man of the desert, and I asked 
this friend of mine, do you want to go out? And he says, not on your 
life. He said, this is the most polluted stuff in North America. He 
said, you are going to be catching that stuff right in your teeth.
  So I suggested to the fish and wildlife people, who were conducting 
the tour, that maybe George and I might be allowed to ride in the air 
boat that had the high seats. And, of course, we were denied that 
privilege. That went to Mr. Babbitt. So George says, looks like they 
have a little something less for us. They provided us with a single 
sheet of plastic. I think we were to pull up like a makeshift 
windshield to keep ourselves from getting too much of this pollution in 
the teeth.
  We got lots of it that day. And here was George Brown, a guy who had 
immense prestige and political power, and could have been doing a lot 
more comfortable things than riding around in the Salton Sea with 
whitecaps coming over the stern of this little air boat, because he 
believed in this cause of cleaning up the Salton Sea. That was George 
Brown. A man of great civility, a man with great good humor.
  And I like to think of George as being a real product of this country 
that he came from, this Imperial County, Imperial Valley. He was born 
in Holtville, the carrot capital of the world, where they do a lot of 
farming, where people are hard working Americans, they are open and 
straightforward, and they all seem to have a sense of humor. And I 
think that George acceded to that desert sense of humor in the best 
way, brought it to this House and this chamber, and helped to make us 
all better people and better representatives because of it.
  So I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr) and the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) for putting on this very 
important service. George Brown is going to live for a long time in our 
hearts and I think in our actions, because I think we are all going to 
be a little better to each other. We are still going to have those 
tough differences, and I think that is good, but we have a democracy 
that is a model for the rest of the world because we are civil, and 
George Brown was a leader in civility.

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