[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 36 (Tuesday, March 28, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H1426-H1428]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      E. ROSS ADAIR FEDERAL BUILDING AND UNITED STATES COURTHOUSE

  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 2412) to designate the Federal building and United States 
courthouse located at 1300 South Harrison Street in Fort Wayne, 
Indiana, as the ``E. Ross Adair Federal Building and United States 
Courthouse''.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                               H.R. 2412

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. DESIGNATION.

       The Federal building and United States courthouse located 
     at 1300 South Harrison Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana, shall 
     be known and designated as the ``E. Ross Adair Federal 
     Building and United States Courthouse''.

     SEC. 2. REFERENCES.

       Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, 
     or other record of the United States to the Federal building 
     and United States courthouse referred to in section 1 shall 
     be deemed to be a reference to the ``E. Ross Adair Federal 
     Building and United States Courthouse''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) and the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette).
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2412 designates the Federal building and United 
States courthouse in Fort Wayne, Indiana as the ``E. Ross Adair Federal 
Building and United States Courthouse.''
  Edwin Ross Adair was born in 1907, attended public schools and 
graduated from Hillsdale College and the George Washington University 
Law School. Adair volunteered as a lieutenant in World War II and was 
awarded battle stars for the Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, Rhine 
and Central European campaigns. Congressman Adair was first elected to 
the 82nd Congress and served for 20 years in the United States House of 
Representatives. He became the ranking member on the Committee on 
Foreign Affairs and was active on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs 
and on the Committee on Committees.
  After his service in the United States House of Representatives, 
President Nixon appointed Adair ambassador to Ethiopia, and he served 
as ambassador until 1974.
  This is a fitting honor for this dedicated public servant. I fully 
support this bill, and I urge all of my colleagues to support it as 
well.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. BERKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2412 is a bill to designate the Federal building 
and United States courthouse in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as the ``E. Ross 
Adair Federal Building and United States Courthouse.''
  Congressman E. Ross Adair served his country and his State with 
bravery and distinction for almost his entire life. He was a dedicated 
teacher, decorated war hero, conscientious civil servant and diplomat. 
He served in the House of Representatives for 20 years, from 1951, the 
year that I was born, until 1971, representing the citizens of the 4th 
District of Indiana. In 1972, President Nixon appointed him as 
ambassador to Ethiopia, where he was posted until 1974. In 1976, Adair 
served on the Indiana State Privacy Commission, and in 1976 he was 
appointed to President Ford's reelection campaign. He was active in 
many civic organizations as well as in his church.
  Mr. Speaker, it is fitting and proper to acknowledge the 
accomplishments of Congressman Adair with this designation. I support 
H.R. 2412 and urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to 
the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder), the prime sponsor of the 
legislation.
  (Mr. SOUDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor for me today to be here 
with this bill to name the Federal building and U.S. courthouse in Fort 
Wayne, Indiana, my hometown, after northeast Indiana's longest serving 
Congressman, E. Ross Adair. He served 20 years in the district, getting 
elected the year I was born in 1950, and served until 1970, when he was 
appointed ambassador to Ethiopia.
  It is also with great personal satisfaction that I have the honor of 
doing this, because as a young political activist, when I was still at 
Leo High School and moving to Indiana Purdue University at Fort Wayne, 
my first campaign was in Ross Adair's 1968 reelection effort when 
redistricting had put two Congressmen into the same district. The group 
that we developed was at that time the second largest youth group ever 
put together in the country, and as my colleagues can see from this old 
poster, E. Ross Adair was not necessarily who one would think would 
attract a lot of young people. In fact, one of my friends, Lauren 
Smith, did a campaign for Winston Prouty, a Senator in Vermont, and 
Winston Prouty dressed up in all of these fancy clothes and it said, do 
we elect Winston Prouty because he is a swinger? You open it up and it 
says, no, it is because he does a good honest job of representing the 
people of his district.
  That is what E. Ross Adair did, and that is why many, 2,000 young 
people got involved in that youth campaign to elect him and he won a 
very close and, quite frankly, unexpected victory in 1968. This 
particular poster, I collect a lot of Indiana memorabilia, and it is in 
the 1952 campaign when he still had hair. He lost his hair not too many 
campaigns after that, as politics is prone to do.
  Let me give my colleagues a little bit of his bio. He was born in 
Albion, Indiana, a small town northwest of Fort Wayne in 1907 to 
parents Lue and Alice Adair. His mother and father were both educators. 
His father was a school superintendent and newspaper editor and his 
mother a school teacher. That newspaper, by the way, still exists in 
Albion. Ross's parents emphasized the importance of education and 
encouraged him to be an avid reader. In fact, the family home contained 
one room solely dedicated to books, which later became the first 
lending library in Albion. Albion now has one of the most beautiful 
small-town libraries in the country.
  After attending public schools in Noble County, he attended Hillsdale 
College in Michigan, receiving an AB degree in history in 1928. He was 
an active member of the debate team, served as fraternity president, 
was selected to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. But, instead of going 
abroad, he chose to attend George Washington University School of Law 
here in Washington from which he received a law degree in 1933. When he 
was not studying, he actually served as a Capitol Hill police officer, 
a very honorable profession. In 1934 at age 28, he returned to Indiana 
to teach history in Noble County before devoting himself full-time to 
the practice of law in Fort Wayne.
  In addition to practicing law, he was a lecturer, giving commencement 
and holiday addresses. His father was proud of his son, describing him 
as a country boy living a good and clean life in the city.
  Adair later serving as probate commissioner in Albion County until he 
volunteered on September 15, 1941, to serve in the Army as a second 
lieutenant in the U.S. Officers Reserve. As my

[[Page H1427]]

colleagues have heard, he received multiple medals, five battle stars 
for Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes, Rhine, and the Central 
European campaigns during World War II.
  After the war, he returned to Indiana to first serve again as Allen 
County probate commissioner and the practice of private law and began 
political networking, starting his political campaign first as GOP city 
chairman in Fort Wayne and later as a precinct committee man. In 1950 
at the age of 43 he announced his candidacy for the Republican 4th 
District Congressman. The Adair campaign became a family affair, run by 
the Adair Family Enterprise, Incorporated. The partnership included 
Ross's wife, Marian; the two Adair children, Carol, age 11, and 
Stephen, age 7. The children were common fixtures at political events, 
passing out campaign literature and urging folks to vote for their dad.
  Marian, who is 92 years old and who is watching us on television 
today, was a dynamo, not only in that campaign and all the campaigns 
afterwards, but later in Washington; and she is still quite the 
organizer even at 92. His granddaughter, Amy Adair Horton, is my 
legislative director, continuing the Adair tradition here in 
Washington.
  His early campaign themes focused on honesty, decency, economy in 
government, and a definitive foreign policy to not unduly jeopardize 
American servicemen and that would promote just and lasting peace; and 
he won that election over incumbent Congressman Ed Kruse.
  In 1951 he began serving 20 years, and nobody else in our district 
has ever served more than 10. Ross' first office was in 433 Cannon, 
then called the ``Old House Building.'' Back then, Members received 
$12,500 annually and had a total of only three to six staff members. 
Even in 1968, when I was helping his campaign, he had one part-time 
staff person, Rosemary Hillis, in the district office and added a full-
time staff person in 1969, Al Harvey, for field work. That shows my 
colleagues how much it has changed.

  He was elected president of the 82nd Club, which consisted of the 45 
Republicans who were elected in 1950. He also wrote to the student 
newspaper at Indiana Purdue in Fort Wayne in 1953 about his daily 
professional responsibilities:
  ``The average Congressman works diligently. We maintain unusual 
office hours and many times are called upon to attend business or 
social affairs in the evening. It is not infrequent for us to take 
material home with us at night to study in preparation for the next 
day's work. It is a very active and varied life. This is a matter of 
handling the correspondence and dealing with problems of the people in 
our district as representatives, in addition to studying legislation 
and attending meetings of committees. The latter occupies an important 
place in the life of a Congressman, as legislation is studied and many 
times redrafted by the committees of the House and Senate.''
  In 1959 he sent a postcard: ``When you elect a man to Congress, 
actually you send a family to represent you. This is my family at our 
home in Washington. Please let us know if we can be of service in any 
way, either at home or in Washington.''
  Despite being from the Midwest, the home of isolationism, he began 
building a professional expertise in foreign affairs and began his 
assignment to the House Committee on Foreign Relations.
  At the same time, his wife, Marian, was honing her diplomatic skills 
socially. In 1959 Mrs. Adair organized and founded a program designed 
to give hospitality and special interest activities to wives of foreign 
diplomats. Her earlier organization of six international clubs between 
1953 and 1957 grew to 170 members who were spouses of Congressmen, 
diplomats and government and business officials. These clubs were 
described in Congressional Quarterly as places where ``first names and 
small talk made for pretty good foreign relations.''
  In 1962 he toured Asia, meeting with high-ranking officials in 
Taiwan, Pakistan, and Turkey to gauge their loyalty to the West and 
opposition to the Communist menace in Asia. South Vietnam, he thought, 
was in trouble because Communist infiltration could not be stopped.
  He was also selected as a delegate to the annual sessions of the 
Interparliamentary Union in 1959, 1963, 1964, and 1965.
  During his congressional service, he rose to ranking Republican 
member on House Veterans by 1966 in the Committee on Foreign Affairs 
and was also in the Committee on Committees.
  Some of his legislative victories, including ushering President 
Nixon's major proposals on pollution control, introducing legislation 
to provide tax incentives for voluntary efforts to curb pollution, and 
assisting the city of Fort Wayne in obtaining funds for storm sewers. 
He also introduced and helped pass the Peace With Justice resolution, a 
resolution condemning the treatment of American prisoners of war by the 
North Vietnamese Communists and a bill to implement President Nixon's 
plan to curb plane hijacking. He also led efforts which he bragged 
about in every campaign to slash millions of dollars of wasteful 
foreign-aid spending.
  He lost his final campaign in 1970, but Senator Hruska paid a final 
tribute to him by saying, ``Ross Adair made his mark as a Congressman's 
Congressman, quiet, hard-working and effective. One of the great things 
about Adair was his ability to conciliate differences and effect 
agreements between bitter political enemies.''
  After his departure from Congress, President Nixon appointed Adair as 
U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, a post he held until 1974, just before the 
Ethiopian revolution erupted, deposing American ally, His Majesty, 
Haile Selassie.

                              {time}  1500

  Thereafter, he returned to Indiana, where he continued his practice 
as a senior partner in the law firm of Adair, Perry, Beers, McAlister, 
and Mallers.
  He was also tapped in 1976 by former Governor Otis R. Bowen to serve 
on the Governor's Privacy Commission, and he also served on an advisory 
committee for President Ford's re-election campaign.
  Ros Adair received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from Indiana 
University of Technology in 1964 and from Indiana University in 1982. 
He was a member of the Southgate Masonic Lodge, Forest Park Methodist 
Church, Mizpah Temple, and Scottish Rite Cathedral. In 1966, he 
received the 33rd Degree, the highest honor in Scottish Rite. He died 
in Fort Wayne in October of 1983.
  I have also received a few letters from some of his long-time friends 
I want to read.
  ``Ross Adair spent most of his adult life in service to his country 
and its citizens. He was a lawyer, soldier, Representative, ambassador. 
It seems fitting that a Federal building be named to honor his service 
and his loyalty.''
  That was from Susan Prickett, the wife of his longtime chief of 
staff. She edited the Albion paper after her husband died, and she 
passed away just a few months ago. I was hoping she would be able to 
see us name this building. I am glad we got to put her tribute in the 
Record.
  Orvas Beers, his longtime law partner, cousin, and close friend, 
wrote ``I am writing in support of this legislation to designate the 
Federal building after E. Ross Adair. I think this is a great idea.
  ``National recognition of our former congressman and United States 
Ambassador to Ethiopia is long overdue. He dedicated well over 20 years 
of his life to public service in both Congress and as ambassador. His 
accomplishments . . . were outstanding. His integrity and statesmanship 
are unmatched. Ross was among the finest Congressmen ever to represent 
Northeast Indiana. As a former law partner of Ross, and former chairman 
of the Republican party of Allen County, I am proud to have known him 
and worked for his elections.
  Ross Adair's word was as good as his name. He meant what he said, and 
said what he meant. A handshake and his word closed many solid 
agreements. He served our country during a time when political machines 
were a big part of how this Nation functioned. Yet, Ross's honesty and 
integrity were never questioned. He was a fine man. Republicans and 
Democrats alike were well represented by Ross Adair.''
  Ken Meyers writes that E. Ross Adair will finally get the recognition 
he deserved. He tells a story. He was a Republican County Chairman of 
Steuben

[[Page H1428]]

County, a county to the north of Fort Wayne, in 1950.
  He said, at the time Ross was nominated he was not familiar ``outside 
Allen and Noble Counties--but not for long. His sincere friendly 
campaigning won him the nomination and election in November.
  ``E. Ross Adair represented all the people in the district; 
Republican, Democrat, or Independent received the same attention and 
consideration. On important legislative matters he was in constant 
contact with his constituents. He read and studied the legislation 
before the House.
  ``One personal incident proved to me that he did his `homework.' A 
popular piece of legislation was before the House that would be 
beneficial to his district. Ross voted against it. As county chairman, 
I questioned his vote. His reply was, `Ken, a last-minute amendment was 
attached to it that made it unacceptable.' When he explained what the 
amendment was and what it would do, I was proud he was our Congressman.
  ``The election in 1958 was an indication of his popularity in Steuben 
County. Statewide, the 1958 election was a disaster for Republicans in 
Indiana. Ross was roughly 1,100 votes behind until little Steuben 
County's 1,400 plurality sent him back to Washington, where he remained 
for 12 more years.
  ``E. Ross Adair's morals and integrity were of the highest. I have 
often wondered what our country would be like if all 535 Members of 
Congress and yes, the President, too, had the same level of morals, 
integrity, and dedication as E. Ross Adair.''
  Walter Helmke, a longtime State Senator, father of the immediate past 
mayor of Fort Wayne and son of the former district chairman and 
congressional candidate, wrote, ``Congressman Adair served the Fourth 
Congressional District with high distinction . . . having been elected 
10 times to the office of Fourth District Representative. I knew him 
well during the entire 20-year period that he served. He was always 
responsive to his constituents, and, I believe, represented the 
sentiments and beliefs of his constituents to an extraordinary degree.
  ``During 8 of the 20 years that Ross served as Congressman, I served 
as Prosecuting Attorney of Allen County, and had occasion to call on 
him for assistance and information a number of times. He always 
provided me with assistance and support without hesitation.
  ``After his distinguished career in the United States Congress, he 
ably served the United States government as the U.S. ambassador to 
Ethiopia until the emperor of Ethiopia was deposed.''
  The last letter I would like to read is from Marta Gabre-Tsadick. She 
is the only female senator to have ever served when Haile Selassie was 
head of Ethiopia. She writes, ``We at Project Mercy,'' a project that 
continues today based and working out of Fort Wayne to help those 
impoverished people who need health care and other things in Ethiopia, 
``wholeheartedly support this initiative to commemorate a man who not 
only gave 20 years of his life to serving his country as Congressman, 
but reached international boundaries as a great Ambassador to Ethiopia. 
His service there impacted all African countries through his 
interaction with the Organization of African Unity, headquartered at 
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We are grateful for his service.
  ``In retrospect, I can think of no one who has contributed more to 
this area, or anyone who could possibly deserve this honor more than 
our mutual friend and mentor, E. Ross Adair.''
  When Haile Selassie fell, roughly one-third of the senate in Ethiopia 
came to Fort Wayne, Indiana, because Ross Adair meant to them America, 
and where freedom was. I and many others heard the stories of peoples' 
heads being chopped off and watching their kids die. Ross Adair 
represented the values, as do so many of our ambassadors, of America 
abroad, not only here in this Chamber.
  It is a tremendous honor and distinction for me today to be the 
United States Congressman from the Fourth District to sponsor this bill 
to have our Federal building and courthouse named after E. Ross Adair.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Petri). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) that the House 
suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 2412.
  The question was taken.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

                          ____________________