[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 103 (Thursday, July 25, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1402-E1404]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTE TO REP. TONY HALL OF OHIO

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 25, 2002

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, we come to the House floor today to pay 
tribute to our colleague from Ohio, the Honorable Tony P. Hall.
  As you know, Mr. Speaker, Tony was nominated by President Bush to be 
the United States ambassador to the United Nations food and 
agricultural agencies located in Rome, Italy. He is awaiting final 
Senate confirmation, which could come in a matter of days. Once 
confirmed, he will resign as the representative of the 3rd District of 
Ohio and take his post in Rome where he will be able to continue his 
passionate work as a leading advocate for ending hunger and promoting 
food security around the world.
  Tony will be greatly missed in the House of Representatives, but I 
know that he is absolutely the right person to serve as the United 
States representative to the World Food Program, the Food and 
Agricultural Organization, and International Fund for Agricultural 
Development, all agencies of the United Nations which assist 
international hunger-relief efforts.
  This is a bittersweet time for me. I have had the privilege and honor 
to call Tony Hall my colleague for two decades, but more importantly, I 
have come to call Tony Hall my best friend in Congress. Many people 
don't understand how a Democrat from Ohio and a Republican from 
Virginia, who more often than not are on the opposite sides of votes in 
the House, can share a friendship.
  But it's been easy to be Tony's friend because he is one of the most 
decent, sincere, loving, dedicated people that I know. He finds his 
strength through his deeply held faith in God. I have come to know him 
well through our weekly Bible study together, where we have shared 
personal moments about our families, our lives, our work in Congress. 
We've had weighty and serious discussions, we've laughed together and 
we've shared tears.
  As a public servant, Tony embodies Christ's teachings in Matthew 25: 
``For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me 
drink . . . inasmuch as you did it to the least of these My brethren, 
you did it to Me.'' His life's work is consumed with spiritual purpose.
  Tony Hall's name is synonymous with the cause of alleviating hunger 
both domestically and worldwide. He believes that food is the most 
basic of human needs, the most basic of human rights, and he has 
passionately worked to convince others that the cause of hunger, which 
often gets lost in the legislative shuffle and pushed aside by more 
visible issues, deserves a prominent share of attention and resources 
to assist people who are the most at risk and too often the least 
defended.
  But Tony hasn't limited his humanitarian work to hunger issues. He is 
a tireless advocate for the cause of human rights around the world and 
most recently has focused his attention on the illicit diamond trade in 
Sierra Leone. He convinced me to travel with him to Sierra Leone in 
late 1990 to see how the machete-wielding rebels there have intimidated 
men, women and children by hacking off arms, legs, and ears. He has led 
the effort in bringing to the attention of Congress the conflict 
diamond trade and authoring legislation to certify that the diamonds 
Americans buy are not tainted with the blood of the people of Sierra 
Leone and other African nations.
  We also traveled together in January to Afganistan with Congressman 
Joe Pitts as the first congressional delegation to that country since 
the war on terrorism. We visited hospitals, an orphanage, schools, and 
refugee camps. We met with U.S. diplomats and soldiers; with local 
leaders and officials with direct responsibility for humanitarian 
problems and refugees; with representatives of United Nations and 
private relief organizations; and in Pakistan with refugees and members 
of religious minority groups.
  Tony is never deterred in his effort to help make a positive 
difference in the lives of suffering people. He has traveled to 
wherever the need arises and met with whomever he can to effect change, 
taking risks few would take, with his own comfort and safety never 
entering his mind.
  I believe Tony's life destiny is to be a servant, though in his 
college days, if he'd had a little larger frame, he may have had a 
career in football. An Ohio native, in 1964 he received his A.B. degree 
from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and while at Denison, he 
was a Little All-American tailback and was named the Ohio Conference's 
Most Valuable Player in 1963.
  But his inner voice and his servant's heart directed him to what 
would become a career of service. During 1966 and 1967, he taught 
English in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer. He returned to Dayton 
to work as a realtor and small businessman for several years, but 
before long, he was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives where 
he served from 1969 to 1972, and then to the Ohio Senate, serving from 
1973 to 1978. On November 7, 1978, Tony was elected to the House of 
Representatives from the 3rd District of Ohio and has served with 
distinction since.
  Tony Hall's worldwide hunger relief quest began in earnest in 1984 
when he first visited Ethiopia during that nation's Great Famine. What 
he saw then, especially the faces of emaciated children, was indelibly 
etched in his mind, forever transforming him and instilling a passion 
that drives him in his quest to help feed the starving people of the 
world.
  In 1993 this House, in what has been described in Politics in America 
as ``a wave of frugality,'' abolished the Select Committee on

[[Page E1403]]

Hunger, as well as three other select committees. Having served as 
chairman of the Select Committee on Hunger and having worked in 1984 as 
the principal supporter of the legislation which created the Select 
Committee on Hunger, Tony Hall fought to keep the committee alive 
because of its importance as a forum to raise the cause of hunger and 
the very survival of vulnerable populations.
  In an effort to use this disappointing event as a means to elevate 
the problem of hunger, Tony embarked on a 22-day water-only fast. He 
was also dismayed that congressional leaders would not even let the 
House vote on the matter. But through his perseverance, the momentum of 
this fast led to the creation of two new hunger entities: the 
Congressional Hunger Caucus and the Congressional Hunger Center, which 
I was honored to co-chair with Tony here in the nation's capital. Those 
forums allowed Tony to continue the fight against hunger, to ensure 
that issues of both domestic and world hunger remain at the forefront 
of national debate, and to accomplish what always was the goal of the 
Select Committee on Hunger: to push responsible policies and to 
generate a national sense of urgency to solve hunger once and for all.
  His humanitarian work also has focused on efforts to improve human 
rights conditions around the world--in the Philippines, East Timor, 
Paraguay, Romania, and the former Soviet Union. In 1983 he founded the 
Congressional Friends of Human Rights Monitors. He was the principal 
U.S. nominator of East Timor Bishop Carlos Belo, winner of the 1996 
Nobel Peace Prize.
  Tony himself was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize for 
his advocacy for hunger relief programs and improving international 
human rights conditions. He is the author of legislation supporting 
child survival, basic education, primary health care, microenterprise, 
and development assistance programs in the world's poorest countries.
  But while Tony's name is known far and wide for his hunger and human 
rights work, he also has been a stalwart representative for the people 
of the 3rd District, vigorously defending his district and its largest 
employer, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.
  He was the principal author of legislation enacted in 1992 to 
establish the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. Also 
in 1992, Tony introduced successful legislation extending the life of 
the Dayton Area Health Plan which provides health care services to more 
than 42,000 low-income residents of Montgomery County, costing 
taxpayers $1 million less than a traditional health care program.
  He was a leader in Congress in support of the Air Force Science and 
Technology program, which is headquartered at Wright-Patterson. He 
wrote legislation passed in 1993 which laid the foundation for the 
privatization of the Energy Department's Miamisburg Mound Plant, a 
former defense nuclear facility. He has supported legislation to create 
high tech jobs in the Dayton area that combine the region's strengths 
in aerospace and automobile manufacturing. He is the author of 
legislation to improve safety for police and emergency workers 
assisting stopped vehicles on highways.
  The people of his district also know well his work on hunger issues 
because it was there in 1984 that he founded Saturday Meals for 
Seniors, a weekend hot lunch program for seniors in need in Dayton 
which has fed over 10,000 meals at group sites and to shut-ins every 
year since.
  In 1985 Tony introduced legislation incorporated in the 1985 Food 
Security Act to promote gleaning programs, which gather the produce 
left behind after commercial harvests, to feed hungry people. He also 
organized annual gleaning projects in Dayton, beginning in 1986 which 
salvaged 77 tons over a three-year period, and helped organize gleaning 
projects throughout Ohio.
  Also in 1985, Tony organized STOP HUNGER . . . FAST!, a broad-based, 
community-wide effort in Dayton, which raised $330,000 that year for 
hunger relief efforts in the U.S. and Africa.
  There are so many examples of how Tony Hall's passion and principles 
and Christian values have made a positive difference in the lives of 
those suffering from hunger around the world for over two decades. His 
efforts have included work to convince the community of nations that 
food must never be used as a weapon against hungry people. Tony Hall's 
legacy of fighting hunger spans from Dayton, Ohio, through Washington, 
D.C., on to the Horn of Africa and around to North Korea.
  In 1982, two years before his work to create the House Select 
Committee on Hunger, to call attention to wasted food that could be 
used for hunger relief, Tony organized a media event and luncheon 
serving only food salvaged from trash cans and then worked for passage 
of legislation which outlined steps to make food available to hungry 
people that would otherwise be wasted.
  In 1984, following reports of massive famine and starvation, Tony 
visited relief camps in Ethiopia and revisited the country again in 
1987, after working tirelessly during that time to investigate efforts 
to head off a repeat of Ethiopian famine and encourage early action to 
prevent loss of life in not only Ethiopia but other drought-stricken 
nations in sub-Saharan Africa, and urge Ethiopian leaders to allow 
famine relief to reach all the people of Ethiopia, including regions 
affected by civil war.
  Legislation Tony authored passed the House in 1985 calling on the 
U.S. to support measures aimed at immunizing the world's children 
against six major childhood diseases.
  Tony successfully led efforts in Congress to earmark $38 million in 
FYs 1986-1990 to fund vitamin A programs in developing nations, in 
light of significant evidence linking vitamin A to improvements in 
children's health.
  Tony visited Haiti with the Select Committee on Hunger in 1987 and 
again with the Congressional Hunger Caucus in 1993 to investigate 
humanitarian assistance projects. Following the 1993 visit he helped to 
secure U.S. Agency for International Development support to assist a 
leading non-governmental organization to begin feeding over a half 
million more malnourished Haitians.
  In 1988 Tony visited Bangladesh during the devastating flood and upon 
his return, worked for passage of legislation to aid Bangladesh's 
recovery from the flood.
  In 1989 Tony visited Sierra Leone and convinced Executive Branch 
officials to change food assistance programs to better serve 
humanitarian needs.
  Tony contacted leaders in Ethiopia calling for a summit to address 
the issues of providing humanitarian assistance to conflict situations 
and the issue of children as victims of war in the Horn of Africa. The 
summit was held in April 1992. For his hunger legislation and his 
proposal for a Humanitarian Summit in the Horn of Africa, Tony Hall and 
the Hunger Committee received the 1992 Silver World Food Day Medal from 
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
  He also is the recipient of the United States Committee for UNICEF 
1995 Children's Legislative Advocate Award, U.S. AID Presidential End 
Hunger Award, and 1992 Oxfam America Partners Award. In 1984, he 
received the Distinguished Service Against Hunger Award from Bread for 
the World, the highest award given by the organization to recognize 
efforts to fight world hunger. In 1988, the U.S. Agency for 
International Development awarded Tony Hall its Presidential End Hunger 
Award ``for continued demonstrated vision, initiative and leadership in 
the effort to achieve a world without hunger.'' He is also a recipient 
of the NCAA Silver Anniversary Award and received honorary Doctor of 
Laws degrees from Asbury College and Eastern College and a Doctor of 
Humane Letters degree from Loyola College. In 1994, President Clinton 
nominated Tony Hall for the position of UNICEF Executive Director.
  In May 1994, Tony led a Presidential Delegation to the Horn of Africa 
and was the first U.S. legislator to visit Rwanda. He focused efforts 
with the Congressional Hunger Caucus to convince the administration to 
formally recognize that genocide was occurring there and take the lead 
in the United Nations to establish an international tribunal to bring 
those responsible for the murder of thousands of Rwandans to trial. 
After visiting what at the time was the largest refugee camp in history 
on the east side of Rwanda, he strongly advocated immediate and 
improved cooperation by all international donors for the relief of 
Rwandan refugees and convinced administration officials to visit sites 
of humanitarian disaster in Rwanda leading to the assistance being 
provided today.
  Tony's concern for those suffering in famine-stricken areas took him 
to North Korea where he first visited in August 1996, just weeks after 
North Korea's ``breadbasket'' region was hit by a flood which reduced 
the country's harvest by half and left the people there vulnerable to a 
massive food shortage. He returned to North Korea in April 1997 on a 
humanitarian mission to focus attention on the 5 million people at risk 
of death from starvation from an imminent famine. To help spur an 
international response to help the starving North Korean people, Tony 
traveled to South Korea and Japan in August 1997 to promote additional 
humanitarian aid. He spoke to the largest church in South Korea and 
encouraged private efforts to the North. He also urged Japanese 
officials to consider a larger role in aiding people suffering from 
severe food shortages and suggested that Japan's surplus rice could 
leverage price donations to aid people facing starvation in North 
Korea.
  Troubled by continuing reports of worsening conditions for the Korean 
people and not satisfied that the necessary reforms were in place to 
avert the crisis the Koreans were facing that was unlike any since the 
famine that claimed 30 million people in China nearly four decades ago, 
he made his third visit to North Korea in October 1997 to again call on 
the world to focus its attention on the disaster unfolding there.

[[Page E1404]]

  Perhaps what Tony so effectively conveys when he works to help end 
the suffering of the world's hungry people is his personal conviction 
that lending humanitarian aid is above politics. In his discussions 
with North Korean leaders about their country's acceptance of peace 
talks, they expressed concern about the agenda for the talks and that 
food aid would be used as a political weapon during the talks. He 
assured them that the United States had a long tradition of providing 
food aid solely on a humanitarian basis, which he personally considers 
a point of pride, and that this policy will continue, and he urged them 
to begin formal negotiations on the peace talks with that assurance.
  He made his fourth trip to famine-stricken North Korea in November 
1998, traveling to cities in the far northeastern part of the country 
and a town south of the Pyongyang capital, visiting orphanages, 
schools, hospitals, and an ``alternative food'' factory, before 
returning to Pyongyang for meetings with senior North Korean government 
officials and aid workers. He reported that grave-covered hillsides and 
overflowing orphanages were the most visible changes there since he 
visited a year earlier.
  He observed that the food donated by the United States and others is 
helping to save the lives of children in North Korea, but that food 
alone won't cure the ills there. Stopping the dying will take a new 
focus on health--one sufficient to combat the debilitating effects of 
contaminated water and an almost complete lack of medicine and one he 
found missing in the current approach of the government of North Korea. 
He also reported that private and United Nations health initiatives are 
impossibly underfunded.
  Yet in his visits throughout the countryside, where no one can escape 
the ravages of famine, Tony Hall found something in this fourth visit 
with the North Koreans that made him realize that his efforts to help 
turn the tide toward a brighter future for these suffering people were 
bearing fruit. He found--hope. He called ``heroic'' the efforts of 
ordinary North Koreans to overcome their difficulties, as he saw an 
``alternative food factory'' which turns leaves and twigs into the 
noodles that are becoming a staple in the diets of too many people. He 
saw people working at all hours of the day and night, moving the 
cabbage harvest, gathering twigs for kitchen fires, and gleaning 
already cleanly picked fields. Denuded hills and rows of crops planted 
three-quarters up the hills were clear evidence of their desperate 
efforts.
  And when he had the chance to speak with ordinary citizens through 
his own interpreter and out of the presence of his government 
``minders,'' the shyness he had seen in earlier visits was replaced 
with absolute determination in their voices to overcome their troubles. 
Even faced with slow starvation, the telltale signs of which show on 
skin darkened by malnutrition, these brave people have hope, a hope 
that Tony Hall in his work as a humanitarian ambassador has helped 
instill by showing the people of North Korea that the community of 
nations cares and is there to help them in their time of need--``When I 
was hungry, you gave Me food.''
  Tony's passion took him to southern Sudan in Africa in May 1998 where 
famine was threatening 700,000 Sudanese people in a nation torn by a 
15-year civil war and where 2 million lives had already been lost. His 
own eloquent words in June 1998 from his trip observations may best 
reflect why Tony Hall is the right person to now be the U.S. ambassador 
to the U.N. world food programs:
  ``What I witnessed in Ethiopia convinced me that there was no greater 
service, besides to the people who elect me to Congress, than to those 
people who are so desperately poor that they can't even feed 
themselves. I have been to dozens of countries since then, to some of 
the regions hit hard by both natural disasters and man-made ones. But 
it was not until I visited the forgotten nation of Sudan two weeks ago 
that I saw conditions as terrible as those in Ethiopia. The 
humanitarian aid reaching those people is a drop in the bucket of what 
is needed. If we are sincere about stopping the death toll from 
climbing from two million--to three million people--we have to do more. 
The people of southern Sudan need food and medicine. But they also need 
peace, and we should not squander the narrow window that may now exist 
to bring an end to this hideous war . . . Anyone who has seen the 
terrible condition of the people in southern Sudan feels the same 
determination I do to find a way to bring peace--and relief--to them.''
  Tony's call for an immediate cease-fire and heightened diplomatic 
attention to Sudan's peace process, and his urging of the United States 
and other friends of the peace process to step in and enhance and 
support invigorated negotiations, struck a chord. It's taken some time, 
but fueled by one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts in 
history, with the United States providing the greatest share of aid, 
today's headlines report that breakthroughs in peace talks in Sudan 
could very well pave the way to end the 19-year civil war in which more 
than 2 million people have died.
  Tony Hall speaks for those in so many desolate places in the world 
who can't speak for themselves. Playwright George Bernard Shaw once 
said, ``You see things; and you say, `Why?' But I dream things that 
never were; and I say, `Why not?'''
  Tony Hall says ``Why not?'' and follows those words with action. Why 
not work to stop the suffering of the poorest of the poor? Why not help 
to feed the starving people? Why not help the desperate people of 
Sierra Leone or the Sudan?
  George Bernard Shaw also said, ``The worst sin towards our fellow 
creature sis not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's 
the essence of inhumanity.'' There is no fiber in Tony Hall's body that 
knows indifference. He is the essence of humanitarianism, the 
embodiment of service to mankind, a follower who daily lives Christ's 
teachings as he seeks ways to feed the hungry and give drink to the 
thirsty.
  His leadership and his vision embrace and offer succor to those in 
need, even in the most remote corners of the world. His concept to end 
hunger serves as a beacon to light the way. His achievements in 
providing lifesaving food to so many is the road map to ending 
starvation. His efforts to end human misery the world over inspire 
others to take up that cause.
  Tony Hall is an inspiration to everyone fortunate enough to know him. 
He has a wonderful combination of compassion and passion filled with 
spiritual purpose-compassion to see the suffering in the less fortunate 
in the world and the passion to work to do something about it.
  Today is a bittersweet time for me, to be sure. My best friend in 
Congress is leaving, but he will now have the world's stage to continue 
his life's work of helping to make a difference in the lives of those 
less fortunate in our world.
  Godspeed, my dear friend.

                          ____________________