[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 13, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H3980-H3981]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   IN MEMORY OF MATTHEW J. RYAN, FORMER SPEAKER OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE

  (Mr. ENGLISH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ENGLISH. Today, Mr. Speaker, the House has the melancholy 
responsibility to take up a resolution memorializing one of the great 
leaders of the

[[Page H3981]]

Pennsylvania State legislature who passed recently. I am referring to 
former State Speaker of the House Matthew Ryan whose 41-year 
extraordinary career, including repeated service as Speaker of the 
House beginning in 1981, is an extraordinary testament to how so much 
of our legislative talent and our best legal minds are still 
concentrated in our State legislatures.
  I worked for the State House. I knew Speaker Ryan. I knew what an 
extraordinary individual he was and how, at a time when affiliation 
with parties is something that has lost public favor, he was one of the 
finest products of the Delaware County Republican organization, a great 
friend, an individual who absolutely dominated the State House by the 
force of his mind and the force of his personality and led it in very 
positive directions, a man who was far more bipartisan than the 
reputation of that institution but always a strong Republican and 
always a strong advocate of creating jobs and of welfare reform. We 
will miss him dearly. I hope his memory and his example will long be 
with us.

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