[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 124 (Thursday, September 29, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H8632-H8633]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 FAREWELL TRIBUTE TO JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF CHAIRMAN AIR FORCE GENERAL 
                            RICHARD B. MYERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I take this time to talk a little bit about 
a great American leader who is winding up his tenure as the chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States of America, and that is, 
of course, General Richard Myers.
  General Myers had his last appearance before the Committee on Armed 
Services today, and I was reminded of all the many wonderful 
appearances that he has made in advising not only the President and the 
Secretary of Defense but also the membership of both of the Houses of 
Congress with respect to the United States and our military 
requirements.
  I was looking over the statements that were made by the President and 
others in 2001, really just a few days after 9/11, when General Myers 
was nominated for this position by the President of the United States, 
and I thought I would read that statement that the President made. I am 
quoting the President, George W. Bush, who said then in 2001: ``Today I 
name a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, one of the most important 
appointments a President can make.

                              {time}  1830

  ``This appointment is especially so because it comes at a time when 
we need great leadership. Secretary Rumsfeld and I thought long and 
hard about this important choice, and we enthusiastically agree that 
the right man to preserve the best traditions of our Armed Forces, 
while challenging them to innovate, to meet the threats of the future, 
is General Richard B. Myers.''
  The President went on to say, ``General Myers is a man of steady 
resolve and determined leadership. He is a skilled and steady hand. He 
is someone who understands that the strengths of America's Armed Forces 
are our people and our technological superiority, and we must invest in 
both.''
  Now, later, after the President had made that nomination, a number of 
people weighed in on this, commentators in the main weighed in on this 
nomination by the President and one, in one of the discussions, General 
Richard Hawley, retired, was asked about General Myers. He was asked to 
give his take on this particular appointment by the President. He said, 
``Well, Dick Myers has wonderful credentials at the tactical, 
operational, and the strategic level. He has had diplomatic 
assignments. I think perhaps as an example when he was at U.S. Space 
Command, he really helped our combatant commanders understand how to 
fully integrate our space capabilities into their operations. And he 
also helped particularly those of us in the Air Force, but also I think 
others who work in defense issues understand what the potential is of 
our space forces to contribute in the future of our operational 
success.''
  Now, of course, after that initial nomination and confirmation by the 
Senate, General Myers was thrust into this role, this very demanding 
role at a time in which we were engaged in a shooting war in 
Afghanistan on the heels of 9/11 and, shortly thereafter, combat 
operations in Iraq which have been ongoing. Through all of that, 
General Dick Myers has truly been a steady hand. He has been 
thoughtful, he has been able to handle the exigencies, the emergencies 
of the moment and, at the same time, look over the horizon to the 
problems that may face us 5 or 10 or 15 years down the line.
  All the while he was operating or maintaining this understanding of 
our operational requirements in a combat sense, General Myers has been 
there when we have had national emergencies. I remember the hail of 
firestorms that we had in California. We had massive parts of our State 
literally on fire, and we desperately needed help. I remember the 
bureaucracy that we had in California in those days, and the fact that 
the State of California had not requested that our military 
capabilities, our military aircraft, that have a tremendous capability 
to put out forest fires, they had not requested that those be brought 
in because, in their words, they wanted to use all the contractors that 
they could before they went to the military. While that was happening, 
much of California was burning up.
  I remember the decision that General Myers made to not wait on the 
bureaucrats in California, but to send these units, these emergency 
units out to California, and his reasoning was, by the time the planes 
got there, California would understand that they, in fact, needed some 
help in putting those fires out. Sure enough, before that first unit 
landed at Point Magoo, the State of California had, in fact, decided 
that they were not going to be able to put this one out in an 
expeditious fashion, and they requested the aircraft that General Myers 
had already sent.
  So it was an example of a leader who understood how important it was 
to act quickly. Now, he has acted quickly as an adviser to the 
President and the Secretary of Defense. He is not in the chain of 
command. The combatant commanders go directly up to Secretary Rumsfeld 
and the President when they are receiving their orders for the 
prosecution of a war. But General Myers' advice on operations, on 
moving troops, on putting together a plan to handle the challenges of 
things like these improvised explosive devices, to handle rotations, 
this tremendous stress on our forces as we move forces in and out of 
theater, and as we bring the Guard and Reserve in and we

[[Page H8633]]

match them up with the active duty forces and have them in the present 
combat situation in Iraq and in Afghanistan, have the Reserve and Guard 
forces working side-by-side with the active duty forces to the point in 
which they cannot be distinguished, one from the other is, to a large 
degree, a function of General Myers' leadership.
  So he leaves us with his last appearance before the House Committee 
on Armed Services today, and he is going to enjoy hopefully a little 
free time with his wonderful wife, Mary Jo. I know that we will be 
calling on him to give us his great judgment in the future, because he 
is a great American with lots of integrity, lots of respect from all 
sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill in both bodies, and also a great 
deal of respect from those people that work and serve this country 
every day, wearing the uniform of the United States. We are going to 
call on General Richard B. Myers many times. A wonderful, wonderful 
American.

  Now, I would also like to talk very briefly about another great 
American, and an American family. I was reminded about this family when 
General John Kelly came in and we discussed some of the challenges that 
we are facing in Iraq. He is the liaison for the United States Marine 
Corps on Capitol Hill.
  I thought about that family, that Kelly family as he walked out the 
door, and about the fact that while General Kelly was the Deputy 
Commander of the First Marine Division, and a very tough conflict and 
contest in Fallujah, in the western area of operations in Iraq, one of 
the most volatile and one which is very, very dangerous. While he was 
the Deputy Commander of the First Marine Division, his son John was a 
communications officer, also a United States marine in country, and his 
other son Robert was a rifleman, a member of a marine fire team, an 
enlisted marine who was, in fact, on the ground floor going house-to-
house, street-to-street, and carrying out the mandates of the 
leadership of the First Marine Division in which his dad was the Deputy 
Division Commander. What a great American family. What a tradition this 
Kelly family has manifested. Of course, General Kelly has a wonderful 
daughter, Kathleen Kelly, who has spent a lot of time in places like 
Bethesda Hospital, comforting wounded marines and letting them know 
that Americans care about them.
  That is the tradition of this country, and it is one that the Kelly 
family has done a lot to promote and to extend, and our great thanks to 
them for what they have done.
  Also, Mr. Speaker, today I wanted to mention two wonderful leaders in 
my community who have passed on very recently. I have discussed before 
Jim Kuhn, who is a great, wonderful guy from the Imperial Valley, the 
guy who started the Salton Sea International Bird Festival. We are down 
there in Imperial Valley, we are very close to, and in fact, touch the 
Mexican border; we have an immense inland sea that is full of salt 
water, the Salton Sea. Jim Kuhn was a farmer who was a stand-out 
citizen who started in football and wrestling and went to Stanford, but 
came back to his beloved Imperial Valley and became one of the leading 
farmers, one of the leading innovators, a guy who was very creative in 
his area of agriculture, but also a guy with a great heart for the 
community. He founded this International Bird Festival which has 
brought people from all over the world to the banks of the Salton Sea 
there in Imperial Valley, California.
  Jim died, as I noted earlier, very tragically in an automobile 
accident. He leaves a wonderful wife Heidi and the children, Vienna and 
Fritz, to carry on his legacy, and I know that they will.
  Another dear friend and a great leader in California passed away, and 
we had services for him yesterday, and that was Corky McMillan. Corky 
McMillan was a guy who started his business with a pickup truck and a 
few carpenter's tools and rose from that and I might say is a guy who 
built much of San Diego, built a career and built a community in San 
Diego from those humble beginnings to become San Diego's finest 
homebuilder, one of the finest homebuilders in the Nation, and a person 
who literally built communities, not only in San Diego, but also in 
other parts of California and in other States.
  Corky McMillan was a guy with a great heart. He was a guy who did 
lots of stuff for the community and was centered on his family. His 
family, Scott and Mark and Lauri and, of course, his beloved wife 
Bonnie were everything to Corky.
  He became one of the great off-road racers in southern California. 
Those are the people that go down into Baja, California, with machines 
that go over holes in the ground that are 2 and 3 feet deep over 
ravines, literally taking those vehicles, those desert vehicles over 
them in a surreal manner, sometimes at speeds far exceeding 100 miles 
an hour, and manage to survive all of that. It is a rare breed of 
people. It started out with guys like Parnelli Jones, and has become a 
very high-tech sport, and it is one in which Corky McMillan and his 
sons Scott and Mark excelled and elevated to a level in which it is 
appreciated by people throughout the world.
  Corky McMillan was a wonderful guy who gave a lot to his community 
and a lot to his country and a lot to the sport of racing, and we are 
going to miss Corky McMillan.
  So I thank my colleagues for letting me reflect on some transitions 
today and talk about some Americans who truly deserve to be well 
remembered.

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