[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 62 (Thursday, May 18, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H2878-H2879]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              HONORING FORMER CONGRESSMAN SONNY MONTGOMERY

  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of 
the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentlewoman from Ohio 
is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to pay tribute to a 
former Member of this body, Congressman Sonny G.V. Montgomery of 
Meridian, Mississippi. Our Nation laid him to rest this week in his 
home State.
  As a Congresswoman who arrived here in the early 1980s, it was my 
great privilege to serve on the committee which he chaired, the 
Veterans' Committee, which was his life here in the Congress of the 
United States. I can recall so many times, as a Member of that 
committee, what a gracious, gracious Chair he was. Even to the new 
young members who had much to learn. I remember so much of what he did 
and the camaraderie that he established as a very precious gift not 
just to the committee or to the Congress but to the Nation. And we 
could use more of that spirit here today.
  I remember in 1984 when the Montgomery G.I. Bill passed in a 
Democratic Congress with his leadership, how generation after 
generation a young veteran would come to be able to afford an education 
and to obtain decent health care and what he did to strengthen our 
Armed Forces, including our Guard and Reserve, and given us the best 
Armed Forces that the world has ever known. He hardly ever claimed 
credit for that publicly, and yet he worked on it for years.
  I can remember many State of the Union addresses where in what I 
called the Montgomery chair back there in the back row he would sit and 
he would welcome the Presidents from each party as they would come into 
this Chamber, and I cannot ever remember Sonny Montgomery losing his 
temper. If he did, I certainly never saw it.
  I watched him when we struggled with the issue of Agent Orange. When 
some of the scientists who testified before the committee said, We 
really cannot show causality, we cannot show that, in fact, this 
veteran has cancer because he was mixing Agent Orange in big vats with 
paddles in Vietnam back in the 1960s and early 1970s. And there came a 
point in the committee when Sonny said, You know, there is a time when 
you have to do what is morally right even though it may not be 
scientifically provable. And for the first time in the Nation's history 
since Vietnam we were able to treat veterans who contracted serious 
illnesses as a result of their service. Special centers were set up, 
such as in New York, in order that we could assess and learn about 
these terrible, terrible illnesses that resulted from exposure to Agent 
Orange.

                              {time}  2245

  Sonny Montgomery traveled to the districts of the Members of his 
committee. I was so impressed, because many times we would get a 
veteran who, unfortunately, because of illness would be out of control 
in the audience, and Sonny had a way of moving his hand and talking to 
the veteran, kind of calming him down. He was an amazing, amazing man 
to watch.
  He loved veterans. He loved Americans, but he had a special gift to 
be able to reach those who sometimes were distant. Half of the homeless 
in America are veterans. The work that he did as Chair of that 
committee helped us to recognize for the first time the problem of 
homeless veterans.
  He got great assistance from a young Congressman then who had joined 
the committee, Lane Evans of Illinois, who currently due to Parkinson's 
illness is in Illinois right now trying to heal himself. These men did 
so much for our Nation and for the improvement of the conditions under 
which our veterans serve.
  I can remember when Sonny came to my district in Ohio. It didn't 
matter where you took him, to a Veterans Post, a Legion Post, a public 
meeting, people would stand and cheer. He was ``Mr. Veteran'' from 
coast to coast. And he left a legacy of improved education, of improved 
health care, of a veterans system that increased the number of health 
care clinics, both in urban and rural areas, to care for our veterans, 
and he took very seriously the slogan from Lincoln that is on the front 
of the Department of Veterans Affairs, ``To care for them who shall 
have borne the battle, his widow or widower, and his or her orphan.'' 
He lived it.
  He traveled the world. We improved cemeteries around the world for 
our veterans. We worked on housing programs to go beyond the GI single-
family home mortgage to multiple family home construction.
  He did so much so quietly and so effectively. Personally, he worked 
with me many, many years as we were trying to build the World War II 
memorial here in Washington in three different committees of 
jurisdiction, and yet was

[[Page H2879]]

that steady force that was always at our side as we worked for 17 years 
to move that piece of legislation from dropping it here in the hopper 
all the way to dedication just a few years ago here on the Nation's 
Mall.
  His staff, Matt Fleming, Gloria Royce, so many people who served on 
that committee, knew that they had worked with a very great man, a man 
who always carried himself with great humility and great humor.
  He was one of the founders of the Prayer Breakfast, the Bipartisan 
Prayer Breakfast here that meets every Thursday morning, and he offered 
the ``sick and wounded report.'' He took an interest in every Member 
here, and he would know about their families and he would report to us 
on what was happening, and he built such a bond between people on both 
sides of the aisle.
  I look at a certain Member whose voting record is different than 
mine, and I will say, how did I meet that person? My gosh, I met that 
person at the Prayer Breakfast with Sonny Montgomery.
  He would go to the national meetings of the VFW or when the young 
winners would be selected from the Voice of Democracy awards at the VFW 
or through the American Legion and would receive standing ovations by 
thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
  He was a two star general himself, having served in World War II, in 
Korea and then, of course, in the Guard, and he became a champion of 
the Guard and Reserve at a time when so many Americans were not really 
paying attention. He improved the facilities, he improved their 
opportunities.
  So today, Mr. Speaker, in ending my remarks, I just want to say it 
was truly a deep, deep privilege to serve with Congressman and General 
Sonny G.V. Montgomery of Meridian, Mississippi. It is obvious the 
people of his district love him and appreciate him, and so does 
America. God bless him and God bless America.

                          ____________________