[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 6 (Thursday, January 11, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E71]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         IN MEMORY OF JOE LACEY

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NANCY PELOSI

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, January 11, 2007

  Ms. PELOSI. Madam Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to a longtime San 
Francisco community leader and friend, Joe Lacey, wno died on December 
30, 2006.
  Joseph Patrick Lacey's family moved to San Francisco in 1921. As a 
scholar athlete, Joe attended St. Ignatius High School and the 
University of Santa Clara on a football scholarship, playing in two 
Sugar Bowls. In 1940, Joe won the Pacific Coast Heavyweight Boxing 
Championship. In 194I, Joe played on an All Star Football team in 
Hawaii where he met his beloved wife of 55 years, Katharine Faye 
Dooling.
  He served our Nation with distinction in the Navy on the USS Yarnall 
DD 541 in World War II participating in several Pacific battles, 
including Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and again in the 
Korean War, serving on the USS Walker.
  After the war, Joe began the next chapter of his life, starting a 
successful homebuilding company whose work includes thousands of homes 
in the San Francisco and Sacramento areas. Later in life, he taught 
special education in the Watsonville, Newark and San Francisco County 
school districts.
  Joe was a life-long volunteer, dedicated to children and our city's 
most vulnerable residents. He was active in youth sports and a champion 
of San Francisco's homeless and elderly populations. He served on the 
boards of several non-profit organizations in San Francisco for more 
than 25 years, including Old St. Mary's Housing Committee, Catholic 
Charities, Senior Action Network, Planning for Elders and TURN.
  Joe was well known in the halls of San Francisco city government 
buildings, representing nonprofit organizations. Mayor Willie Brown 
appointed Joe as a commissioner on the San Francisco Commission on 
Aging, where he proudly served until his death.
  With great appreciation for his extraordinary work and service to our 
city and our Nation, I extend my deepest sympathy to his large and 
loving family. He will long be remembered by countless individuals 
whose lives he touched. He was a great friend to the people of San 
Francisco, and we are diminished by his passing.

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