[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 14 (Tuesday, January 29, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E111-E112]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO CHARLES LUCE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. NORMAN D. DICKS

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 29, 2008

  Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, as we look forward to considering 
legislation in Congress this year to address our Nation's energy 
shortage, it is my sad duty to announce that one of the real giants of 
the energy business in the United States has passed away. Charles F. 
Luce, the former chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Consolidated 
Edison, died this past weekend at age 90 after a brief illness.
  Starting as a meter reader for a power company when he was a 
teenager, Chuck Luce rose to become a legend in the electric power 
industry through an interesting career progression. Following his 
clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Chuck Luce practiced 
law in Walla Walla, Washington, for 15 years. In 1961, President John 
F. Kennedy summoned him into public service as the Administrator of the 
Bonneville Power Administration, which markets the power from the 
Columbia River hydroelectric system in the Pacific Northwest. At BPA, 
he was an enlightened leader who keenly understood federal energy 
issues, pioneering many jurisdictional arrangements that established 
the distribution of federal power resources in the Northwest, including 
the Pacific Northwest-Pacific Southwest Intertie.
  During the Johnson Administration, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall 
brought him back to Washington to serve as Undersecretary of the 
Interior Department, but his talents were quickly recognized and 
summoned when Con-Ed, New York's largest utility, needed a steady hand 
to confront looming problems of growth and supply. He led Con-Ed during 
the toughest times that any American utility has faced in our Nation's 
history, including the oil supply crisis of the 1970s and the infamous 
New York City blackout in 1977. His leadership through those times of 
crisis set an example of calm and focused action, and he is remembered 
as one of the most effective and thoughtful leaders in an industry that 
affects every American every day.
  I want to take this opportunity, Madam Speaker, to insert into the 
Record Mr. Luce's obituary, printed today in the New York Times, so 
that Members can read the story of a truly legendary figure in the 
history of electric power generation and transmission in the United 
States.

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 29, 2008]

           Charles F. Luce, Ex-Chief of Con Ed, Is Dead at 90

                           (By Dennis Hevesi)

       Charles F. Luce, the chairman and chief executive of 
     Consolidated Edison, the giant New York electric and gas 
     utility during some of its most difficult times, died 
     Saturday in Torrance, Calif. He was 90 and lived in 
     Bronxville, N.Y.
       The cause was prostate cancer, said Joyce Hergenhan, a 
     former company spokeswoman.
       Mr. Luce headed Con Ed from 1967 to 1982 and dealt with the 
     oil crisis of the 1970s, customer rage over rising rates, the 
     1977 blackout that paralyzed New York City and the settlement 
     of a decades-long struggle with environmental groups over 
     construction of a power plant at Storm King Mountain on the 
     Hudson River.
       A liberal Democrat and an environmentalist, Mr. Luce did 
     not fit the standard profile of the big-business executive 
     when he agreed to leave his post as under secretary of the 
     interior in the Johnson administration to take over 
     Consolidated Edison.
       ``The metropolitan area's need for electric energy doubles 
     about every 15 years,'' Mr. Luce said then. ``To supply these 
     vast new quantities of energy at reasonable cost, but protect 
     the city's environment from pollution and unsightly 
     structures, is a king-size job.''
       It became particularly difficult in 1973, when fuel prices 
     skyrocketed because of the Arab oil embargo, and Con Ed's 
     rates followed.
       Facing customer protests, Mr. Luce chose to soften the 
     monthly billing blow by eliminating the company's April 1974 
     dividend. That prompted shareholder protests, and on May 24, 
     1974, Mr. Luce presided over a meeting at the old Commodore 
     Hotel on 42nd Street at which customers and shareholders 
     boisterously expressed their views.
       A New York Times headline the next day said, ``Days of 
     Anxiety for the Man Who Saved a Watt.''
       That was a reference to the ``Save-a-Watt'' program, which 
     Mr. Luce had instituted soon after taking over as Con Ed 
     chairman. It was a shift from the electricity industry's 
     traditional marketing strategy, succinctly expressed as 
     ``Live better electrically.''
       For 25 hours, starting on the evening of July 13, 1977, New 
     York City could not live electrically at all. Two lightning 
     strikes on major tie-lines in Westchester County led to the 
     collapse of the entire system.
       Some Con Ed officials attributed the blackout to ``an act 
     of God.'' Although Mr. Luce did not utter the phrase himself, 
     he became associated with it.
       He kept cool in the face of Mayor Abraham D. Beame's 
     accusations of ``gross negligence'' on the part of the 
     company, saying, ``Respectfully, I think he's wrong,'' and 
     calling for a fair review.
       In the end, Con Ed had to concede that the systemwide 
     expansion of the power failure after the local lightning 
     strikes was largely its fault.
       Four years before Mr. Luce became chairman, Con Ed had 
     started seeking approval from regulators to build a 
     hydroelectric plant on Storm King Mountain in Orange County, 
     55 miles north of New York City. Opposition to that plan and 
     to proposals for other power plants along the Hudson River

[[Page E112]]

     was fierce and unrelenting for nearly 20 years.
       Then, in December 1980, 11 environmental groups, Con Ed and 
     other utility companies reached what became known as the 
     Hudson River Peace Treaty. Mr. Luce had asked Russell E. 
     Train, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, 
     to mediate the dispute.
       Under the agreement, Con Ed abandoned efforts to build the 
     Storm King plant. In return, the environmental groups and the 
     federal Environmental Protection Agency dropped their demands 
     that Con Ed build six costly cooling towers to protect fish 
     from being sucked into power plants at Indian Point and 
     several other sites along the river. The agreement was widely 
     cited as a model for balancing economic and environmental 
     needs.
       Charles Franklin Luce was born on Aug. 12, 1917, in 
     Platteville, WI, a son of James and Wilma Luce. His father 
     owned a furniture store and a mortuary.
       As a teenager, Mr. Luce got some early exposure to the 
     utility business as a meter reader for the local power 
     company.
       Mr. Luce earned a bachelor's degree and a law degree 
     through a five-year program at the University of Wisconsin in 
     1941, then received a master's degree in law at Yale in 1942.
       Unable to enlist for military service in World War II 
     because of an attack of polio, Mr. Luce became a staff lawyer 
     for the Board of Economic Warfare in Washington.
       A year later, on the recommendation of a professor at Yale, 
     he was chosen as a law clerk to Justice Hugo L. Black of the 
     Supreme Court.
       For 15 years after World War II, Mr. Luce practiced law in 
     Walla Walla, Washington.
       Then, in 1961, President Kennedy chose him to head the 
     Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power from the 
     Grand Coulee Dam and more than 20 other federal hydroelectric 
     plants in the Columbia River Basin.
       Mr. Luce also worked with Interior Secretary Stewart L. 
     Udall in creating the Pacific Northwest-Pacific Southwest 
     Intertie, a vast power transmission complex. He negotiated a 
     1964 treaty with Canada for joint hydroelectric development 
     of the Columbia River.
       At Mr. Udall's request, President Johnson appointed Mr. 
     Luce as under secretary of the Interior in September 1966. 
     But within six months, Con Ed officials--spurred by a Fortune 
     magazine headline, ``The Company You Love to Hate''--asked 
     Mr. Luce to take control of the company.
       Mr. Luce's first wife, Helen Oden, died in 2001. He is 
     survived by his second wife, the former Margaret Richmond; 
     two sons, James, of Vancouver, Washington, and Charles Jr., 
     of Boulder, Colorado; two daughters, Christina Gordon of 
     Mansfield Center, Connecticut, and Barbara Luce of Portland, 
     Connecticut; and eight grandchildren.
       Mr. Luce was an avid biker. As Con Ed chairman, he would 
     regularly pedal around Manhattan on a three-speed bike, 
     wearing a meter-reader's cap, inspecting company work crews 
     and peeking into open manholes.

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