[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 84 (Wednesday, May 21, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E983]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  IN TRIBUTE TO CHARLES M. HAIR, M.D.

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ELTON GALLEGLY

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 20, 2008

  Mr. GALLEGLY. Mr. Speaker, last week the Livingston Memorial Visiting 
Nurse Association celebrated its 60th anniversary and, in doing so, 
paid tribute to Charles M. Hair, M.D., for his enduring devotion to the 
organization.
  I, too, rise in tribute to Dr. Hair, Chairman of the Board of 
Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association.
  Dr. Hair was raised in the farming community of Santa Paula, 
California. He joined the U.S. Army after earning his M.D., at the USC 
School of Medicine, and served two years in an Army field hospital in 
post-World War II Salzburg, Austria.
  He returned to his home in Ventura County, California, in 1948, and 
embarked on a career as a family doctor. He and his wife, Gerry, whom 
he met when he was a student at Ventura College and she a student at 
Ventura High School, raised five children here.
  Dr. Hair retired from family practice in the mid-1980s, but his 
dedication to his profession and the ill continues undaunted. 
Throughout his tenure with the Visiting Nurse Association, Dr. Hair has 
overseen the direction and growth of the agency to meet the complex and 
ever-changing home health needs of Ventura County.
  In doing so, Dr. Hair brings a rural family doctor's perspective and 
philosophy to Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association. The 
Association was founded to provide home care services as an alternative 
to institutionalizing the frail, elderly, sick and disabled, an idea 
dear to the heart of a family physician. In 1965, Medicare certified 
the Association as a home health agency. In 1987, it developed a 
Medicare-certified Hospice program.
  Today, Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association is Ventura 
County's only not-for-profit home health agency with a Medicare-
certified home hospice program. Livingston services are provided for 
every individual in need, regardless of ability to pay.
  Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association's continued ability to 
provide professional, licensed, compassionate home care that is high 
quality and cost effective is in no small measure due to Dr. Hair's 
vision and direction.
  Mr. Speaker, I know my colleagues will join me in tribute to Dr. Hair 
and his vast contributions to comforting and treating the ill and thank 
him for a lifetime of healing.

                          ____________________