[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 126 (Monday, July 28, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7569-S7570]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        REMEMBERING FRANK STROUD

 Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to honor a 
man we recently lost--a remarkable individual full of warmth and 
generous of spirit.

[[Page S7570]]

  My wife Jackie and I came to know Frank Stroud as a doctor at the 
Spring Valley Pediatrics practice to which we take our daughters. But 
before Frank was one of our daughter's doctors, he was a friend.
  My father said at the end of his life that he hadn't regretted a 
moment of his career in public life because no other calling gave him 
the opportunity to impact the lives of so many people.
  He might have said otherwise had he met Frank Stroud.
  Frank had a remarkable capacity for remembering every detail about 
you. His ability to make casual acquaintances feel like old childhood 
friends would have made Members of the Senate green with envy.
  But public office wasn't his vocation. Nor was the seminary, which he 
contemplated entering. As his children say, Frank found a higher 
calling:
  Helping children--which Frank did for nearly four decades, 
specializing in helping children struggling with learning disabilities 
such as attention-deficit disorder.
  But politics was certainly never far from his mind--or his work. His 
wife Kandy, whom he loved dearly, worked for the Democratic National 
Committee.
  As Terry McAuliffe once said, Frank became ``the pediatrician for the 
Democrats,'' having treated Al Gore's children and Smith Bagley's, 
among others. And 40 years ago this year, Frank became medical director 
at the Office of Economic Opportunity which was, of course, at the very 
center of President Johnson's War on Poverty.
  We all have unique experiences in our lives that shape the person we 
become. In Frank's case, one of those experiences was that he was 
raised by a single mother. One of his children said in his eulogy of 
his father words that are so poignant today:
  ``At a big party, he would make sure to dance with all the single 
ladies as though he knew what it felt like for his mother to sit along 
the edges of the dance floor.''
  Frank passed away a little over a month ago. At the time, he was 
doing what he always does: caring for someone other than himself--in 
this case, his beloved mother Lila, from whom his strength of character 
was surely handed down.
  And so today, I wish to extend our thoughts and prayers to Kandy, 
their three children and the entire Stroud family, and quote the words 
in his obituary, which read:

     The innocence of a child,
     The elegance of a Prince,
     And the generosity of a Saint,
     Frank Stroud was a majestic human being.

  Indeed, he was. Frank will be missed. His memory will remain, his 
legacy will endure, for as long as the children he cared for grow into 
the healthy adults Frank always believed they could. And because of 
Frank Stroud, they most certainly will.

                          ____________________