[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 154 (Friday, September 26, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2025-E2026]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRIBUTE TO BILL FORD

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 25, 2008

  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, on June 1, 2008, a great man passed 
way--William Patrick Ford, human rights advocate and the brother of 
martyred Maryknoll Sister, Ita Ford.
  I had the privilege of knowing Bill Ford for many, many years. I was 
honored to call him my friend, but he was also someone who I admired, 
respected, and looked to as a model of how a man should live his life. 
Like so many outside of Bill's family, I first came to know Bill 
because I became active in seeking to bring to justice those in El 
Salvador responsible for ordering and carrying out the murder of Bill's 
sister, Maryknoll Sister Ita Ford, and three other American churchwomen 
in December 1980. Bill was a very skilled lawyer, who worked for an 
important Wall Street law firm. But he lived his life humbly, fully, 
and with integrity. He understood in the marrow of his bones the 
meaning of compassion, justice and mercy.
  Every year, Bill would faithfully travel to El Salvador to visit 
Ita's grave, sometimes alone, and more often in the company of other 
Ford family members or relatives of another of the murdered 
churchwomen. On one of those occasions when Bill was making his annual 
pilgrimage to his sister's grave when I happened to be in El Salvador 
on congressional work. I asked Bill if I could accompany him on his 
trip to the remote Chalatanango province where the gravesites of the 
four churchwomen are located. This was during the middle of the 
Salvadoran civil war, I might add. It was one of my most memorable days 
in El Salvador, and I will treasure the memory of our conversation 
during that long, often anxious, jeep ride.
  In December 2005, I joined the families of Sisters Ita Ford, Maura 
Clark and Dorothy Kazel, and of lay missionary Jean Donovan at events 
throughout El Salvador commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 
churchwomen's deaths. Nearly 300 people from around the world came to 
El Salvador to take part in these reflections, and hundreds more 
Salvadorans participated. I was honored to walk in the footsteps and 
recall the lives and contributions of these four remarkable American 
women. And there, at the emotional center of it all, were the families, 
and for me, especially Bill and his wife, Mary Ann.
  Madam Speaker, Bill passed away in his home, surrounded by his 
family--Mary Ann and their children William, John, Miriam, Ruth, 
Elizabeth and Rebecca, and their eight grandchildren. He will be 
missed, and he will always be remembered and cherished in our memories 
of him.

                [From The New York Times, June 3, 2008]

               William P. Ford, 72, Rights Advocate, Dies

                           (By Dennis Hevesi)

       William P. Ford, a former Wall Street lawyer who spent more 
     than two decades seeking to bring high-ranking military 
     officials to justice after his sister and three other 
     American churchwomen were murdered in El Salvador's civil war 
     in the 1980s, died on Sunday at his home in Montclair, N.J. 
     He was 72.
       The cause was esophageal cancer, his son William Ford III 
     said.
       Mr. Ford's efforts eventually led to a $54.6 million 
     liability ruling against two former Salvadoran generals in a 
     2002 civil trial in Florida, where the generals were living 
     after being granted residence by the United States.
       Although the ruling was not directly connected to the 
     murders of Mr. Ford's sister and the other women, it resulted 
     largely from his long and tenacious campaign. The federal 
     court jury found Jose Guillermo Garcia, El Salvador's former 
     defense minister, and Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, its 
     former National Guard commander, liable for lasting injuries 
     suffered by three Salvadoran immigrants to the United States 
     who were tortured under the generals' command. ``We pursued 
     the case, with Bill in the lead,'' Michael Posner, president 
     of Human Rights First, said on Monday. ``In an extraordinary 
     way, he went beyond simply grieving the loss of his sister; 
     he became a leading advocate for justice in El Salvador.''
       Mr. Ford had been an influential figure in the Lawyers 
     Committee for Human Rights, which in 2004 became Human Rights 
     First.
       On the night of Dec. 2, 1980, shortly after the start of El 
     Salvador's civil war, Mr. Ford's sister, Ita, a Maryknoll 
     sister; another member of the same order, Maura Clarke; the 
     Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel; and a lay missionary, Jean 
     Donovan, were abducted, raped and shot to death. The next 
     day, peasants discovered their bodies beside an isolated road 
     and buried them in a common grave. The van they had been 
     driving when they were stopped at a military checkpoint 
     turned up 20 miles away, burned and gutted.
       The killings came as the United States was beginning a 
     decade-long, $7 billion aid effort to prevent left-wing 
     guerrillas from coming to power in El Salvador, and the case 
     quickly became the focus of a bitter policy debate about 
     Central America.
       ``This particular act of barbarism,'' a 1993 State 
     Department report said, ``did more to inflame the debate over 
     El Salvador in the United States than any other single 
     incident.''
       In 1984, four national guardsmen were convicted of murder 
     in El Salvador and were sentenced to 30 years in prison. 
     After 17 years of silence, the guardsmen said they had acted 
     after receiving ``orders from above.'' Their admissions were 
     made to a delegation from the Lawyers Committee for Human 
     Rights, including Mr. Ford.
       For years, Mr. Ford lobbied politicians and made speeches, 
     charging that the Salvadoran government had failed to conduct 
     even a rudimentary investigation into the murders. In 1981, 
     he pressed his case with the American ambassador to El 
     Salvador, Dean Hinton, and the Salvadoran president, Jose 
     poleon Duarte.
       Mr. Ford also criticized the Reagan administration. The 
     government, he said, ``is so obsessed with the East-West 
     confrontation that they are willing to tolerate the murder of 
     American citizens in El Salvador.'' The Salvadoran junta had 
     killed more than 30,000 people, he said.
       It was an unusual stance for a lawyer who had been on the 
     staff of the New York law firm where Richard M. Nixon and 
     John Mitchell had worked before Mr. Nixon became president 
     and Mr. Mitchell became the attorney general. A year after 
     his sister's murder, Mr. Ford said he had been 
     ``radicalized'' by American support for a government ``which 
     is no more than a group of gangsters in uniform.''
       William Patrick Ford was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on 
     April 28, 1936, the son of William and Mildred O'Beirne Ford. 
     Besides his son William, Mr. Ford is survived by his wife of 
     47 years, the former Mary Anne Heyman; another son, John; 
     four daughters, Miriam Ford, Ruth Ford, Elizabeth Ford and 
     Rebecca Ford; a sister, Irene Coriaty; and eight 
     grandchildren.
       Mr. Ford graduated from Fordham University in 1960 and 
     earned his law degree at St. John's University in 1966. He 
     was a law clerk to a federal judge and later a founding 
     partner of the law firm Ford Marrin Esposito Witmeyer & 
     Gleser.
       Litigating securities and product-liability cases took a 
     back seat for Mr. Ford after that day in 1980. Of the 
     American government, he said a year later, ``You can't take 
     seriously the inscription at the base of the Statue of 
     Liberty if at the same time you are sending arms, ammunition, 
     trucks and police equipment to a junta which is murdering its 
     own citizens.''
       This article has been revised to reflect the following 
     correction:
       Correction: June 4, 2008.
       Because of an editing error, an obituary on Tuesday about 
     William P. Ford, who spent decades pursuing justice after his 
     sister and three other American churchwomen were murdered in 
     El Salvador, misidentified the religious order of one of the 
     slain women, Dorothy Kazel. She was an Ursuline sister, not a 
     Maryknoll sister.
                                  ____


     William Patrick Ford Obituary--Maryknoll Sisters, June 3, 2008

       Ford--William Patrick, (Bill) beloved husband of Mary Anne, 
     devoted father of Miriam, Bill, Ruth, Elizabeth, Rebecca and 
     John and adored grandfather of Samuel, Thomas and Carolina 
     Marth, Billy, Maggie and Mary Ita Ford, Anna and Alex 
     Esteverena, son of the late William Patrick Ford and Mildred 
     O'Beirne Ford, brother of Irene Coriaty and of the late Ita 
     Ford, Maryknoll missionary. He died in the arms of his family 
     after a courageous 17 month battle with end-stage esophageal 
     cancer. Born on April 28, 1936, he was a graduate of Brooklyn 
     Prep, Fordham University (B.A. 1960) and St. John's 
     University (LLB 1966). Bill married Mary Anne Heyman on Feb. 
     4, 1961, whose decision to marry him, he later said, made him 
     ``the luckiest man alive.'' He served in the U.S. Army from 
     1957--1958, and again in 1961. He was a clerk to Federal 
     Court Judge Richard Levet, a founder and senior partner of 
     Ford Marrin Esposito Witmeyer and Gleser, recipient of 
     honorary doctorates from Fordham University, St. John's 
     University , the College of St. Elizabeth and Niagara 
     University and claimed his greatest successes as the births 
     of his six children and eight grandchildren. Bill served as 
     an Essex County Democratic Committeeman. An active member of 
     St. Cassian Church in Upper Montclair, NJ, he was a founding 
     trustee of the North Jersey Inter-Religious Task Force on 
     Central America and a member of the Commission on Justice and 
     Peace for the Archdiocese of Newark. After the December 2, 
     1980 murder in El Salvador of his sister Ita and her 
     companions, Bill tenaciously sought to bring those directly 
     responsible for the deaths of his sister and her three 
     religious companions to justice. For over 22 years, Bill 
     worked unceasingly to hold those in command positions 
     responsible for the death of

[[Page E2026]]

     his sister and so many Salvadoran victims. His efforts laid 
     the groundwork for the eventual successful prosecution of two 
     Salvadoran generals. His personal courage, integrity and 
     undying love of family are the hallmarks of a life well 
     lived. He will be forever remembered by the quiet kindnesses 
     he did for so many. May his soul rest in peace. Visitation 
     Tuesday, June 3 from 2-4 and 7-9 PM at the Hugh Moriarty 
     Funeral Home, 76 Park Street, Montclair, NJ. Mass of 
     Christian Burial will be celebrated Wednesday, June 4 at 
     10:30 AM at St. Cassian Church, 187 Bellevue Avenue, Upper 
     Montclair, NJ. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to 
     Maryknoll Sisters, Box 39, Maryknoll, NY 10545 or Cristo Rey 
     NY High School, 112 East 106 St. NY, NY 10029.

                          ____________________