[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 98 (Friday, June 26, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1634-E1635]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE DEATH OF FARRAH FAWCETT

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON-LEE

                                of TEXAS

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, June 26, 2009

  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Madam Speaker, thank you for letting me 
stand before you today in order to mourn a great American icon, Farrah 
Fawcett. She died today, Thursday, June 25, 2009, shortly before 9:30 
a.m. after battling cancer. She was 62.
  I would also like to express and send my condolences to her family 
and friends. I know the actress fought a very public battle with cancer 
and I am proud to say that this beautiful, talented and courageous 
woman was an American legend, icon and a TEXAN.
  Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett was born on Feb. 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, 
Texas. Her father, James William Fawcett, was an oil pipefitter who 
later founded a pipeline construction company and a custodial service. 
She enrolled at the University of Texas in Austin, where she initially 
planned to study microbiology but later switched her major to art.
  Farrah Fawcett is a true Hollywood success story. Winning a campus 
beauty contest got her noticed by an agent, who encouraged her to 
pursue acting. After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles and her 
healthy style and beauty was immediately noticed. She quickly got roles 
in various television commercials and also made appearances in some TV 
series.
  Eventually, she came to the attention of the highly successful 
producer Aaron Spelling, who was impressed by her beauty and vivacious 
personality which won her a role in the TV series ``Charlie's Angels'' 
(1976). She played a private investigator who worked for a wealthy and 
mysterious businessman, along with two other glamorous female 
detectives. The show immediately became the most popular series on 
television, earning record ratings and a huge audience. All three 
actresses became very popular, but Farrah became by far the best known.
  She was America's sweetheart, and found herself on every celebrity 
magazine and pursued by photographers and fans. While she enjoyed the 
success and got along well with her co-stars (both of whom were also of 
Southern origin), she found the material lightweight. Also, the long 
hours she worked were beginning to take a toll on her marriage so the 
following year, when the show was at its peak, she left to pursue a 
movie career.
  September 2006, Fawcett, who at 59 still maintained a strict regimen 
of tennis and paddleball, began to feel strangely exhausted. She 
underwent two weeks of tests and was told the devastating news: She had 
anal cancer. Farrah fought a long, difficult brave battle against the 
cancer for three years and we must admire her determination and 
strength through it all. According to the American Cancer Society, an 
estimated 5,290 Americans, most of them adults over 35, will be 
diagnosed with that type of cancer this year, and there will be 710 
deaths. She was able to give many people hope for a cure while 
documenting her own personal battle, so we must continue to search for 
a cure for this abhorrent disease that is cancer.
  I would just like to leave her friends and family and all Americans 
who have lost a loved one with this poem by Henry Van Dyke:

[[Page E1635]]

                           Gone From My Sight

                          (By Henry Van Dyke)

     I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads 
           her white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the 
           blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
     I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a 
           speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to 
           mingle with each other.

     Then, someone at my side says, ``There, she is gone''
     Gone where?

     Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in 
           mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
     And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight 
           to her destined port.
     Her diminished size is in me--not in her.
     And, just at the moment when someone says, ``There, she is 
           gone,'' there are other eyes watching her coming, and 
           other voices ready to take up the glad shout, ``Here 
           she comes!''

     And that is dying.  .  .