[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 46 (Friday, April 1, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H2258-H2260]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO GERALDINE FERRARO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) is recognized 
for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to a good friend and a 
former colleague who passed away this past week, a true trailblazer, 
former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. She is one of the few people in 
history who can lay claim to being a first. She was the first woman to 
be nominated for Vice President on a major ticket and also the first 
Italian American to achieve that honor. She was a leader, an advocate, 
a devoted public servant and beloved family member. I am also honored, 
most of all, to have been able to call her a friend.
  The history that has unfolded after she stood on the stage in San 
Francisco in 1984 to accept her party's nomination for Vice President 
has happened thanks to her taking those first steps. I remember being 
there at the convention in San Francisco in 1984 and how proud we were 
that one of our own, a New Yorker, Gerry Ferraro, was being nominated 
as Vice President. At the same time, our Governor at the time, another 
New Yorker, Mario Cuomo, gave the keynote address at that convention.
  Since that time, of course, another woman has appeared on the ballot 
of a major party for Vice President and another came within a handful 
of delegates of becoming the first Presidential nominee. Strong women 
in politics and business are not the exception any longer; they are 
mainstream. As Gerry declared in San Francisco, ``I stand before you to 
proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for 
all of us.''
  Gerry grew up, as I did, in New York City and went into teaching 
before going to law school, as I did, and grew up in the South Bronx as 
a young person, as I did as well. She headed the new Special Victims 
Bureau of the Queens County District Attorney's Office and was a Queens 
criminal prosecutor before being elected to the House of 
Representatives in 1978.
  While serving in the House, she created a flex-time program for 
public employees which has become the basis of such programs in the 
private sector. She also successfully sponsored the Women's Economic 
Equality Act, which ended pension discrimination against women, 
provided job options for displaced homemakers, and enabled homemakers 
to open IRAs.
  When I think of Gerry Ferraro, I think of her as a typical 
representative of the middle class in New York's outer boroughs. She 
had a certain kind of combination of street smarts and book smarts and 
a certain kind of sense and moxie, knowing how to get ahead and what to 
say.

[[Page H2259]]

  We are all better off, no question, America is a better place, 
because of the accomplishments of Gerry Ferraro. Women from coast to 
coast are better off because of her. But all Americans, women or not, 
are better off because of what she did. She took those first steps in 
1984 when she was nominated. Sixty-four years after women won the right 
to vote, a woman had removed the ``men only'' sign from the White House 
door.
  I thought it would be good at this point to read some of the things 
that The New York Times had mentioned about the highlights of Gerry 
Ferraro.
  She was considered very ideal for television: a down-to-earth, 
streaked blond, peanut butter sandwich making mother whose personal 
story resonated powerfully. Brought up by a single mother who had 
crocheted beads on wedding dresses to send her daughter to good 
schools, Ms. Ferraro had waited until her own children were school-aged 
before going to work in the Queens District Attorney's Office.
  In the 1984 race, many Americans found her breezy style refreshing. 
``What are you--crazy?'' was one of her familiar expressions. She might 
break into a little dance behind the speaker's platform when she liked 
the introductory music.
  Gerry Ferraro, Geraldine Anne Ferraro, was born on August 26, 1935, 
in the Hudson River city of Newburgh, New York, where she was the 
fourth child and only daughter of Dominick Ferraro, an Italian 
immigrant who owned a restaurant and a five-and-dime store, and the 
former Antonetta L. Corrieri. One brother died shortly after birth, and 
another, Gerard, died in an automobile accident when he was 3, 2 years 
before Geraldine was born.

                              {time}  1610

  Geraldine was born at home. Her mother, who had been holding Gerard 
at the time of the crash, and who had washed and pressed his clothes 
for months after his death, would not go to the hospital for the 
delivery and leave the third brother, Carl, at home. Geraldine was 
named for Gerard, but in her book, ``Framing a Life: A Family Memoir,'' 
written with Catherine Whitney, Ms. Ferraro said her mother had 
emphasized that she was not taking his place. ``Gerry is special,'' she 
quoted her mother as saying, ``because she is a girl.''
  Her mother soon sold the store and the families' house and moved to 
the South Bronx. With the proceeds from the sale of the property in 
Italy that her husband had left her, she sent Geraldine to the 
Marymount School, a Catholic boarding school in Tarrytown, New York. 
She sent Carl to military school. Tarrytown, New York, is part of my 
district.
  Ms. Ferraro's outstanding grades earned her a scholarship to 
Marymount College in Tarrytown, from which she transferred to the 
school's Manhattan branch. She commuted there from Queens, where her 
mother had moved by then. An English major, Ms. Ferraro was editor of 
the school newspaper and an athlete and won numerous honors before 
graduating in 1956. ``Delights in the unexpected,'' the yearbook said 
about her.
  After graduating, Ms. Ferraro got a job teaching in a public grade 
school in Queens. She later applied to Fordham Law School, where an 
admissions officer warned her that she might be taking a man's place. 
Admitted to its night school, she was one of only two women in a class 
of 179, and received her law degree in 1960.
  Ms. Ferraro and John Zacarro, whose family was in the real estate 
business, were married on July 16, 1960, 2 days after she passed the 
bar exam. She was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1961, and 
decided to keep her maiden name professionally to honor her mother. She 
was admitted to the United States Supreme Court Bar in 1978.
  For the first 13 years of her marriage, Ms. Ferraro devoted herself 
mainly to her growing family. Donna was born in 1962, John in 1964, and 
Laura in 1966. Ms. Ferraro did some legal work for her husband's 
business, worked pro bono for women in family court, and dabbed in 
local politics. In 1970, she was elected president of the Queens County 
Women's Bar Association. In 1973, after her cousin Nicholas Ferraro was 
elected Queens District Attorney, she applied for and got a job as an 
assistant district attorney in charge of a special victims bureau 
investigating rape, crimes against the elderly, and child and wife 
abuse. The cases were so harrowing, she later wrote, that they caused 
her to develop an ulcer, and the crime-breeding societal conditions she 
said, planted the seeds of her liberalism.
  When she was elected to the House, she became very good friends with 
Tip O'Neill, who was the Speaker. Ms. Ferraro found her opportunity in 
1978 to run for Congress when James Delaney, a Democratic Congressman 
from a predominantly working class district in Queens, announced his 
retirement. In the House, Ms. Ferraro was on the Public Works and 
Transportation Committee, and in doing that she successfully pushed for 
improved mass transit around LaGuardia Airport. Tip O'Neill, the 
Speaker, took an immediate liking to her, and in her three terms she 
voted mostly with the party's leadership.
  She was elected secretary of the Democratic Caucus, thanks in part to 
Tip O'Neill, giving her influence on committee assignments, and in 1983 
she was awarded a seat on the House Budget Committee. It was Ms. 
Ferraro's appointment as chairwoman of the 1984 Democratic Platform 
Committee that gave her the most prominence. In her book, ``Ferraro: My 
Story,'' she said that in becoming the first woman to hold that post 
she owed much to a group of Democratic women, congressional staffers, 
rights activists, labor leaders, and other who called themselves Team A 
and who lobbied for her appointment.
  When she was running there were a lot of slights, being the first 
woman. People were either adjusting or not adjusting to a woman on a 
national ticket. Mississippi Agriculture Secretary called Ms. Ferraro, 
``young lady,'' and asked if she could bake blueberry muffins, to which 
she said, Yes, I can. Can you?
  Gerry Ferraro always had a smile and always had a kind word and never 
said no to someone needing her help. Even though I came to the House 4 
years after she left, I got to know her very well and truly feel a loss 
in having her pass away.
  Near the end of 1998, she learned that she had multiple myeloma--bone 
marrow cancer--that suppresses the immune system. Before then, she was 
Ambassador to the United States Human Rights Commission during the 
Clinton administration. And we remember her as cohost of the CNN 
program ``Crossfire'' from 1996 to 1998. She wrote books and articles 
and did business consulting. She addressed her place in history in a 
long letter to the Times in 1988, noting that women wrote to her about 
how she had inspired them to take on challenges, always adding a 
version of ``I decided if you could do it, I can too.'' Schoolgirls, 
she said, told her they hoped to be President some day, and needed 
advice.
  Gerry Ferraro said, ``I'm the first to admit that were I not a woman, 
I would not have been the vice presidential nominee. But she insisted 
that her presence on the ticket had translated into votes that the 
ticket might otherwise not have received. In any event, she said the 
political realities of 1984 had made it all but impossible for the 
Democrats to win that year, no matter what the candidates or their 
gender. ``Throwing Ronald Reagan out of office at the height of his 
popularity, with inflation and interest rates down, the economic 
moving, and the country at peace, would have required God on the 
ticket,'' Ms. Ferraro wrote. ``And she was not available.''
  Geraldine Ferraro is survived by her husband, three children, and 
eight grandchildren. I must say that I was disappointed that in the 
House we didn't have a plane to take all the Members to the funeral 
yesterday. I'm sorry about that because, frankly, I think it was a bit 
disrespectful. But we all remember Gerry Ferraro. We remember her as a 
true New Yorker. We remember her as a true American. We remember her as 
someone who each of us she inspired to push on with whatever goal we 
want to achieve, no matter how daunting or impossible it looked. That's 
how I'll remember Gerry Ferraro. I'll remember her at the 1984 
convention standing on the stage with Walter Mondale, both putting 
their arms around each other, and even then there was a question about 
how they

[[Page H2260]]

would interact, as it was the first time a woman was on a national 
ticket.

  I will miss my friend Gerry. We will all miss her. But we are all 
better people because of her. Rest in peace, Gerry. We will always 
remember you. And so will the history books.

                          ____________________