[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 14, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S3770]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      REMEMBERING RICHARD W. CARR

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to the 
remarkable life and legacy of Richard W. Carr. One year after Dick 
Carr's passing, I feel deprived of the ongoing, often surprising 
revelations of his depth and diversity. But also, of course, I feel 
deeply grateful to have been his friend.
  Dick Carr was like a great book in which you find new meanings, 
insights, and strengths every time you return to it.
  When I first met Dick, he seemed like another good guy with a kind 
and vivacious wife and wonderful daughters who lived a block away from 
my family in Hillandale. He was surely all that but over time, as I 
came to know him better, it was clear that Dick Carr was much, much 
more.
  He was a man of property but also a man of poetry. He was a man who 
knew history, but also understood what it meant to be holy. He learned 
a lot and taught a lot. He laughed a lot and loved a lot.
  Little things sometimes tell us big things about people. For 
instance, in Hillandale, Dick was one of the few residents who took 
care of his own yard, with Marie's help of course. Not, I presume, 
because he couldn't afford gardening help, but because he just enjoyed 
doing it himself and wanted his grounds to be as perfect as he and 
Marie would make them. And it tells you a lot about Dick that he didn't 
stop with his own yard. He took care of the yards of neighbors who were 
away or whose husbands were ailing or gone. That was Dick Carr.
  Dick had many loves in his life none of course greater than Marie, 
Kate, Annie, Beth, his parents, and his siblings. But he also had a 
special love for this city--its history and its people--and he helped, 
along with his family, to rebuild, enrich, and beautify Washington in 
many lasting ways. Dick's work to restore the Willard Hotel to its 
previous grandeur was a great gift to our country and its Capital City. 
His charitable work changed the lives of many who had much less than he 
did. And he did it all in a quiet way that showed he had the self-
confidence not to need the public credit.
  In the last 3 years since he was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, I 
learned some other new things from Dick Carr. In the face of repeated 
bleak diagnoses and painful treatments, Dick taught me and all of us 
new meaning of words like strength, courage, and grace under pressure. 
He didn't just fight the good fight; he fought a great fight until he 
had given to life all that he could and God was ready to take his soul 
from this Earth. And Marie, his love and life's partner, fought 
tirelessly for him and alongside him every step of the way in the most 
sustained, selfless, and devoted acts of caring I have ever seen. Marie 
Carr is simply saintly.
  Thank you, Marie, for what you showed and taught all of us about love 
and faith over the years. I pray that you will be strengthened now and 
in the years ahead by your faith and comforted by wonderful memories of 
Dick.
  I pray also, with total confidence, that Dick's soul has soared to 
heaven where he is living in eternal peace, which in his case will 
probably mean reading, writing, gardening, dreaming, and building. In 
fact, I would not be surprised if right now Dick was devising plans to 
restore some heavenly structure to its previous grandeur.
  Today, in Sister's Garden of the Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart 
here in Washington, DC, Dick's great life and legacy will be honored 
and memorialized forever in that lush, green, and holy space.
  May God bless you and keep you, Dick, as you blessed and inspired 
each of us who knew you.

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