[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 15, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Page S3503]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO SARAH NEIMEYER

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, once in a while you are lucky enough to 
meet someone who is down to Earth but uncompromising in their idealism. 
I met someone just like that in the year 2007, and I hired her for my 
staff. It was a great decision.
  For the better part of 6 years, Sarah Neimeyer has been a senior 
member of my staff, and this week she left my office for a new 
adventure which she started today, working with the new Secretary at 
the Department of the Interior. I am sorry to lose her, but I wish her 
well.
  Sarah comes by her idealism honestly. She grew up in a family of 
progressives in rural Minnesota. Her dad practiced law and her mom 
raised honey bees and grew her own vegetables.
  From her parents Sarah inherited progressive ideals, practical 
Midwestern values and a deep love of the land.
  During college, she spent her summers leading canoe trips through the 
Boundary Waters Wilderness in northern Minnesota and Ontario, Canada.
  Her first boss in the Senate was a dear friend and one of my personal 
heroes, Paul Wellstone. Sarah worked for Paul for 10 years. After he 
passed away, she left Capitol Hill and worked as an advocate for land 
conservation and wilderness preservation.
  Illinois has benefited from Sarah's passion, her practicality and her 
incredibly hard work.
  Lake Michigan is one of Illinois' most beloved treasures. As a member 
of my staff, Sarah has fought many battles to protect the Lake from 
threats from toxic dumping to invasive Asian carp.
  She has worked alongside energy companies in Illinois that are 
cleaning up the way energy is produced.
  Whenever safe water, clean air and healthy lands are at stake, you 
can be pretty sure Sarah Neimeyer is close by. She is committed and 
tenacious. And she usually wins.
  There is one cause which is even dearer to Sarah and that is her 
family--her husband, Joe Warren, and their teenage sons, Will and 
Harry. As accomplished as Sarah is in her professional life, if you ask 
her what she is proudest of, she will tell you in an instant: it's her 
boys.
  Paul Wellstone had a great definition for politics. He used to say:

       ``In the last analysis, politics is not predictions and 
     politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. 
     Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what 
     we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to 
     imagine.''

  Paul Wellstone was right. That is politics at its finest. That is the 
kind of public service Sarah Neimeyer has performed for me and for the 
people of Illinois for the last nearly 6 years and I am grateful to 
her.
  I want to thank Joe, Will and Harry, first of all, for sharing Sarah 
with us. And I want to thank Sarah for helping to protect and preserve 
some of my State and our Nation's greatest natural treasures.
  I wish her continued joy and success as she gets back on the ``green 
bus'' to begin her next professional challenge.

                          ____________________