[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 97 (Tuesday, July 9, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1028]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 A TRIBUTE TO FLOYD SEARS, A LEADER OF THE MILITARY RETIREE GRASSROOTS 
                                MOVEMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 9, 2013

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Floyd Sears of 
Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Floyd passed away on June 5, 2013 at the 
age of 82.
  Floyd Sears was a national leader of grassroots military retirees who 
achieved remarkable legislative success in righting what they knew was 
a wrong. He represented the best of the military retirees whom we all 
represent.
  I am grateful to Floyd Sears, a great American citizen in the truest 
sense, who joined the military in his youth when duty called and 
devoted his career to defending our freedoms, and then, in his 
retirement, exercised those freedoms to help make our country a better 
place.
  Health care for our military community is a priority for me as it was 
for Floyd, and it is a privilege to represent the district that is home 
to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Walter Reed is the 
crown jewel of military medicine, serving our country's active and 
retired military and especially the wounded who have suffered greatly 
in the most difficult circumstances. Congress has provided the 
resources that were necessary to ensure that the new Walter Reed can 
provide world-class health care to our uniformed service personnel.
  However, Floyd's generation did not always receive that level of 
attention. Floyd became a leader in the effort to restore retiree 
health care benefits that his generation of enlistees was losing. These 
individuals had been promised health care upon their retirement when 
they enlisted in the military services in their youth. But those 
benefits were pulled out from under them when they retired after a 
career of at least 20 years due to unintended consequences of 
legislative and administrative changes in military health care.
  Floyd recognized how these legal changes were stripping him and his 
colleagues of the retiree health care benefits that they earned and 
richly deserved. Nearly 20 years ago, he began his personal crusade to 
amend the law and restore those promised benefits. What began as one 
man sending letters to his local newspaper and representative in 
Congress became a nationwide grassroots effort connected by the 
Internet. Ultimately, Floyd, his good friend Jim Whittington and 
others, on behalf of their grassroots army, inspired the introduction 
of the ``Keep Our Promise to America's Military Retirees Act,'' which 
led to the enactment of Tricare for Life, a great leap towards 
fulfilling Floyd's dream of full restoration of the benefits he had 
been promised.
  Floyd never intended to draw attention to himself. But with his 
passing we can admire what one person can accomplish when he puts his 
mind, his heart, and his energy into it.
  I ask my colleagues to join me in expressing our gratitude for the 
extraordinary contributions that Floyd Sears, a truly great American, 
made to our nation.

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