[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 151 (Thursday, December 11, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6682-S6683]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               TRIBUTE TO NANCY ERICKSON AND SHEILA DWYER

  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President I would like to take a moment to thank a 
woman whom most Americans do not know but whose name is well-known to 
every employee of the United States Senate because--among other 
reasons--she signs our paychecks. Nancy Erickson will be leaving the 
Senate at the end of this session.
  For the last 7 years, Nancy has served as the Secretary of the United 
States Senate. All told, she has worked for the Senate for 26 years.
  For those who may not know, the Secretary of the Senate is this 
body's top appointed position. It is like being CEO of a large 
corporation. The Secretary oversees two dozen departments--from payroll 
and printing to the Congressional Record. Nancy Erickson is the 32nd 
person--and the sixth woman--to hold that position. Nancy is a 
consummate professional who has won the respect of Senators on both 
sides of the aisle. She is unfailingly cheerful and unflappable.
  Nancy Erickson loves the United States Senate even more than she 
loves the Green Bay Packers--and that is saying a lot. Nancy got the 
political bug early. As a fifth grader in Brandon, SD, she campaigned 
door-to-door for South Dakota Senator George McGovern in his 1972 
Presidential campaign. She moved to Washington, DC, after college to 
work for the Government Accountability Office, which was then known as 
the General Accounting Office. After 2 years of desperate homesickness, 
she was ready to pack her bags and head back to South Dakota when she 
got a better offer.
  A young South Dakota congressman with a bright future offered her a 
job as his scheduler. His name was Tom Daschle. Over the next 16 years 
Tom Daschle moved from serving as a House Member to Senator to Senate 
majority leader. Nancy moved up the ladder, too, eventually becoming 
Senator Daschle's deputy chief of staff. When Senator Daschle left the 
Senate in 2005, Senator Reid immediately snapped Nancy up to serve as 
his representative to the Senate Sergeant at Arms. Two years later 
Senator Reid became majority leader and asked Nancy to serve as the 
Secretary of the Senate. Nancy calls being Secretary of the Senate her 
``pinch me job.''
  Over the course of her 26-year Senate career, there have been 
traumatic moments. On the morning of September 11, 2001, Nancy was at 
her desk in the Capitol when Capitol Police rushed in and ordered that 
the building be evacuated immediately, fearful that the Capitol was 
under terrorist attack.
  One month later Nancy was one of 28 people in the Senate who were 
exposed to anthrax when a letter carrying the deadly bacteria was 
opened in Senator Daschle's office. Experts estimated that the affected 
staffers were exposed to between 1,000 and 3,000 times the lethal dose 
of anthrax. Fortunately, with expert medical assistance, no one in the 
Senate was seriously injured in the anthrax attack.
  To walk back into the Capitol the day after 9/11 took courage. To 
keep coming back after living through a potentially deadly anthrax 
attack required not just courage but a true devotion to public service 
and a love of this Senate.
  You can see Nancy's love of this Senate and its history in the 
exquisitely restored Old Senate Chamber, whose renovation occurred on 
Nancy's watch. You can see her love of the Senate in the ongoing 
restoration of the Capitol's magnificent Brumidi Corridors, a project 
that Nancy has championed.
  You can see Nancy Erickson's reverence for the U.S. Senate in a 
massive portrait of one of the giants of Senate history, former 
Kentucky Senator Henry Clay. That painting, measuring 11 by 7 feet, was 
discovered a few years ago in a storage room in New York State. The 
paint was peeling, and there were holes in the canvas created when a 
high school had used it as a basketball backboard. Nancy spearheaded 
the effort to procure and restore that lost masterpiece. Today, the 
painting of the Senate's ``Great Compromiser'' hangs just off the 
Senate floor--a reminder to all of us of the noble art of principled 
compromise. We thank you, Nancy, for that reminder and for your many 
years of service to this Senate and to America.
  I also want to take a moment to acknowledge Sheila Dwyer, who has 
served as Assistant Secretary of the Senate since 2007. Majority Leader 
Harry Reid, who paid tribute to Sheila on the Senate floor yesterday, 
appointed her to this post. Sheila has done an outstanding job 
overseeing the departments within the Office of the Secretary and 
assisting in the day-to-day legislative, financial, and administrative 
operations of the Senate. Sheila never forgets the little touches, or 
as any Democratic Senator can tell you, the meals that make the U.S. 
Senate an enjoyable place to work.
  Sheila first came to Washington, DC, in 1980 as a House page for 
Speaker Tip O'Neil. Immediately after graduating from Suffolk 
University in Boston, she returned to DC and was hired to work in New 
York Governor Mario Cuomo's Washington office. She went on to work for 
Senators Charles Robb and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
  Sheila was responsible for logistics of not one--but two--Democratic 
national conventions. The first was in 1992 in New York City. Then at 
the 1996 convention in Chicago, I chaired the Illinois Delegation as a 
candidate for the U.S. Senate, and Sheila Dwyer once again kept the 
logistics for the event moving smoothly.
  It has been an honor to work with Sheila for all these years, and I 
wish her the best as she begins a new chapter in her life.
  To Nancy and to Sheila, thank you for sharing so much of your time 
and talent with this Senate. We will miss you both.

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