[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 103 (Thursday, June 25, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BIOGRAPHY OF JERRY DUNFEY

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MAXINE WATERS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 25, 2015

  Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I submit the biography 
of Jerry Dunfey, who is celebrating his 80th birthday.

                         Global Citizens Circle

       Jerry Dunfey, co-founder with his brothers of Dunfey 
     Hotels, which now is Omni Hotels International, also is the 
     co-founder and president of Global Citizens Circle. Since 
     1974, hundreds of Circles globally featured prominent leaders 
     engaging in dialogue with 20,000 citizens from all sectors. 
     Circles have been held in Belfast, Soweto, Jerusalem, Havana, 
     and in cities throughout the U.S.
       Dunfey and his wife Nadine Hack have a deep history of 
     involvement in the U.S. civil rights movement. Friends of the 
     entire King family, they served on the board of the Martin 
     Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Dunfey 
     starting alongside of ``Daddy'' King. They maintained close 
     relationships with many of the movement's leaders, including 
     actively campaigning in Georgia during Andy Young's political 
     career. They read a Psalm at Coretta Scott King's family 
     funeral and were honorary pall bearers at her much larger 
     public funeral.
       They also have profound ties with the leaders of South 
     Africa's liberation movement. He's been in South Africa on 
     countless occasions including as a member of Senator Edward 
     M. Kennedy's 1985 fact-finding mission. With his wife, they 
     were guests of state at President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's 
     1994 inauguration they led a 1998 delegation of 61 democracy 
     activists from seven countries on an eight-day visit; he was 
     honored with the 2008 National Order, Grand Companion of OR 
     Tambo, which is that nation's equivalent of the U.S. 
     Presidential Medal of Freedom; and in 2013 he attended 
     Mandela's funeral in Qunu as a VIP family guest.
       He is on the boards of the Joslin Diabetes Center, the 
     South Africa Development Fund, and with his brothers is a 
     founder of The American Ireland Fund. While it was in 
     existence, he was on the board of the International Defense 
     and Aid Fund for South Africa. He is the recipient of 
     numerous awards from myriad organizations ranging from the 
     2003 Northern Ireland Cross-Community Honor to the 2008 
     Hoteliers of the Year, just among several of the countless 
     times he's been honored.
       He is the 11th of the 12 children of Leroy and Catherine 
     Dunfey, who met in the textile mills of Lowell, MA, and he 
     worked with his siblings from a very early age in his 
     parents' luncheonette in that city. In the 1940s and 1950s he 
     and his brothers operated a number of restaurants, later 
     acquiring several small New England inns and by the 1960s 
     founding Dunfey Hotels. The Parker House, the oldest 
     continuously operating hotel in America, was among its 
     flagship hotels. Shortly after acquiring that hotel in Boston 
     is when the family launched their inaugural Circle.
       During those same decades, he and his family were extremely 
     active in Democratic politics. John F. Kennedy announced his 
     presidential campaign from a Dunfey Hotel. Jerry's brother 
     Bud served as the Northeast Coordinator of that campaign for 
     which the entire Dunfey family campaigned actively. They were 
     all invited to the President's 1963 Inauguration. A six-
     decade close relationship among the two families, including 
     comparable activism with Bobby Kennedy, culminated in having 
     the great honor to sit with his wife in the final hour of 
     vigil over Ted Kennedy's casket at the JFK Library before the 
     family brought the Senator to the church for his funeral 
     service.
       A 1956 graduate of the University of New Hampshire, Dunfey 
     has five children--one who died in 1978 with four surviving, 
     all happily married--and six grandchildren. He and his wife 
     Nadine were extremely proud that all three generations of 
     their family actively campaigned for President Barack Obama. 
     Their two oldest grandchildren, for whom this was the first 
     time in their lives to vote, participated in the Maine 
     caucuses. Dunfey continues as an activist with Friends of 
     Barack Obama.

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