[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 76 (Thursday, May 10, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H3921-H3922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    A TRIBUTE TO SEAN PATRICK MURPHY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Estes of Kansas). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman 
from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, the House is often described as a family, but 
it is a lot bigger than 435 Members. Our extended family, of course, 
includes the staff of the House and the staff of each and every Member; 
the Capitol Police who do such an extraordinary job of protecting all 
of us; the maintenance crews that make sure the facilities function, 
are open to the public; and, frankly, all those others who make the 
House of Representatives a very special place.
  I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to report what many of you already know, 
the loss of a member of that extended family, my longtime chief of 
staff, Sean Patrick Murphy.
  Sean has been a professional associate and friend of mine for 19 
years. He was my chief of staff for 11 years, and, frankly, we both 
believed he would be the last chief of staff I would ever have.
  Sean Patrick Murphy left us, unexpectedly, in February. He had based 
his life on three things: his faith, his family, and his friends.
  Those people who were privileged to know Sean know that he was a very 
devout Catholic, and his faith was not something that was casual to 
him. It was something that he lived each and every day and carried out 
in each and every relationship that he had.
  Nothing was more important after his faith than his family. Sean 
Murphy was the consummate husband and father. He loved his family, and 
he lived a life of total dedication to them.
  His wife, Johannah, and his sons, Patrick, Peter, and Charlie, were 
fixtures that we all heard about in our office each and every day, 
particularly the boys because there would always be a funny story about 
what they happened to be doing at any given moment. Sean worked hard so 
Johannah could stay home and actually homeschool those three children, 
so they were an extraordinarily close group.
  And, finally, there were Sean's friends. No one had more, no one, 
frankly, held his friends longer, and no one treasured them more than 
Sean. Because of that, if you happened to attend his funeral, you saw 
over 2,000 family and friends show up to remember this extraordinary 
man.
  As a person, Sean had all the wit, all the wisdom, all the decency of 
the Irish. He was a natural leader and a loyal colleague. People 
followed him because they trusted him. He was fair. He was decent. He 
was selfless. He always put others first.
  And if you sent spent a day with Sean Murphy, you were going to 
laugh. He made people laugh partly by laughing at himself. In all the 
years that I

[[Page H3922]]

knew him and all the many capacities we dealt in together, I never had 
one other person come and complain to me about Sean--no constituent, no 
fellow staff member, no lobbyist, no member of another office. All of 
them thought they were his best friend.
  Now, he was pretty good at that and would give you a pretty good 
opinion later about whether they were really a friend or not, but the 
point is everybody that knew him liked him, and everybody believed that 
he liked them back.
  Sean's lifelong profession, and, really, it began when he was quite 
young, was his passion for politics. He took it first as a volunteer, 
and then it did become the manner in which he lived his life.
  Now, his gentle nature hid an extraordinarily competitive personal 
spirit. Politics, I like to say, is an adult team sport, and Sean 
played it exceptionally well. He was astute in his judgment about 
people and about politics.
  In all the many issues we discussed over many years, both in terms of 
dealing with political campaigns and dealing with the politics of the 
House, itself, both on the floor and in our Conference, I never got a 
piece of bad advice from Sean. But with Sean, politics always had a 
purpose, and that purpose was always to achieve some greater good, some 
more important goal.
  He wasn't just good at winning; he was good at governing. He, 
frankly, never sold out. He had plenty of opportunities to go and make 
a lot more money than I could have ever paid him, but he worked for 
principle. He always put his country and his party and people above 
anything that might benefit himself. And he believed in the things that 
he worked for, and he worked to make a difference in this country each 
and every day.
  Frankly, he cherished this institution above all else. He enjoyed not 
only the politics, but those rare moments of drama when great things 
happen on the floor of the House; and he made sure that any Member he 
worked for--and I wasn't the only one--had an opportunity to impact 
those events thanks to his good advice, thanks to the wonderful staff 
that he built and created, and thanks to his shrewd strategy.
  All of us that knew him believed that he left us far too soon, but 
that is pretty presumptive, Mr. Speaker. Who are any of us to say 
something like that? God chooses the time that we come and the time 
that we go. How can you be bitter when your friend went to his bed, 
innocent and untroubled, and woke up in Heaven with our Lord and 
Savior?
  But God does allow us to miss him, and miss him we all will. He will 
be missed as a husband and a father and a friend. He blessed all of us 
with his life. And for me, in particular, Mr. Speaker, I will miss him 
for all my days.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________