[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 99 (Thursday, June 13, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E772-E773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   HONORING THE MEMORY OF LLOYD TATUM

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. HAROLD ROGERS

                              of kentucky

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 13, 2019

  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to 
the memory of my mentor and dear friend, the honorable Lloyd Tatum of 
Henderson, Tennessee, who succumbed to cancer at the age of 93.
  Given the profound honor of eulogizing Lloyd, I include in the Record 
the following sentiments from my remarks in recognition of a life of 
such great scope and consequence:

       Lloyd inspired all of us with his example of truthfulness, 
     hard work, wit, adoration to family and friends, fairness, 
     and morality. He inspired me to choose law as a career and 
     became my mentor.
       Lloyd's nickname was ``Happy,'' as humor was a mainstay in 
     his life. He truly enjoyed things funny and his hearty laugh 
     was infectious. His easy-going personality, though, 
     camouflaged a very serious and determined hard worker--from 
     his days as a crewman on the B-24 Liberator of Superfortress 
     at the end of World War II; to a stint as an FBI agent; to a 
     mini-career in movies; to a great career as a highly 
     respected and successful practicing attorney in all of West 
     Tennessee; to 10 years as a distinguished appellate justice 
     in Tennessee's Court of Criminal Appeals.
       I first met Lloyd while a teenager in my hometown of 
     Monticello, Kentucky. He came to southern Kentucky to clear 
     the titles for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as they were 
     beginning to create Lake Cumberland,

[[Page E773]]

     to be a 100-mile-long impoundment of the Cumberland River. He 
     worked out of a local law firm's office on the square in 
     Monticello where he met and fell in love with my sister, 
     Inadene Rogers. After a beautiful church wedding, the new 
     couple was off to New Haven, Connecticut and the FBI, and 
     later to Henderson, Tennessee and law practice.
       Through frequent family visits, we shared great times 
     together--great dinners, picnics, reunions and water skiing 
     on Lake Cumberland. It wasn't long until Aaron came along and 
     then, shortly, Janice. What a pair--full of life. Soon, there 
     came Tim, then little Lloyd and Suzanne--all wonderful, 
     talented children of happy and loving parents. But tragedy 
     intervened when their daughter Janice became deathly ill, and 
     sometime later, Inadene lost her battle with cancer.
  Lloyd immersed himself in his other love--the law. His law practice 
and later service as a great justice on the Tennessee Criminal Court of 
Appeals, consumed him. Slowly the old Lloyd Tatum came back, and though 
grief was his constant companion, he regained that impressionable 
personality we cherish today.
  But, tragedy would come again as his second wife, Yvonne, succumbed 
to cancer. There will never be another quite like Lloyd Tatum. The 
joyful memories of our wonderful time together will inspire us all 
until we meet him again on the other side. An inscription on the 
monument over the grave of James Louis Petigru in Charleston, South 
Carolina describes Lloyd much better than my feeble efforts:

     ``Future times will hardly know how great a life
     This simple stone commemorates--
     The tradition of his Eloquence, his
     Wisdom and his Wit may fade:
     But he lived for ends more durable than fame,
     His Eloquence was the protection of the poor and wronged;
     His Learning illuminated the principles of Law--
     In the admiration of his Peers,
     In the respect of his People,
     In the affection of his Family,
     His was the highest place;
     The just need
     Of his kindness and forbearance
     His dignity and simplicity
     His brilliant genius and his unwearied industry
     Unawed by Opinion,
     Unseduced by Flattery,
     Undismayed by Disaster,
     He confronted Life with antique Courage
     And Death with Christian Hope.''

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