[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 20]
[House]
[Page 27579]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



IN APPRECIATION OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS AND IN TRIBUTE TO SUPPORTIVE AND 
                             CAPABLE STAFF

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bonior) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me apologize to my friend, 
Elie Abboud, who has been waiting for me for an hour and a half to have 
lunch. I did not expect this to happen, and I am overwhelmed by the 
wonderful tributes and comments of my colleagues.
  I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) and the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) for their comments, and for 
spending the time that they have here on the floor throughout this 
hour-and-a-half, 2 hours.
  Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor this afternoon, or actually I came 
this morning, but it is afternoon now, to pay tribute to my staff.
  Before I do that, I want to express my appreciation to all the 
Members who came to this well and spoke so lovingly and so wonderfully 
concerning my service here.
  It means a great deal to me to, number one, have such wonderful 
friendships of people that I admire and respect, and to have them 
publicly express their feelings and their thoughts. It was quite an 
emotional and heartfelt experience and well received, I might say, and 
I thank them for it.
  The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), of course, is going to 
be our next whip and a great leader of our country, and she already is, 
but more greatness awaits her; and my friend, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. George Miller), who, with me, has had so many battles 
over so many years on education, labor issues, Central America; we go 
back a long time, and he is one of the best.
  Of course, there is the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), 
who I have come to admire and respect, and is about as genuine and as 
real and as committed to people as we can find in this place; and the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), who was here and has now left, who 
will commence the leadership on the trade issue. He is already a great 
leader in it, but he will be even more so in the days and weeks and 
months ahead.
  Thanks to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) and the chief deputy 
whip, the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr); the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), who spoke with such eloquence and love; the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur); the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. 
Sanders), who always proves that I am bipartisan; the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Wu); the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen); the gentlewoman 
from Nevada (Ms. Carson); the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood), who 
is going to be the next Governor of Guam; the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Green); the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank); the gentleman 
from New Jersey (Mr. Payne); the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Watt); and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder), I thank him for his 
comments.
  Thanks also to Harold Volkmer who came here, I saw him on the floor. 
Many of you knew him; he served many years in the House. He was a 
classmate of mine, and was very instrumental in getting me elected 
whip.

                              {time}  1315

  So I thank them all and I look forward to a final year of service 
with them here. We are going to do wonderful things for our country 
together.
  I take this floor tonight to express my appreciation to people who 
have made it possible for me to be the whip of my party and be a leader 
in my party, and that is my staff. They are an extraordinary group of 
people, some of whom I will miss dearly. Although I am sure we will be 
in contact with each other over the years and the months as they go by, 
but some of them are leaving now, and they have been part of my whip 
staff, and I want to express my thoughts and feelings to them today.
  Bridget Andrews will be coming over to the Rayburn staff with me for 
the next year and she is just a bright, thoughtful, caring, quiet but 
smart woman, and I am really honored to have her and look forward to 
working with her.
  Brian Taylor, who is here on the floor as well, Brian has been with 
us a short time, but he has done a great, great job, and he has got all 
the abilities to be a great legislative assistant in this institution, 
and I wish him all the best. He has had the obligation of answering the 
phone when someone calls to find out what is going on and he does a 
great job. He knows how this place works now. He is a wonderful person.
  Then Kim Kovach, who I will dearly miss. She started off not too long 
ago with us, a couple of years ago, several years ago, and she has done 
everything in the office, and she did our trade stuff for us on fast 
track. She has just progressed in such a wonderful fashion. She is 
caring, she is decent. She is going back to Pittsburgh. She got 
married. She is a lovely person, and whoever gets her in employment in 
Pittsburgh is going to be very, very fortunate. I wish Kim all the best 
in her endeavors.
  I also want to take this opportunity to thank Howard Moon, who came 
from the gentleman from California's (Mr. Matsui) staff. Howard is one 
of our floor people here, and he will continue on in that capacity in 
the next session of this Congress. He and Kristen are very special 
people, smart, hardworking, thoughtful, competent, all the things 
someone would want in a staff person, and I wish Howard all the best 
and I will miss him. We will see him, though, on the floor. So I guess 
I will not miss him that much. He will be around.
  Jerry Hartz. Jerry has been with me now for, I do not want to get 
these things wrong, but it has been at least 15 years, since 1987. So 
let me do my math, about 15 years, and he will be continuing on serving 
this great institution, and he is an enormously talented individual, a 
floor person here who we relied on. Wonderful family. Jerry started in 
our offices when we were the chief deputy whip. There were just four of 
us in there Judy, my wife; Jerry, Kathy and then Sarah. I guess that is 
five, and he was so instrumental in our battles on Central America and 
disarmament issues and you name it, he is there. He is a great resource 
for this institution, and I wish Jerry all the best in his endeavors.
  Sarah Dufendach and Kathy Gille have been with me the longest of the 
group. They worked on my first campaign 25 years ago. Sarah and Kathy 
and I, we all kind of grew up on the east side of Detroit, and as I 
said, they both worked on my first campaign, and Kathy came to work 
with me about 20 years ago, seems like 22, but she was in at the very 
beginning and she has been an enormous, wise consult to me. She has 
great instincts. She has great humanitarian instincts. She has great 
political wisdom and caring, and I am just going to miss her very, very 
much, but I know she is looking forward to the day when she can have a 
little bit of rest, as we all are, and I wish her and Doug much 
happiness. I know that it will be there in abundance for them. They put 
together well in their lives the different pieces that make life so 
profound and wonderful. The spiritual, the physical, the emotional, the 
educational, all those pieces they do very, very well, and she does 
extremely well.
  Kathy traveled to Central America. She has been at all the battles 
that we have done over the years and the Vietnams veterans stuff, all 
the trade issues, worked on the Committee on Rules, as did Jerry, and 
she is just a very special person, and I thank her from the bottom of 
my heart for her service.
  Then Sarah, who with Kathy, worked in that first campaign, has been 
with me in the office now for 25 years. She started in Michigan. She 
lived in the same community I did. She has worked in social services 
her whole life, and I consider this part of that. She has got enormous 
amounts of energy and optimism and can-do-it-iveness and is a deeply 
caring person and was the administrative and political part of our 
operation that was so very, very important. She did a great, great job 
for many, many years.
  She is going on to wonderful things working for an organization 
called the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, which was an 
offshoot of the original Vietnam Veterans of America. I guess it really 
was not an offshoot, but it is Bobby Muller who was instrumental in 
forming both of those organizations, one which is now a national 
veterans organization. She is going to go work over there, and they do 
stuff like land mines.
  They are the folks that got the Nobel Peace Prize for the work they 
did on land mine issues around the world. So it is a good place for 
Sarah because when she puts her heart and soul into something, she 
works hard at it, and there is nothing that could be more important 
than doing that kind of work, making sure we demilitarize our land so 
that our loved ones around the world do not lose their lives and their 
limbs. There will be other things I am sure that she will be doing over 
there but she is a great person, and I wish her all the best in her 
endeavors, and I thank her for her service.
  Another person who I should mention is Chris Cook, who was with me 
for 25 years as well and left just recently. I have four people that 
were with me virtually the whole time, Kathy, Sarah, Ed Bruley, who is 
still there and Chris Cook, Christine Cook. And Christine left recently 
from the Michigan office and those now kind of form the team that we 
have operated with for two and a half decades. And I am going to miss 
Christine. I will see her. She is busy now as a grandma. We were all 
young when we started out in this business, but we have other 
responsibilities now in our lives. And she is handling that with great 
grace and she is a gracious, lovely woman and I miss her already.
  Then let me finally say that my wife, Judy, who worked in our office, 
in the whip's office, chief deputy whip's office and then in the 
majority whip's office and in the minority whip's office was an 
enormous piece in making things work and is the central piece of my 
life. And she was just fabulous in doing all the wonderful things she 
does. Caring, loving and advocating and fighting for the things that 
are important to her, socioeconomic justice, racial justice. So she is 
a beacon of light for me and for many people, and I want her to know 
that. I look forward to marching through life with her.
  To all the Hill staff who I had the pleasure to work with, thank you 
for your cooperation and for your support. To run a whip shop is not 
easy. You do not just need your staff. There is a lot of people that 
are involved and a lot of energy and a lot of heart and soul gets 
poured into these issues. And, I hope over the next year, to thank you 
all individually and to give you my best wishes in your careers.
  Mr. Speaker, you have been very generous. This has been a long 5 
minutes, and I want to thank you for your kindness this afternoon. I 
want to wish my colleagues a very happy holiday season; a happy 
Hanukkah which has passed; a merry Christmas and a spiritual Kwanzaa 
and a Ramadan Koran for those who just finished their holy season.
  We look forward to a good session the next part of this 107th 
Congress.

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