[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14647-14648]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO THE HON. TONY HALL

  (Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, we come to the House floor today to pay 
tribute to our colleague, and Members will have an opportunity to put 
extensions in remarks, and we are doing this because obviously Congress 
is coming to a quick end tomorrow.
  Tony was nominated by President Bush, and it is a credit to President 
Bush, too, nominated as the United States Ambassador to the United 
Nations Food and Agricultural Agencies located in Rome, Italy. He is 
awaiting final Senate confirmation which could come in a matter of 
days. Once confirmed, he will resign as a representative of the Third 
Congressional District of Ohio and take his post in Rome where he will 
be able to continue his passionate work as a leading advocate for 
ending hunger and promoting food security around the world. He will be 
greatly missed in the House, but I know he is absolutely the right 
person to serve as the United States representative for the World Food 
Program, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and the International 
Fund for Agricultural Development, all of the agencies of the United 
Nations,

[[Page 14648]]

which assist in international hunger relief.
  This is a bittersweet time for me. I have had the privilege and honor 
to call Tony my colleague for two decades. He is my best friend in 
Congress. We have been part of a small group that has met for 20 years. 
Bill Emerson was in that group. Bill and Tony went to Ethiopia in 1994. 
A lot of what the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) did, he got me 
interested in a lot of issues that I would not have been interested in. 
That group meeting every Tuesday for 20 years, almost like a band of 
brothers, has made a big difference in certainly my life.
  Tony is one of the most decent, sincere, dedicated people that I 
know. And he finds his strength from his deeply held faith in God and 
by following the teachings of Jesus. In the Bible, in James, it says be 
not only hearers of the word, but also doers.
  Micah 6:8 said, ``He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what 
does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to 
walk humbly with your God.'' Tony Hall is a man of great faith, and he 
not only hears the word, but he does the word. He takes his faith into 
his every-day life, whether it be hunger in Sudan or Ethiopia, whether 
it is conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone or Liberia, whether it be human 
rights in Kosovo or Bosnia or anywhere else in Eastern Europe. I would 
say, and the record should show, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) is 
the best example that I know of what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 
25 when he talks about feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, serving 
the poor. So as I said, it will be bittersweet to see my good friend 
leaving this body; but clearly I think everyone can say on both sides 
of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, well done. You have been 
faithful to all those principles.

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