[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17417]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HONORING BOB STUMP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gerlach). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. KOLBE. Mr. Speaker, I take this time this evening to rise and say 
a few words about our late colleague, the beloved chairman of the House 
Committee on Armed Services and before that the chairman of the 
Committee on Veterans' Affairs. A few words might be the operative 
thing to say here this evening about Bob Stump because Bob Stump did 
not talk very often on the floor. In fact, in these 5 minutes I think I 
will say more words than I ever remember Bob Stump saying other than on 
a bill which he presented to the floor to the Congress of the United 
States.
  He may have been a man of few words, but he was not a man of little 
action; and he was not a man of little commitment. Many others have 
spoken either here on the floor or at the ceremony where his portrait 
was unveiled or his funeral service just a few days ago in Phoenix 
about many aspects of his life.
  I would like to talk for a moment about a couple of the personal 
things that I remember about Bob Stump. I knew him before he came to 
the Congress and long before I came to the Congress when he was the 
president of the Arizona State Senate. I did not serve with him in the 
Senate. I came to the Senate at the time that he left there to come to 
the United States Congress. But he served in that Senate with Sandra 
Day O'Connor who later became a Justice of the United States Supreme 
Court. They were on opposite sides. He was president of the Senate. She 
was the minority leader in the Arizona State Senate at that time. But 
they always had a great deal of respect for each other, and I think it 
was this respect that characterizes the way that everybody felt about 
Bob Stump through the years.
  He came to the Congress in 1976 and served here for 26 years. I think 
in the entire time that Bob Stump served in the Congress he had one 
press conference, and that was the press conference where he announced 
that he was switching from a Democrat to a Republican. When Bob moved 
from a seat on that side of the aisle to a seat on this side of the 
aisle, he really did not change at all. He was the same person that he 
had always been, a fiscal conservative, a hard-nosed individual who 
believed strongly in national defense and somebody who cared 
passionately about veterans. He, himself, was a veteran and he knew the 
sacrifices that veterans had made and he knew the commitment that this 
country had made to providing for health care for our veterans. And Bob 
Stump continued in his service here in the House of Representatives 
doing it with little fanfare.
  Bob Stump came to the office every morning at about 5 a.m., and he 
would open all the mail. He had his desk in his office like most of us 
had, but he also had a desk in the back room, and it was there that he 
spent most of the time, opening the mail, working with his staff.
  He did not have a lot of staff people, about half of the number most 
of us had. And yet he took care of his constituents. He always listened 
to them, always met with them, always found time to be available for 
them. And on weekends he faithfully went home to the district, and he 
faithfully went to his farm and worked the cotton crop on the farm. He 
looked after his constituents. They always felt that they could be in 
touch with Bob Stump. He never lost touch with his constituents.
  He was an unassuming person who asked for very little recognition or 
glory. He called everything exactly as he saw it. He never minced any 
words. When you asked Bob Stump about something, you knew exactly where 
he stood. But I think it is his commitment to veterans and a commitment 
to a strong national defense reflected in the work he did on the 
Committee on Veterans' Affairs and later as chairman of the Committee 
on Armed Services that he will always be remembered for.
  He may not get his name etched in stone and, indeed, future 
generations of veterans and those who served in the armed services may 
never know his name, but they will be indebted to him. They will be 
indebted to him for the health care system we have for veterans and the 
quality of health care we provide in the veterans hospitals all over 
this country. So there will be many who will never have known his name, 
but they will be in great debt to him as those of us in the House of 
Representatives are in debt to him for his unfailingly hard work, his 
unassuming stance, his willingness to call it like it was, and his 
dedication and his commitment to this institution.
  We will miss Bob Stump, but we are grateful for the time that we had 
with him, and we are grateful for his service to his country and to the 
veterans of this Nation.

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