[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24261]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    PAYING TRIBUTE TO MILLIE O'NEILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, in 1976 Congressman Tip O'Neill from 
Massachusetts was selected by the House to serve as Speaker; and while 
for most of us that was an exciting era, most people did not know that 
when he came to Washington and brought his family, he brought the 
wonderful and the beautiful Mildred O'Neill with him.
  All of us have heard and talked about so often the partnerships and 
the sacrifices that wives and children make for those of us who have 
offered ourselves for public service, but I do not think that was so 
with Millie and Tip O'Neill because they just seemed like a perfect 
movie Hollywood couple that just loved each other and did not mind 
expressing that love in front of everybody.
  I had the opportunity for 12 consecutive years to travel with Tip 
O'Neill as he was invited around the world as Speaker; but I do not 
know whether it was Tip or Millie, but one thing was abundantly clear, 
that they were not Democratic trips. They were not Republican trips. It 
was traveling with Millie and Tip O'Neill, and they made everyone feel 
like just one big congressional family, representing this great body 
and representing these great United States.
  You always feel when you have lost somebody that you just did not 
spend enough time saying how much you appreciated them while they were 
here, and I tried to tell Millie how much I loved her, and Millie had 
been very kind to me, as had Speaker Tip O'Neill; but I suspect that 
for the rest of us, many who never knew this wonderful couple, that we 
can take time out as we lost Millie to see whether we could be more 
sensitive and appreciative, not only to our wives but to our families 
that are either with us here in Washington or back at home, and that 
some way we can go to the Members who were fortunate to serve at a time 
where we did not dislike each other as a body, we may have disagreed on 
war or disagreed on policy, disagreed on theories, but at the end of 
the day, we were just so proud to be Members of this House.

                              {time}  2045

  It was people like Millie who kept our families together, who kept 
encouraging our wives, who really inspired a lot of our Members to want 
to be good Members of Congress and not Democratic and Republican 
Members of Congress.
  So I would just like to join with so many people who knew and loved 
Millie O'Neill. Not nearly as much as Tip did, but we always will 
remember him singing to her and her batting eyes as though it was a 
flirtatious first date. We will miss you, Millie, as we miss Tip. So 
many of us are just so fortunate and so lucky that if we do not have 
them, we have their fond memories.

                          ____________________