[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 7806]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    101ST AIRBORNE, CLARKSVILLE, TN

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, a little later today or tomorrow, I want to 
share with my colleagues at the appropriate time a visit I had with the 
101st Airborne families in Clarksville, TN, yesterday. I had the 
opportunity to go by and visit with those families, attend church, and 
to spend the early afternoon with them and have lunch with them. It was 
a remarkable experience for me, Karen my wife, and our son Jonathan.
  Over 17,000 women and men have been deployed from that particular 
post over the last several weeks. Those 17,000 are now in Iraq and 
Kuwait as part of the 101st Airborne air assault team. The pride we as 
a family felt in them, the stories that they told us, I will be sharing 
with my colleagues over the next several days. But just the lasting 
impression I had was this juxtaposition of feeling, as we talked to the 
moms and dads and children, of concern for their husband or their 
spouse and, yes, an insecurity about their safety, which is natural, as 
we would all feel, but at the same time an optimism, a feeling of being 
able to contribute to the United States of America and our great 
democracy.
  They were upbeat. They were optimistic. They were patriotic. And that 
sort of juxtaposition of feeling was something that was a real 
privilege for me and my family to experience. The one thing they did 
all say, as we finished church and went to lunch, was: Make sure, when 
you go back to Washington, that you let your colleagues know and let 
the President of the United States know how much we appreciate their 
leadership, their support for our troops abroad. Let the President know 
that we are keeping him and his family in our prayers.
  I yield the floor.

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