[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11198-11199]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   IN MEMORY OF MATTHEW J. RYAN, FORMER SPEAKER OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE

  (Mr. ENGLISH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ENGLISH. Today, Mr. Speaker, the House has the melancholy 
responsibility to take up a resolution memorializing one of the great 
leaders of the Pennsylvania State legislature who passed recently. I am 
referring to former State Speaker of the House Matthew Ryan whose 41-
year extraordinary career, including repeated service as Speaker of the 
House beginning in 1981, is an extraordinary testament to how so much 
of our legislative talent and our best legal minds are still 
concentrated in our State legislatures.
  I worked for the State House. I knew Speaker Ryan. I knew what an 
extraordinary individual he was and how, at a time when affiliation 
with parties is something that has lost public favor, he was one of the 
finest products of the Delaware County Republican organization, a great 
friend, an individual who

[[Page 11199]]

absolutely dominated the State House by the force of his mind and the 
force of his personality and led it in very positive directions, a man 
who was far more bipartisan than the reputation of that institution but 
always a strong Republican and always a strong advocate of creating 
jobs and of welfare reform. We will miss him dearly. I hope his memory 
and his example will long be with us.

                          ____________________