[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8133-8134]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO MARVIN RUNYON

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have three topics I wish to speak 
about today. The first is about Marvin Runyon. Marvin Runyon is a man 
known to almost all Tennesseans. He died last night. He had a 
remarkable career.
  Marvin Runyon and his Nissan team brought the automobile industry to 
Tennessee, creating jobs and better lives for tens of thousands of 
families. They built from scratch the largest and most efficient car 
and truck plant in North America.
  For an encore, Marvin Runyon became chairman of the Tennessee Valley 
Authority and stabilized TVA rates. And for a double encore, he became 
the Postmaster General of the

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United States, and in the year he left, if I am not mistaken, the Post 
Office made a profit. It is rare that our country has produced a better 
chief executive officer. I am certain Tennessee has never produced a 
better one. He has three wonderful stories all after 50 years of age.
  Prior to that, Mr. Runyon was a senior executive at Ford Motor 
Company. It was in 1980, in my second year as Governor, when Nissan 
hired that team of Ford executives. They came to Tennessee, a State 
that was not building any cars or trucks, only had a few thousand, I 
would say, automobile supplier jobs.
  Today, Tennessee is the third or fourth largest producer of cars and 
trucks. One-third of our manufacturing jobs are automotive. There are 
several reasons for that development, but it would not have happened if 
Marvin Runyon and his Nissan team had not chosen to come to Tennessee 
in 1980.
  My wife and I and our family have lost a dear friend, Tennesseans 
have lost a friend, and I wanted to pay tribute to a man who literally 
changed the lives of tens of thousands of families for the better by 
his work in bringing the automobile industry to Tennessee and 
stabilizing the Tennessee Valley Authority.

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