[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 23]
[House]
[Page 31796]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2145
                        COMMENDING DEAN AGUILLEN

  (Mr. HODES asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HODES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend Dean Aguillen, an 
important member of this body's staff, on the occasion of his 
transition. He's moving on from his job here.
  Dean is the Director of Member Services for Speaker  Nancy Pelosi, 
and there are a number of new Members here tonight, and as we all 
remember, Dean was one of the first, if not the first, members of the 
staff of the Speaker whom we had the pleasure to deal with.
  We arrived here for our orientation, quite disoriented and needing a 
lot of orientation; and we found Dean to be a calm, knowledgeable 
mentor. He was a guide, he was kind, he was compassionate, and he was 
smart.
  As I began to help organize the Democratic new Members into what 
would become the class of 2006, it was Dean who was the go-to guy for 
that effort. He is a consummate professional of integrity, dedication, 
kindness, and wisdom. And we wish him well in his new life. We will 
miss him.
  Dean, thank you very much.
  Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).
  Mr. WELCH. This may well, Mr. Speaker, turn into a bit of a pile-on. 
There were a lot of new Members in the class, and Dean Aguillen was the 
person that greeted us. And if there was one person that we met who 
seemed to have worked harder than the Speaker, it was Dean.
  And I remember every single one of us, as new Members, being anxious 
about what our place was going to be, how to find our way. We were very 
anxious about committee assignments, about how you become an effective 
and contributing Member of the House. And, Dean, you were terrific in 
just giving us calm advice, getting us together to work together, 
giving us some reassurance that we needed as new Members of Congress, 
that, in fact, it wasn't an accident that we were elected, and helped 
all of us find our way. And you've been the same way all of the time 
that we have been here.
  In politics so much of the interactions that we have are 
transactional, and all of us all of the time are trying to make them a 
bit more than that. And, Dean, you really helped provide the glue that 
made this class such a memorable experience for all of us who are 
Members of it.
  I thank you for the wonderful contribution you made to me and to all 
of us in our entry into the United States Congress.

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