[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 8543]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HONORING KEN HOUSE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES L. OBERSTAR

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 29, 2007

  Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Speaker, there have been many giants in the 
transportation history of this Nation.
  During his time as a Postmaster General, which included service both 
before and after American independence, Ben Franklin surveyed, 
rerouted, and marked post roads in the 18th century. In the 19th 
century, great companies with names like Baltimore and Ohio, Union 
Pacific, and Burlington Northern networked a growing industrial America 
from coast-to-coast with railroads. DeWitt Clinton helped bring the 
Erie Canal into existence. In the 20th century, new transportation 
visionaries like the Wright brothers led the Nation to unprecedented 
mobility and economic growth.
  Many transportation experts have toiled quietly behind the scenes in 
the 230 years of the United States to maintain and build on these 
legacies and utter necessities of American prosperity.
  Kenneth House, of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 
staff, has been one of those individuals for more than a quarter 
century. Madam Speaker, I rise today in tribute to and gratitude for 
Ken House's service to this great institution and the American people.
  Ironically, Ken House is indeed a giant physically. At 6 feet 5 
inches tall, Ken's first success was not on the roads but on the 
courts. His high school basketball prowess in Baltimore led to a 
scholarship and distinction at New Jersey's Seton Hall University. How 
good was Ken back then? Decades later, Ken remains Seton Hall's third-
highest rebounder and its ninth-highest basketball player in points 
scored.
  While in graduate school, Ken worked as assistant basketball coach at 
Seton Hall. He continued coaching and mentoring young people even after 
he completed his master's degree. Had he chosen to turn pro, NBA 
history might have been changed as transportation history certainly was 
transformed--and for the better--with Ken's help.
  In 1977, Ken worked on the National Transportation Policy Study 
Commission to examine the transportation needs in the United States. 
The Commission had been created in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1976. 
After the Commission's report was submitted to Congress in 1979, Ken 
went to work in the Carter Administration. Ken was a congressional 
relations officer for the Department of Transportation, DOT, advocating 
the President's transportation policies and responding to congressional 
inquires--such as mine--about those policies and other DOT programs.
  In 1981, Ken came to the House of Representatives and began his long 
professional career in what was the Subcommittee on Surface 
Transportation of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation. He 
is now recognized by his colleagues in the transportation field as an 
encyclopedia of knowledge on transportation issues.
  Ken is warmly regarded by all as a professional in every sense. Soft-
spoken and always approachable, Ken is a walking storehouse of 
transportation history, programs, principles, and impacts. It is 
virtually impossible to ask him a question on any highway or transit 
issue to which he will fail to provide an objective, well-reasoned, and 
insightful answer. His only agenda: public service.
  After three decades of public service in both the executive and 
legislative branches of the Federal Government, Ken has retired. Many 
tried to change his mind, but his decision was as all others: well-
reasoned. As was true on the basketball court for Seton Hall, for Ken, 
it was simply time to pass the ball to a colleague.
  Thus, Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise today, but 
I do so gladly. I do so to recognize a rare individual among us. The 
long, selfless, dedicated, and faithful service of Ken House to the 
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, to the House of 
Representatives, and to the United States, has been replete with 
countless sacrifices during his distinguished career. It is now our 
turn for the sacrifice as we miss his counsel and friendship. All of us 
in the transportation community wish Ken and his family all the best in 
the years ahead.

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