[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 16642]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    REMEMBERING SENATOR TED STEVENS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, at 1 o'clock this afternoon our dear 
friend, Ted Stevens, will be laid to rest, with honors, across the 
river at Arlington National Cemetery. So the Senate will be thinking of 
Ted Stevens today.
  Ted was a legend in his own lifetime and the American people would 
have remembered him even if he had not gone on to serve as the longest 
serving Republican in Senate history. A recipient of the Air Medal and 
the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the Army Air Corps 
during World War II, Ted was, during his earliest days, an adventurer, 
a fighter, and a patriot. He lived an incredibly full life, most of it 
in service to his Nation and more specifically to his State.
  His colleagues in the Senate admired and even sometimes feared him, 
but Alaskans loved him without any qualification. To them he was just 
``Uncle Ted,'' a title I am sure will live on.
  I have been to Alaska a number of times over the years at Ted's 
invitation and one of the things that becomes clear to anyone who goes 
up there, as I said at Ted's funeral last month, is that Alaska 
ironically is a pretty small place--in the sense that everybody seems 
to know each other, and everybody knew Ted Stevens. From the airport in 
Anchorage to the remotest villages, Ted is omnipresent up there. That 
is saying something in a State that is bigger than California, Texas, 
and Montana combined.
  The reason is simple: In Ted's view, if it wasn't good for Alaska, it 
wasn't good. He devoted his entire adult life to a simple mission, to 
work tirelessly and unapologetically to transform Alaska into a modern 
State. He was faithful to that mission to the very end. It is hard to 
imagine that any one man ever meant more to any one State than Ted 
Stevens.
  One of the stories I like about Ted is the one about his former chief 
of staff and his first trip to Alaska with Ted. When he showed up at 
Ted's house to pick him up at 6 o'clock in the morning, Ted had already 
gone through the briefing book he had been given the night before, read 
all the daily papers, and had already been on the phone to Washington 
for a couple hours. By the end of the trip, he said he needed a 
vacation after doing, for 2 weeks, what Ted had been doing for 39 
years.
  But Ted would always say he worked so hard because there was always 
so much work to do. Part of that, of course, was making sure that all 
of us knew about what Alaska and Alaskans needed. So everybody got 
invited up there--not necessarily because he liked you but because he 
wanted us to appreciate the unique challenges Alaskans faced day in and 
day out, and turning down an invitation from Ted Stevens was not 
recommended.
  Ted poured himself into Alaska and he poured himself into the Senate. 
He mentored countless young men and women who worked for him over the 
years. He mentored countless new Members from both parties.
  It was an honor to have known him, and it was a privilege to have 
served alongside him in the Senate for so long.
  We have missed him the past 2 years, and we honor him again today.
  I yield the floor.

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