[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 17530-17531]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     A TRIBUTE TO MR. GEORGE CONDON

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, November 15, 2011

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, I first met George Condon when I was a 
copyboy at the Plain Dealer. It was the mid-sixties and the newsroom 
was a combination of Ben Hecht and Salvadore Dali, where nervous news 
jockies whipped the keys of their typewriters, men against white space, 
racing against a looming deadline, frenzied calls of ``boy, boy'' 
echoing summoning the serfs to duty. Unpretentious and approachable, 
columnist George

[[Page 17531]]

Condon would occasionally appear in the midst of the tumult gazing upon 
the chaos with an amused wisdom about the city room and the city, 
befriending even a lowly copyboy who confided in him his own dreams of 
one day being Mayor of Cleveland.
  While the strong, quick pulse of the city could be felt in the news 
room, George Condon knew there was a deeper story upon which all news 
was built.
  ``There is no satisfactory way to describe a city or to convey its 
spirit in words,'' he wrote in Cleveland, the Best Kept Secret, ``Facts 
and statistics, names and dates, prose and poesy all are well-
intentioned bids to give flesh and breath to a chunk of real estate, 
but they hang lifelessly on the skeleton. If there is a way to give 
life to a city with words, those words must try to renew some of the 
lives that created the city.
  In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Glendower proclaimed: I can call spirits 
from the vasty deep. Hotspur replied: Why, so can I, or so can any man. 
But will they come when you do call for them?''
  Read Cleveland, the Best Kept Secret and George Condon's account of 
the clash over a hundred years ago between Mark Hanna and Tom Johnson 
and you will see that when George Condon called the spirits forth, they 
leaped onto his pages, their lives renewed vividly, dissolving the 
barriers between past, present . . . and future. For it was in 
November, 1976, after reading George Condon's account of the struggle 
between privileged interest and public interest that I made a decision 
to launch a full-scale campaign to save Johnson's Muny Light from a 
takeover by the then Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company.
  A year later, because of the primary impact of his writings on my own 
life, I asked George Condon to be the master of ceremonies at my 
inauguration as Mayor of Cleveland.
  Anyone who read his works could not help but be moved by his ability 
to bring to life his beloved city and all the characters who populated 
it. What made George Condon's writings so unique was his power of 
observation, fused with love and tempered with a non-judgmental humor.
  He was our Boswell. One of the debates that George Condon played out 
in his work was the efficacy of the promotional campaign which declared 
Cleveland to be the ``Best Location in the Nation.'' He thought such a 
declaration could be off-putting to the visitor. After all, each city 
has its celebratory aspects. But upon further reflection, we can claim 
that title, not because we have the biggest buildings, or the grandest 
stadiums, or the most powerful corporations, or the best freeway 
system, but because a humble wordsmith named George Condon picked words 
from heavens and brought a shower of stars upon this community year 
after year, ennobling us, making us lighter, making us wiser.

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