[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15608]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        REMEMBERING DAN McKINNON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Hunter) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  It is my unfortunate honor to come before you and speak about a true 
son of America who lost his battle with cancer 6 days ago on November 
22. I have an article here from the local paper in San Diego talking 
about Dan McKinnon, and it says, Dan McKinnon: Navy pilot, radio, and 
airline executive. Appointed to two Federal boards, was son of San 
Diego congressman. Those are a lot of things, but Dan McKinnon was so 
much more than those, even put together.
  First, his father was a Democrat congressman from San Diego here in 
the 1950s, probably stood at this table and spoke like I'm speaking 
now. Dan was a page, when we still had pages in this House on this 
floor in the fifties during the Truman administration as well. He had a 
great respect and love for this country, and he had a great respect and 
love for this body and the institution.
  He has some great claims to fame. One of those is this: As a young 
man, Dan served in the Navy as a helicopter pilot, and he's credited 
with 62 saves on land or sea. That's more saves during peacetime than 
any other Navy pilot in American history. He loved the Navy and he 
loved flying, and that led him to do other things later in his life. 
But he was a great pilot. He was inspired to fly from some words taken 
from the movie ``The Bridge Over Toko-Ri.'' And basically the words--
I'm going to summarize what made him want to be a helicopter pilot. 
There were some folks talking in this movie, and they basically said: 
Where does America get these kinds of people that want to fly off these 
little platforms that are floating in the ocean, go and rescue men or 
take out the enemy, and then fly back out to these platforms again in 
the middle of the ocean, try to find those platforms and then land on 
them? Where does America get them? They are the greatest in that 
country.
  That inspired Dan to join the Navy and do exactly that--to fly 
helicopters and rescue his fellow sailors that had the bad luck or the 
bad skills to land in the water.
  He bought a country radio station in San Diego and transformed it, 
made it into one of the most successful radio stations in San Diego 
County. At the same time, in 1977 he was the president of the Country 
Music Association in Nashville. He also served on the National 
Association of Broadcasters' board of directors here in Washington, 
D.C.
  And as I go through this litany of things that Dan McKinnon did, you 
can see where his courage, his faith in God, and his selfless service 
to country and Christianity played through throughout his entire life.
  He ran for Congress. He tried to get in this body in 1980. He had an 
unsuccessful run for Congress in 1980, but the next year President 
Reagan nominated him to lead the Federal Civil Aeronautics Board which 
basically oversaw the deregulation of all of the airlines. And as I 
know, as somebody who wants less government and less Big Brother 
intervention, Dan McKinnon was the rare sort of man who, after he did 
his work on the Civil Aeronautics Board and deregulated the airline 
industry, so we have what we have now, which is competition and low 
rates and extremely high safety measures, he shut down his own board 
that President Reagan started. Rarely in Washington do you see a 
creature that starts up some kind of board or blue ribbon panel or 
commission and actually closes it down on themselves after they've done 
the work that they needed to do. That takes a special person. It takes 
a special person to give up the reins and say, we don't need more 
bureaucracy, we're going to shut it down. We've done the work that we 
were assigned. So he did that. He didn't get paid for that either. He 
did it because he wanted to help the country and he loved being a pilot 
and he loved the airline industry.
  People say that the airline industry right now, the way that it is is 
a direct reflection of how he deregulated it during these times. That 
was a big deal when you had the Federal Government dictating fares and 
routes, and to change that into a free market system where competition 
could enter, it took a long time and it took a man of special character 
and significance to do that, and Dan did it.
  His daughter Lisa, who is, I think, a lieutenant in the Navy right 
now in Coronado doing intelligence work for the Navy SEALs, said this 
about her dad: He would say that his Navy wings were the only thing 
that he ever did by himself. He said everything else was a team effort. 
He loved being a pilot. He loved flying for the Navy, and he flew and 
sailed to the end of his days.
  He also worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. They had him 
doing special projects, and he actually got the Seal Medallion from the 
Central Intelligence Agency.
  So you take all of these things together, and you see a man who had a 
full life, a full family, that loved his country and served his 
country, and someone who had courage and true grit and a true faith in 
God, that God would help lead him through his life and his path, and he 
trusted in the Lord to do that.
  On a couple of other separate stories, Dan taught me how to jump 
motocross bikes at his ranch when I was a kid. I got my first job in 
high school at a TV station doing the news camera that his brother had. 
I got to work on his airlines after high school and between college. 
I'm a young guy. I'm only 35 years old, Mr. Speaker, and sometimes 
young guys like myself need people to look up to, people that give us 
structure and people that tell us which way is the right way to go and 
which way is the wrong way to go. Dan always knew what the right way to 
go was. He was a mentor of mine. And on November 22, when he lost his 
battle with cancer, America and San Diego truly lost one of their sons 
and one of the people that make this country truly great.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________