[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11770-11771]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    HONORING THE LIFE OF MEL FELDMAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Schilling) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCHILLING. Mr. Speaker, I wish to rise and say just a few words 
to honor the remarkable life and note the passing of a constituent of 
mine and an accomplished small business man from central Illinois, a 
businessman named Mel Feldman.
  I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Feldman in 2010, when he shared 
with me the story of his life and times. I'd like to share some of that 
with you, for it encapsulates much of what we all love about our 
country and what I love about central Illinois.
  Mel was born in Poland in 1913, which he and his family fled soon 
thereafter to escape the pogroms that arose during the First World War. 
The family eventually settled in St. Louis, where Mel studied 
engineering. He began a career in the radio business, hustling a job as 
a remote engineer with KMOX during the 1930s, where he courted his 
wife, Ruth, while doing remote broadcasts of big band concerts on 
Saturday nights. Later, he was an engineer and sidekick of a young 
broadcaster named Harry Carey, of who we're very familiar with.
  Mel fought in World War II, and upon returning home, he and a friend 
bought a radio station in Springfield, Illinois. Operating on a 
shoestring budget, they worked day and night for years to get 
established, eventually buying two other radio stations in Peoria and 
coming to employ nearly 100 workers.
  He and his wife, Ruth, became pillars of the community at the 
synagogue

[[Page 11771]]

there in the central Illinois area, where she helped run the preschool. 
In the 1980s, they sold their stations and retired, choosing to remain 
in the area to be near their family.
  To go from the streets of Eastern Europe to the prosperity and 
stability of central Illinois in the 21st century is a journey that is 
difficult for many of us to fathom. It is to the enormous benefit of 
our community that people like Mel came to the United States and braved 
war and oppression and poverty and all kinds of other tribulations for 
the chance to settle down and raise their families amongst us. They are 
one of the things that make Illinois such a great and rewarding place 
to live and raise our families.
  America owes much to immigrants, and central Illinois owes much to 
the contributions of Mel and Ruth Feldman, whose legacy goes beyond the 
radio stations he established, the synagogue they served, and the 
family they raised. Their lives touched and bettered so many friends 
and neighbors in Peoria, who I know are mourning Mel's passing but, at 
the same time, celebrating his life.

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