[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12614]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING RICHARD DUDMAN

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, Richard Dudman, one of our Nation's most 
esteemed journalists, passed away at his Maine home last night. I rise 
today in tribute to a great American reporter and engaged citizen.
  After serving in the Merchant Marine and U.S. Navy Reserve during 
World War II, Mr. Dudman began his journalism career at the Denver Post 
in 1945 and joined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch 4 years later. In his 
more than three decades at the Post-Dispatch, he covered Fidel Castro's 
Cuban revolution, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the 
Bay of Pigs invasion, the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, as well 
as armed conflicts from the Middle East and Asia to Central and South 
America.
  In 1970, while covering the Vietnam war, Mr. Dudman was captured by 
the Viet Cong and held prisoner in Cambodia, a harrowing experience he 
wrote about in his acclaimed book, ``Forty Days With the Enemy.'' In 
1981, on his last day as Washington bureau chief for the Post-Dispatch, 
he ran up Connecticut Avenue to cover the attempted assassination of 
President Ronald Reagan. For some of the most momentous events of the 
second half of the 20th Century, Richard Dudman wrote the first draft 
of history.
  After retiring and moving to Ellsworth and Little Cranberry Island in 
Maine, Mr. Dudman continued to contribute to the Post-Dispatch and 
wrote more than 1,000 editorials for the Bangor Daily News. Among his 
many accolades are the prestigious George Polk Career Award in 
Journalism and induction into the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame.
  Mr. Dudman combined his journalistic professionalism with a spirit of 
serving others. In 2014, he and his wife, Helen, were presented with 
the Golden Eagle Award from the Boy Scouts of America for their 
commitment to community service, a quality that ran through their 
remarkable 69 years of marriage.
  In this time of sorrow, I offer my deep condolences to Helen and 
their family. I hope they will find comfort in Richard's inspiring 
legacy and in a life well-lived. It has been said that we all have a 
birth date and a death date, with a dash in between. It is what we do 
with our dash that counts. Richard Dudman's dash was extraordinarily 
long, and he made it count. He filled it with passion, professionalism, 
and dedication. May his memory inspire us all to do the same.

                          ____________________