RECEPTION OF FORMER MEMBERS OF CONGRESS -- (House of Representatives - May 10, 2007)
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Mr. BOEHNER. Good morning to all of you and welcome back for the 37th annual Former Members Day. I look around the audience and see a lot of familiar faces. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for your service to the institution and thank you for what you are continuing to do.
I presume that some of you know, but of your colleagues, Bob Walker's, wife passed away several days ago. Our prayers are with Bob and his family. Bob and I served together. His wife was a great influence on him and on his career, and it's sad to see her go over a fight with cancer that had gone on since last summer.
I had to come today, one, to see all of you, but to see my good friend Bob Dole. Bob and I got to know each other in 1994, when I was this bomb-throwing new Member, relatively new Member--Sarpalius remembers--and then in 1995 after Republicans took the majority, Bob and I sat in many bicameral leadership meetings together. And for some young whippersnapper who didn't know the ways around here, not that I always agreed with Senator Dole, but I always had great respect for him. Especially now, looking back those 12, 13 years ago, I realize how much I learned from Bob. I think Bob represents all that we would expect of ourselves in his demeanor, the way he did his business here. He represents an entire generation of Americans, the World War II generation, and I couldn't miss this opportunity to come and say hello to him.
Now, all of you know that Bob would tend to sit on his porch and work on his tan. Then he would run off to Florida on the weekends and work on his tan. And one night when we could still fly airplanes, private airplanes out of National, I ran into Bob one day as we were going somewhere, he was coming back, and he looked over at me and says, ``Hey, tan man.'' And so this has been a running joke between the two of us, because if there was somebody who always had a better tan than I did, it was Dole.
I could tell other stories, Bob, but I think I'll stop there. Let me just say welcome. Welcome back to all of you. Thank you for what you did for this institution to keep it alive and healthy for our generation. I just hope that those of us who have some guiding hand in where this institution is going today can do as good a job as all of you have in terms of leaving the institution in a stronger way for the next generation of leaders. Thank you and welcome.
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