In Memoriam: Joe Remcho

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I rise in tribute to the late Joe Remcho, who died in a helicopter crash in California last Saturday. Joe was a great American an accomplished attorney, a strong advocate for civil liberties, a leading legal scholar, and a trusted advisor to many public officials.
   
 Joe's curriculum vitae is varied and impressive. After graduating from Yale University and Harvard Law School, he taught second grade for a year at an inner-city public school. In the early 1970s, with the Vietnam war at its height, the young attorney went to Saigon to serve on the Lawyers Military Defense Committee. After returning to the United States, he moved to California to become the staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Four years later, he established a successful private practice specializing in first amendment, education, and election law. His clients included California's Governor and the State assembly. In 1988, he was honored by his colleagues as California's Trial Lawyer of the Year.
   
 Despite his very full docket, Joe found time to serve as an adjunct professor of law at the University of San Francisco, a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, and a member of California's bipartisan State committees on internet political practices and the Political Reform Act.
   
 Above all, Joe Remcho was a warm and wonderful human being a devoted family man, a loving husband and father, and a friend to those who were fortunate enough to know him.
   
 I last saw Joe just 2 days before he died. Our families were together, and his strength and warmth were ever present.

 Whether he was spending a quiet vacation with family and friends or fighting in court to defend the Constitution, Joe Remcho lived his life to the fullest. His death leaves a tremendous void in the lives of all those who knew him, but his memory fills that space with love and admiration.