BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Sheriff Reichert for his service to the country and to the great State of Washington. I want to thank Judge Poe, Sheriff Nugent, and my friend and colleague from South Carolina, Joe Wilson, who is the father of a prosecutor.
Mr. Speaker, Allen Jacobs was going to be a father again, but this time was going to be a little bit different. He was already the father of two precious little boys, but he was going to be the father of a little girl. His wife, Meghan, and he were expecting a child this July.
Life had prepared Officer Jacobs very well to be a father. He was an outstanding student, an athlete in Greenville, South Carolina. He put that athleticism and intelligence to work for our country in the United States Army.
He was deployed to Iraq, Mr. Speaker, for 15 months and even volunteered to live in the neighborhoods of Baghdad because he understood that all people want to live in a peaceful, secure environment.
After Iraq, he was deployed to Haiti because he wanted to help the Haitian people in the aftermath of their tragic earthquake.
Well, Mr. Speaker, the tug of fatherhood is strong. So Allen decided to return to the Upstate of South Carolina, but his desire to protect and serve others and to provide peace and security to others never dissipated.
So he left the uniform of the United States Army and put on the uniform of the Greenville City Police Department. He pursued that calling with the same vigor and the same strength and the same professionalism that epitomized every other facet of his life, whether it was service on the SWAT team or the Cops on the Court, as a patrol officer for schools or a gang resistance team.
Mr. Speaker, Allen Jacobs would stop his patrol car from time to time to shoot basketball with young men in the inner city of Greenville who did not have the father figure that he was to his boys and that he would be to his daughter.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I learned all of this from Allen's mother in a telephone call we had 2 days before his funeral. This strong man who survived Iraq and Haiti and boot camp and police officer training couldn't survive an encounter with a teenage gang member who had just been released from jail. He never even had a chance to unholster his weapon, Mr. Speaker. He was just trying to protect, serve, enforce the law, and he was ambushed.
His funeral gave all of us an opportunity to reflect not only on his life, but on the lives of all the other folks in the upstate of South Carolina who died in the line of duty, whether it be Russ Sorrow or Kevin Carper or Eric Nicholson or Marcus Whitfield or Greg Alia, who was killed in the line of duty, as my friend from Columbia made note of. His wife is here and his parents are here and his aunt is here. They have a little boy who is less than 1 year old.
I want to say this in conclusion, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank all the women and men in uniform who are willing to do what most of us are not willing to do, and interact with people that most of us are not willing to interact with, and miss things in life that most of us are not willing to miss. But I especially want to send a message, Mr. Speaker, to Allen Jacobs' two sons and his daughter on the way and Greg Alia's son. Their fathers lived a life of service and sacrifice and significance, and they left the greatest legacy that you can ever leave children, which is a good name to be proud of.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT