TRIBUTE TO THE HONORABLE HENRY J. HYDE -- (House of Representatives - June 07, 2006)
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Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
It has been my privilege during my lifetime to have three heroes living at the time that I was able to benefit from their example. They are my father, President Ronald Reagan and Henry Hyde.
As the gentlelady knows, I served in the Congress for 10 years from 1979 to 1989, where I had the privilege of serving on the Judiciary Committee with Henry Hyde all those 10 years. I served on the subcommittee dealing with civil rights with him, and if it had not been for Henry Hyde we would not have had the extension of the Voting Rights Act of the early 1980s.
We had hearings all around the country. It may sound strange today, but at that time there was a question of whether or not that would be extended. It was Henry Hyde who going around the country on field hearings who finally made a statement that he had seen the parade of horribles. He had seen that there was still a need to have this extraordinary law extended. Had it not been for Henry Hyde, the Voting Rights Act would not have been extended. He has never gotten the credit for that.
Henry Hyde is a gentle man; a large man, but a gentle man; someone who can argue on the floor of the House vociferously, but when it is over, he goes over and punches you in the arm and tells you a joke; a man who has all the dignity you would look for in a statesman; a man who has the intellect which we can all admire; a man who, when former Governor Cuomo made a well covered speech at the University of Notre Dame talking about the responsibility of a Catholic man or a Catholic woman in politics, Henry Hyde had a slightly different take. So he then, a month later, spoke on the campus of the University of Notre Dame and gave his version.
It was one of the most compelling speeches I have ever heard, telling that someone can be a man of faith and a man of the House, a man or woman of faith or a man or woman of the House.
He was so eloquent in the way he argued. There was in this House a stillness that came upon this floor when Henry Hyde would get up to speak. Democrat and Republican and independent alike would stand at attention or sit at attention when Henry Hyde came and spoke. It was a capstone of the argument to see Henry Hyde present himself.
I am pleased that at one time I was able to have Henry Hyde in my home community to speak to people on the very, very important issue of life. He always did it with a forthrightness, with a concern for the sensitivity of the subject, but always, always so grounded in the principles.
One time I asked Henry about whether he ever got tired of dealing with the life issue. He said, ``You know, sometimes I do. You get all this criticism, you get all of this attention that you don't want.'' And he said then, ``But as you get older, you think of that day in the future where, if hopefully you get to heaven, all those unborn children are there to greet you to say thank you for what you have done.''
That is Henry Hyde. It is from the heart. It is from the head, because he has got a great intellect, but it is from the heart, because he truly believes it.
If there is one person that I admire most in this House, if there is one person who is the embodiment of all that is good in this House, if there is one person that compelled me to return to the Congress, it is Henry Hyde; a friend, a statesman, a leader, a man of courage, someone who has fought his whole life for what is good and right about America, and someone I am happy to call a friend; but, more than that, someone I am happy to call a leader in this House, who has stood for everything great about this country.
This is a man who has dedicated himself to this country; a man who dedicated himself to his family; a man who dedicated himself to the principles that we all espouse. But he lived those principles as much as anybody I have ever met. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
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