Farewell To The Senate

FAREWELL TO THE SENATE -- (Senate - December 07, 2006)

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, parting really is sweet sorrow. Mr. President, thank you very much for being here today honoring not only Senator Frist, our majority leader, but the entire Senate.

On the surface, some may ask how the Senate and the operating room are the same. What do they have in common? Senator Frist has shown us that helping people is what he did as a doctor and what he has done as a Senator. Serving others is a trait as we have observed by knowing this good man is that he learned from his family. His father was also a doctor. As a young man he was obviously academically very talented. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps. He went to Princeton University, which shows that he is someone who is talented academically and socially. He graduated from that great American learning institution and decided he was going to go to Harvard, which speaks well, again, of his intellect and, of course, his ability to get along with people. His surgical training came at Massachusetts General Hospital and Southhampton General Hospital in England.

Senator Frist was a pioneer, but he learned his transplant surgery from the pioneer. I have heard BILL FRIST talk about Norman Shumway on many occasions--the first doctor to perform a successful heart transplant in the U.S. Senator Frist--then Dr. FRIST--started Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Heart and Lung Transplant Center. I don't know if anybody knows--I am sure someone knows--how many heart and lung transplants Senator Frist has done, but most say it was nearly 200. Think about that. Some of these operations took many hours, and some of them took days.

I heard Dr. FRIST talk about those first transplants, where he actually went and got the organs and personally brought them back to the operating room.

Things have changed since then. Pioneer, doctor, Senator Frist has and will write a lot about his success as a surgeon and as a Senator. And not only will he talk with his family and his friends about this, things will be written about his service as a doctor and as a Senator.

When we talk about these nearly 200 transplants, we are talking about 200 human beings whose lives have been saved by virtue of his talent. Senator Frist helped hundreds of people continue their lives. Here, as a public servant, a Senator, he has affected the lives of millions of people.

I have had the good fortune of serving with Senator Frist during his 12 years in the Senate. I knew him before I became the Democratic leader and, as all of you know, I spend a lot of time on the floor and I worked with him very closely.

Over the years, we have had our ups and downs. It has been tough. These jobs, I can tell my colleagues up close, are not real easy. We have had problems over budgets, over committee structure, disagreements about schedules--oh, yes, about Senate rules. I have never once doubted--never once doubted--that what Senator Frist was doing he was doing because he believed in his heart it was the right thing. That is why I, HARRY REID, at his home on a very personal level, told Senator Frist he should run for reelection. I don't believe in term limits. I truly believed then, as I do now, that he should have run for reelection. I told his good wife Karyn the same thing in her home, in their home.

I have come to learn a number of things about BILL FRIST. He loves medicine. He has done his work in the Senate. But the thing that is first and paramount in his mind and his heart every minute of the day is Karyn and his three boys.

All of you out here have seen our fights publicly, and we have had them, but they have been fair. I can remember only once has Senator Frist ever raised his voice at me, and it was right from here because, even though I didn't mean to, he thought I had said something that reflected upon his family, and I apologized to him. This man loves his family and is an example of how people should treat their family.

Karyn is a wonderful woman. She has treated my wife--my wife is a very shy person. She has always been very shy. Karyn has taken good care of her, and I will always, Karyn, appreciate that.

In the years that go on, I, frankly, will never think about or, if I try, not remember any of the differences we had on the Senate floor, but I will always remember the friendship I have developed with the good man from Tennessee, a citizen legislator.

Senator Frist, Karyn, I wish you the very best. You are a good man. I love and appreciate everything you have done for the country and for me.

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