Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Madam President, I rise today with a heavy heart and with great sadness to commemorate the life of Rachel Jacobs. Rachel was tragically killed in last week's Amtrak train crash.

This morning, my wife Colleen and I joined hundreds of mourners who attended her funeral as she was laid to rest in Metro Detroit. Rachel was only 39 years old when her life was so tragically cut short. She had a life filled with love, with accomplishment, and with promise. She was the beloved daughter of my dear friends Gilda and John Jacobs. Rachel was a wife, the mother of a 2-year-old son, and the CEO of an education startup in Philadelphia. While she worked in Philadelphia and lived in New York City, this is a profound loss for the Detroit area, where she grew up but which she never left behind.

Rachel was the cofounder of Detroit Nation, an organization to engage former residents of the Detroit area in cities and communities around our great country. Rachel helped to connect people and motivated her friends. She took part in Detroit Homecoming, an event held last fall to engage accomplished leaders across the United States who grew up in the Metro Detroit area and now want to give back to the community they still love and call home.

Rachel was a leader in this important work--work that will now need to be carried on by those whom she inspired. I am heartbroken for her many friends and deeply saddened by this tragic loss for the Metro Detroit area.

My heart goes out to her young son Jacob, her husband Todd, her wonderful parents Gilda and John, her sister Jessica, and her entire family as they struggle with this painful loss.

As parents, we want to give everything to our children. We want to give them a stable home and a loving family. We want to give them a great education and a bright future. But the one thing we cannot give or promise them is a long life. That is in God's hands, and now Rachel is as well.

Madam President, we have suffered an incredible loss with the passing of Rachel Jacobs. We have lost a brilliant businesswoman, an active community leader, and a loving mother, wife, sister, and daughter. May her memory be a blessing.

I yield back.

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