Speaker Pelosi Delivers Remarks At U.S. Capitol Memorial Service to Honor Chairman Tom Lantos

Speaker Pelosi Delivers Remarks At U.S. Capitol Memorial Service to Honor Chairman Tom Lantos

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Contact:Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. â€" Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the following remarks at a memorial service in the Capitol today, honoring the life of Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, who died on Monday.

â€Å"When we received the sad news earlier this week of Tom’s passing, the word spread not only through our district in San Francisco, which Tom proudly represented, not only through the Congress of the United States in which he proudly served and led, but throughout the world.

â€Å"I could imagine prisoners in China and Tibet, people sadly expelled from their homes in Darfur, people all over the world for whom Tom fought, knowing that a great champion had passed on. But as Annette said, Tom lives. He lives in the struggles and the legacy that he has left us.

â€Å"All of us who served with Tom Lantos know that he did everything with great enthusiasm. As a representative of San Francisco in the Congress, which I had the honor of sharing with him and Senator Feinstein, he was a working man’s champion, a protector of the environment, and a leader for economic and social justice. We have suffered a tremendous loss in losing him as our representative.

â€Å"One of the joys of this year was that before Tom left us he got to serve, rightfully so, as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a job he was born to serve in. It was perfect. When we took the majority, Tom and Annette came on the first trips that we made. We went to visit the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to some of the countries that are platforms to our troops. I saw him received by our troops with great appreciation. I saw him speak truth to power to Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Kings throughout the Middle East. And I saw him received with the greatest respect and dignity.

â€Å"He and Annette were like a royal couple themselves because of their reputation for values-based foreign policy for America, a commitment to respect the dignity and worth of every person, and founding the Human Rights Caucus. Their unwavering values heralded them as true leaders in the world. So it is heartbreaking personally, and also a major setback, except that Tom’s legacy is so strong.

â€Å"After I received the first call, I received a call from the President of the United States, saying that he had just spoken to Annette and spoke with very high praise of the leadership of Tom Lantos. And I told him I would convey to our colleagues and Tom’s many friends his warm words of sympathy.

â€Å"I am so pleased that so many of Tom’s friends from the Senate, led by Leader Reid, are here, because so many of them started in the House, or he has collaborated over time for the security of our country and the spread of our ideals for which he was very well known.

â€Å"But for all of his professional, political and official duties, we all knew that nothing meant more to him than his family. More than anyone I knew, Tom Lantos’ strength sprang from his family. And listening to Annette’s remarks today, we know why. We’ve known why for a long time. So many times in his last phone calls he said, ‘Annette and I loved each other since we were young, but we’ve never loved each more than now.

â€Å"What a tribute to him that so many leaders from around the worldâ€"the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel, a rock star Bonoâ€"this is the breadth of the reach of Tom Lantos.

â€Å"Elie, I told you earlier that Tom took me over to the Holocaust Museum one day and he showed me your picture on the train. It was such a moving thing. It meant so much to him. I can just imagine what it means to him that you are speaking here today.

â€Å"We will all be talking about the fact that he was the first Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress. He took the responsibility to shed the bright light on tyranny wherever it existed in the world very seriously. He taught us that the fight and struggle for human rights was a long one, but we must always be faithful to it. I know I speak for all of my colleagues when I say it was a privilege to serve in the Congress and to call Tom Lantos a colleague, and for many of us, to cherish him as a friend.

â€Å"When I think of him, I think of the words of Ecclesiasticus and the chapter known as the ‘Eulogy of Heroes:’ ‘Now let us praise great men: the heroes of our nation’s history whom the Lord established His renown and revealed His majesty. Some were sage counselors, who led the people by their counsels and by their knowledge of the law; out of their fund of wisdom they gave instruction. They were men of loyalty, whose good deeds have not been forgotten. As the eulogy of heroes proclaims, He will be buried in peace, but his name lives forever, as people recount his wisdom.’

â€Å"Such is Tom Lantos. He died as he lived, surrounded by the people he loved the most: his family. Annette, Katrina, Annette, children, grandchildren, Timber and Dick, his sons-in-law, and so just many people who benefited from it.

â€Å"Of all the things that are said of Tom, his love of our country is something that everyone has something to say about. And so do I now. If I may present to Annette the flag on behalf of all my colleagues in the Congress, the flag that was flown over the Capitol on the day that Tom passed away. I present this to you, Annette, in tribute to Tom’s patriotism.

â€Å"He loved America, and others will speak to that as well. He loved its people. He loved its freedoms and its constitution. He loved its natural resourcesâ€"he was a champion for the environment. He loved its industryâ€"he was a champion for America’s working families. And he was committed to the pledge that we take every day as we open the Houses of Congress. He was committed to liberty and justice for all.”