The Honorable Donna F. Edwards
Honoring John Dingell, the Dean of the House
June 27, 2013
I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Barrow, for leading this Special Order.
I am just so honored really to be here to celebrate and honor somebody I call a friend, John Dingell.
I notice, as we’re talking here today and as so many have approached the podium, that everyone who approaches says: John Dingell, my friend, my colleague, my mentor, someone I look up to, someone I respect. I would just like to say to my good friend from Michigan that I can’t really change those words because they echo my own sentiments.
I want to share with you – and so many of us have talked about the long legislative legacy of John Dingell. As I sat here, Mr. Dingell, I thought, well, I too, when you came into Congress, I had not been born yet. It was about 3 years before I entered the world. When you took that courageous vote in support of the Voting Rights Act and civil rights, I was 6-years-old. I recall at the time living here in the Washington metropolitan area that my father and mother used to bring us to this Capitol almost every Sunday after church. They would bring us and we would run up and down the east front of the Capitol. We would picnic on the west front of the Capitol.
I am thinking today how wonderful it is to know that there was someone who was in this institution who so valued this institution and who, even when I was a 6-year old, John Dingell was working to protect my rights. When I think about that, Mr. Dingell, I think of all of the Members who lined up even before we began this Special Order and talked about the need to work in a bipartisan way to make sure that we create a formula for the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court would support, that institutes and puts into place the formula for the way that we protect our voting rights in section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and almost to one, including John Lewis, none of us would be here had you not had the courage to take that vote in 1964.
So it’s such an honor to serve with you and to know that while that may have been the battle in 1964, that you are fully prepared to engage in the battle here in 2013, and what an honor that we all have the great privilege of being able to serve with John Dingell.
I almost think, and Mr. Kildee mentioned this, but I almost think there is hardly anything that impacts our modern day laws that we can’t attribute to the great hard work and public service of John Dingell. The fact that I got up this morning and turned on a faucet and ran a glass of water and was able to drink it and know that it was clean, was about John Dingell. That I walked outside today, and even on a stuffy day like this, knew that I could breathe air that was okay – we still have work to do, Mr. Dingell – but to know that that clean air, and the cleaner we make our air, is attributed to John Dingell.
I think back to my grandmother who came to live with us at a point as she was aging – and it was actually just prior to the passage of Medicare – and how different families’ lives are now because of the protections that they have for health care as they age and are disabled. Those things are attributable to the great work, the legislative legacy and the service of John Dingell.
So here we are today, and when I first came into Congress, I came in a different kind of way. One day John Dingell pulled me aside in the cloak room and he said, “Come sit down, I want to talk to you, I want to get to know you.” And I was, frankly, afraid of him. I knew his history, I had watched several Energy and Commerce hearings, and I knew that he was a great friend of my predecessor – a great friend of my predecessor.
I sat down and I talked to him, and what I gained from John Dingell was the kind of honor and dedication that he has, and reverence that he has, for this institution. It is unlike any that we see, and we learn from that. So we talked, and we became friends.
Then a funny thing happened. Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and an inauguration was coming forward, and again another reminder that John Dingell’s 50 years of service are about this amazing legislative work, but it is also about the people of his district – the children, women, men, families, of his district.
There was a high school in his district – actually, I’m not quite sure it was still in his district, but at one time he represented that high school – and they had gotten the great gift of being able to play in the inaugural parade for President Obama. Somehow or other things got confused and they were staying in a hotel that was many, many miles, a couple of hours away, from Washington, D.C., and they would have had to get up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning to get to the staging area on time. I represent a district just outside of Washington, D.C., in Maryland. John Dingell reached out to me and he told me this story, and I said, Well, maybe we can figure out something.
We found a high school out in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and a parent-teacher organization and the students. They welcomed these students from Michigan that they didn’t know at all into their high school. They fed them pizzas and sodas and everything. So the students were able to actually get to the inaugural parade on time.
John Dingell and I have been locked at the hand and the hip ever since. Those students were so grateful to him. What I saw in this great legislator is that the people of his district really did come first and he looked out for them, and they knew that he looked out for them. Like I said, I don’t know whether he still represented them or not. I suppose over those 57 years, the way lines get drawn, at some point or other he did and he didn’t, and he did and he didn’t.
But whatever, he thought of them as his constituents and they thought of him as their Member of Congress. I thought that that is the kind of Member of Congress that I want to be. I think there are so many of us who serve in this institution who really do value it and who listen, who really listen to the message that John Dingell gave us about the need to work together and to preserve and protect our democracy by working in a kind of way that gives value and service to all of our communities and to this great Nation. So for that, I want to thank John Dingell for being such an important part of this institution and important part of the way I have learned to become a Member of Congress.
I want to say, just finally, on health care, when I came to the Congress, I had had an experience of not having had health care and getting very sick and going to an emergency room and having a lot of bills that I couldn’t pay because I didn’t have health insurance. When we gaveled in that health care bill, the Affordable Care Act, it was John Dingell sitting as speaker pro tempore who gaveled in the Affordable Care Act with the gavel that he used for Medicare.
Then during the course of that debate, I helped to gavel in the debate on health care. There was one moment that John Dingell was speaking on the floor about his father’s experience and about his experience working on health care. I was sitting in as speaker pro tempore. Mr. Dingell, I will never forget that picture because for me it was what we do as legislators, but it also felt very personal, and it felt so wonderful to know that in your service you never stopped not a single day of the 57 years to make sure that millions of Americans like me could have health care that was quality and that was affordable and that was accessible. So I thank you so much for your service, and I am so honored to serve with you.
