Pelosi Floor Remarks in Honor of the Late Bill Newsom
Washington, D.C – Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi delivered remarks of the Floor of the House of Representatives to honor the late Bill Newsom. Below are the Speaker-designate’s remarks:
Speaker-designate Pelosi. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I may not use the full five minutes but I wanted the opportunity to go beyond the one minute to talk about a very special person in our community who left us recently. I rise to pay tribute to a gentleman of exceptional generosity, deep principles and extraordinary wit: Justice William Newsom, or as many called him, Bill.
A dedicated public servant with a commitment to the art and conservation, he leaves a lasting legacy for America. Any one of us who knew him considered him a cherished friend.
Bill was a proud fourth-generation San Franciscan who was born to a large Irish brood. As a Commissioner of the San Francisco Superior Court, Judge on the Placer County Superior Court and then California Court of Appeals Judge, he worked relentlessly to uphold liberty and justice for all.
Again, Bill’s charitable and civic contributions to our city and our state are legendary. Bill was endowed with great decency and humanity. He took the Golden Rule literally. He considered an injustice to one an indignity to all.
A passionate student of natural history and lifelong enthusiast of the outdoors, Bill worked relentlessly to preserve the beauty of God’s creation. His leadership on a vast range of conservation and environmental measures was vital in protecting clean air, clean water and public land for our children and grandchildren.
Bill also understood the power of the arts to bring us together and dedicated decades to fostering beauty, culture and the arts in the Bay Area and around the world. Again, all who were fortunate enough to call Bill a friend knew him as a brilliant man of letters, a tireless champion of civic causes and a trusted confidante of unsurpassed empathy and generosity.
But it’s Bill’s profound love of family we will miss the most. Bill’s favorite role was that of patriarch, pater familias of a big Irish brood. Family trips to Squaw Valley and Dutch Flat were his great joy and he relished every opportunity to share books, stories and special moments with his family, especially Irish literature.
I do want to call to attention and place in the record, Mr. Speaker, with your permission without objection, an obituary that was written about Bill Newsom that I think everyone should read, about a person so special that you really have to read the story to find it even believable that somebody could accomplish so many things with such dignity and grace.
Again it says, ‘Justice William Newsom was pater familias of a pioneering San Francisco family and a revered figure to his family.’ His family including his wonderful daughter Hillary whom we all love and his son, Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom, whom he will unfortunately not get to see sworn in but he did see elected as Governor in the month of November.
Again, ‘a fourth-generation resident of San Francisco, born to a large Irish-Catholic brood in depression-era San Francisco.’
His story is the story of America. Again, ‘throughout his life, he served the community with great, great dignity. His civic and charitable commitments were substantial serving on the Board of Regents events at the University of Santa Clara’ – the list goes on in terms of education and the arts.
Sometimes, Mr. Speaker, it says here, sometimes we lose someone whose passing makes it seem like an entire era has vanished but that is not so with Bill Newsom because he left such a legacy for us to continue to enjoy. Again, he is survived by Hillary and Gavin and his beautiful grandchildren with whom he enjoyed so much time in his later years with so many friends who revered him.
And I just wanted our colleagues to know this special person made a mark on the people of the great state of California and in our country and if they have a moment to read his obituary, it is a great story of the American dream of a great Irish-American family, a pioneer family in California.
Again, when Gavin [Newsom] is sworn in in the first week of January, we’ll all take such great pride in the love that his father had him for him and his sister, Hillary, and know he will be looking down from heaven on the great state of California as the Newsom legacy lives on. With that, I yield back.