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Floor Speech

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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Madam President, I come to the floor today to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of Thomas Horace Porter, my good friend and a man who could put a smile on my face even in the toughest times, on one of the most painful days of my life, while I was recovering at Walter Reed.

Among the peer visitors at Walter Reed Hospital, two of the most beloved were Tom and his wife Eleanor.

Tom was a gentle giant--a tall, smiling, then-74-year-old veteran who showed up at my bedside while I was still sedated to talk with my husband and mother and who came to visit again soon after I regained consciousness.

As a young Army lieutenant in the Korean war, Tom had lost both his legs in a landmine explosion. His heroic actions saving his men on that day earned Tom both the Silver Star in addition to the Purple Heart for his combat injuries.

During his months of recuperation back in the States, Eleanor--or El, as we all know her--an Army second lieutenant herself, had been one of his physical therapists.

The couple ended up married for more than 50 years. Tom continued to serve our Nation--this time as a civil servant, achieving the rank of Senior Executive Service in the Department of Agriculture. When Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom began and the wounded began flooding the wards at Walter Reed, Tom and El decided that they needed to help. They became peer visitors, and for the next 7 years, during twice weekly visits, they changed the lives of countless veterans who passed through that hospital, my own included.

When I was at Walter Reed, Tom made it his mission to talk with injured troops about the full lives they will lead after their devastating injuries.

A lot of the wounded warriors around me were really young, just 19 to 24 years old, lying in their hospital beds with limbs missing, burns to their faces and bodies, skulls crushed and encased in protective metal cages or helmets. They were all facing a future none of them had planned for. Like them, I had always assumed I would either die in combat or come home. The third option of coming home severely injured was never something that occurred to the majority of us.

Tom would walk in with that big smile of his and say: Hey, I was like you. Lost my legs at 22. But I recovered and I have had a full and regular life. I courted El after I lost my legs, and she and I have been married for 50 years and have wonderful kids and grandkids.

He reassured them that they could still have the lives they dreamed of, and his words had weight because he was living proof that that was possible.

He would wink and joke: Listen, having an amputation is better than having a puppy. Trust me, you won't have any trouble getting the ladies.

And then he would answer any questions they had because he knew they needed to hear from someone who had already journeyed on the road they were about to travel.

For years, Tom and El came into Walter Reed every Tuesday and Thursday without fail. El was known as the Cookie Lady because she would bring in dozens of homemade cookies that she collected from folks at her church.

For those of us who were in the hospital a long time, El knew our favorites. Mine were oatmeal raisin. If I was at physical therapy or in surgery or getting my wounds debrided when El made her rounds, she would make sure to leave a little bag of cookies by my bedside table. It was a real treat in the midst of the painful, early stages of recovery--something to look forward to every week.

Tom and El. El and Tom. The two of them became family for all of us. They would bring me and my husband to their lakeside home, feed us home-cooked meals, and let me fall asleep in their hammock overlooking the water, knowing the good that getting out of that fluorescent-lit hospital room would do me.

As someone who loved and was desperately missing the ocean, I can't begin to describe how restorative those days by the lake were.

There are no words for how right it felt to be drifting off to sleep to the sound of waves hitting the shore rather than to the beeps and the buzz of the hospital machines that had been my nightly soundtrack for too long.

And there is no possible way to express just how grateful I am to Tom and El for making that a possibility; for giving me a taste of home, right when I felt most like a stranger to myself; for enveloping me in something good and whole right when I felt untethered from what I felt was my life's mission; and for simply being who they were--kind and fierce, as compassionate for the people they loved as they were passionate about the causes that they believed in.

They were our advocates, our heroes, our Tom and our El.

I am so sorry for your loss, El. We miss Tom every single day. Thank you both for all you did for me and what you did for all of us. We miss you desperately.

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