Remembering Senator Craig Thomas
Floor Speech
REMEMBERING SENATOR CRAIG THOMAS -- (Senate - June 05, 2007)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I appreciate this consideration. I realize we must move to the legislation before us, the issue of immigration, but I wanted to take just a few minutes this afternoon to stand in tribute to my friend, to our friend and colleague, Senator Craig Thomas.
I think it is fair to say that this is very difficult for all of us here in the Senate. It has been described that we are a family. We are friends. My neighbor Senator Thomas and I have sat on this back row together for this past year. I sit next to him in the Energy Committee. I sit next to him in the Indian Affairs Committee. He is a friend and a man whom I will miss very deeply. To learn this morning of his passing leaves me truly with a hole in my heart. I can't imagine the depth of loss the family and his wife Susan are feeling at this point.
We recognize that we were privileged to serve with a truly incredible man. I haven't served with him as long as many of my Senate colleagues. I came to know him really from a very personal perspective. I was fascinated with the fact that he is a true cowboy. I have always kind of thought that cowboys never die. He was claimed by a very terrible disease, a very terrible cancer, leukemia. Alaska mourned the loss of a young woman just last year who was claimed by leukemia. She was a world-famous dog musher. In Alaska, we say dog mushers, real famous dog mushers never die, either. So, again, my heart is very heavy.
When I got up this morning and saw on my BlackBerry the news of Senator Thomas, there was a second BlackBerry that came to me from one of the pages who served here in the Senate just last fall. She was one of the winter pages. I was very touched by the note she sent to the head of the page program, and she forwarded me a copy of it as well. I want to read just a paragraph from her e-mail to me because I think it reflects how Senator Thomas touched the lives of so many--not just his colleagues and not just the people of Wyoming but a young 16-year-old page from Alaska. She wrote:
My class and I witnessed some of the stages of Senator Thomas' sickness, but we never witnessed him getting upset or angry because he was feeling down and overtired due to his symptoms and treatments.
Senator Thomas was a cheerful man, always smiling and personable, even when he was not being approached. He did not have to address us at all; we were pages, mere peons in the infrastructure of what we know as the Senate. Yet, every time he entered the Senate, he warmed the room with his smile and a warm glow that protruded gently from his kind eyes. When he would speak to us, he did so with the utmost respect and thoughtfulness, truly treating us as equals. He never looked down on us, and I believe that is why his memory has stayed with me and will continue to do so in the future.
What made Senator Thomas remarkable, aside from all this, was that at the end of the day when we were at our lowest point and we felt so tired we couldn't help but frown, he was the one that no one ever caught frowning. He was a great Senator, and from what I have had the chance to witness firsthand, a great man. I am deeply sorry for this loss, and I hope that this e-mail will attest to that. His actions and his kindness were not lost on us.
This was signed:
With utmost respect and deepest sincerity, Former U.S. Senate Page, Lily George from Anchorage, AK.
I thought it important to share that e-mail with my colleagues because, again, Senator Thomas was one who generated warmth with everybody he reached out to, whether they were pages or Senators or people in the airport. We will miss him very deeply here in the Senate.
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