Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. KING. Mr. President, I probably have known Tom for the least length of time of anybody in this Chamber, and I want to offer some comments from the perspective of only 2 years and really more like a year and a half since we became friends and colleagues.

I have seen Senator Coburn in two contexts--one is intelligence and the other is faith. He and I serve on the Intelligence Committee. We sit directly across from each other. That committee is generally a non partisan one, but it is also one where all the meetings generally are closed. There is no press. You can really take the measure of someone when they ask questions and participate in a debate in that forum.

His questions always struck me as the questions I wished I had asked, and they struck me as the questions I am sure the people of America would have wanted asked. They were penetrating, they cut through obfuscation, and they were always meaningful and helped us move toward the important work that committee has to accomplish.

I have also become acquainted with him through our faith and participation in the Wednesday Prayer Breakfasts, and more recently, for reasons that I am not entirely sure, he has invited me to join him on Tuesday evenings for dinners on the other side of the Capitol that have been very meaningful.

For the 9 years before I came here, I taught a course called ``Leaders and Leadership,'' and I taught it at a couple of colleges in Maine. I taught it really as much for myself as for my students because I wanted to try to understand what leadership was, and I thought if I signed on to teach it, I would have to learn something about it. Every year what we did was go through and discuss the stories of great leaders throughout history, some well known and some not so well known. We always started with Ernest Shackleton. We talked about Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Thatcher and Martin Luther King and Lincoln and Churchill. We always tried to define the qualities that make a leader, and there are lots of them--perseverance, communication, vision, team work, trust--but the last one on the list and the one that brings me back to Tom is always character. It is an indefinable quality. You cannot really put a specific definition to it, but people like Lincoln had it, Ernest Shackleton had it, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain from Maine had it, Eleanor Roosevelt had it. It involves a combination of qualities that Tom embodies, and almost all of them have been mentioned here today--integrity, intelligence, honesty, faith, belief in principle, and daring to stand for principle. It is the hardest thing to teach, but it is the easiest thing to see. And the reason I felt so privileged to get to know this man for such a short period of time is that he has shown me what character is all about.

Tom, it is one of the great joys of my life to have had these 2 years to get to know you, if only slightly. It is one of the great sadnesses of my life that it has only been 2 years.

Godspeed, Tom. You have made a difference for this country that we all love and honor and respect. Thank you for your service and for sharing your great character with all of us.

I yield the floor.

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