Cliff Stearns: “it is obviously with great sadness that we all honor the service of our colleague and friend, Paul Gillmor. Paul and I…”

“it is obviously with great sadness that we all honor the service of our colleague and friend, Paul Gillmor. Paul and I came to Congress the same year. We were in the 101st Congress and we were both veterans of the United States Air Force. He obviously expressed a great love for this Nation, for this institution, and I believe sincerely he brought credit upon all of us. This dedication was matched by his love for his family, his wife, Karen, his two daughters, Linda and Julie, and his three sons, Paul Michael, Connor and Adam. I express my deepest condolences to the family. I had the opportunity when I first met Paul to talk informally with him about his background. He said he was a leader of the senate. Coming from the private sector and not understanding the full significance of what that meant, I became acutely aware of what it meant when I heard him in informal sessions or in meetings where he had a presence about him, an aplomb, and also a sincerity, in which he would express his ideas in a way that would get to the meat of the issue and cut to the chase. And I realized during this, he could do it tactfully. He was not a partisan individual. He was bipartisan, in fact. I can't recollect on the floor him having a really partisan speech because I think it goes to when he was a leader of the senate, he understood to get things done, he had to develop consensus.”