On the recordDecember 9, 2014
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about my friend Ralph Hall. An amazing man. He has done just about anything adventuresome you can think of in your life. This is the man that tells us that he was a little boy when Bonnie and Clyde went through, and I think he is telling us the truth. He tells me that he was a fight promoter, and I know he was a fight promoter--I heard it from other people--who turned down a young man from Kentucky named Cassius Clay because he thought he had a glass jaw. He is a man that served in the wild and wily Texas Legislature and Texas Senate. He once ran for attorney general, and he said he looked in the mirror and thought he saw the attorney general, and it turned out there was another guy that he was seeing in the mirror. He served in this House both as a Democrat and a Republican and is loved by both parties and respected by both parties. He had an amazing talent for carrying humor around as a tool of friendship. I just want to share one small thing that livened up a crowd like I have never seen before. We were at the laying of the keel of the aircraft carrier George Herbert Walker Bush. There were about 50 or so people sitting down in chairs in the hot sun. They put a bottle of water under each chair. I was sitting next to Ralph on the front row. He looked down there underneath his chair and he saw that bottle of water. All these people were sweltering behind us waiting for the thing to start.…
