John Hansen: “I walked in this place in 1980, and I was asked to sit on the Committee on Ethics. Nobody wants to serve on the…”

“I walked in this place in 1980, and I was asked to sit on the Committee on Ethics. Nobody wants to serve on the Committee on Ethics, but the ranking member of the Committee on Ethics happened to be Floyd Spence. Floyd served there for years and years and years. We had a horrible case right off the bat. It was called the sex scandal with pages made up by CBS and one of their reporters. Floyd handled that with more dignity than I have ever seen anyone handle anything. He was the ranking member, and he served longer on that committee than anybody in this House. I hate to admit it, but I matched it at 14 years when I was on the Committee on Ethics. He did that with great distinction. I remember when we used to watch Floyd come across in a wheelchair with his girl Carolyn pulling him across there with the oxygen. He heard of a doctor down in Mississippi who could do a double lung transplant, a doctor from India. He did this with a young boy who was killed on a motorcycle. He became very close to the family. He called the mother Mom. She used to come up here. They were very close. That is what we would expected from a man like Floyd Spence, a man who was a Navy captain himself, who had more compassion for people than most I have ever seen in my life. I stand amazed at the compassion he had and point out what a gentleman he was.”