Dan Burton: “last night we had a terrible tragedy occur in my office. My assistant for foreign policy, Dan Getz, who was age 37…”

“last night we had a terrible tragedy occur in my office. My assistant for foreign policy, Dan Getz, who was age 37, dropped dead of a heart attack. Dan was an outstanding young man. He worked very, very hard in dealing with foreign policy issues, and he was a real credit to everybody that works here in the House. One of the things that Members and the people of the country don't realize sometimes is how hard the people behind the scenes work. The staff people here and the staff on the committees work very, very hard day and night to make sure we are ready for debate on the floor of the House and our committee meetings. And Dan was one of the people that I thought did exemplary work. He worked so hard for us. In fact, this week we had two hearings, and he didn't have assistants to help him, and he did it all by himself. And I feel a little guilty that he had to work so hard. So we were going to give him today off so that he could recuperate from all the hard work. He went home last night to his beautiful wife, Lydia, and his two daughters, Nova and Sonia, who are both very, very young. I think they are very young children. And evidently he was resting and he keeled over with a heart attack; and before the rescue team could get there, he passed away. So I would just like to say to his wife and his children how sorry we are.…”