Dan Coats: “I rise this evening to honor a longtime friend, confidant, and mentor, Chuck Colson, whose life we will celebrate…”

“I rise this evening to honor a longtime friend, confidant, and mentor, Chuck Colson, whose life we will celebrate tomorrow at a memorial service at the National Cathedral. It has been said that a man's character can be tested by the way he responds to adversity. If that is the case, Chuck Colson's character was one of remarkable strength, tenacity, faith, and humility. Chuck was a brilliant man with a resume of impressive accomplishments at a very young age: A scholarship to an Ivy League school and a law degree from George Washington University; a veteran and, at one time, the youngest captain in the Marine Corps; a former chief of staff to a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts; and then top assistant and legal counsel to the President of the United States. Now, this does not sound like the type of man who would find himself sitting alone in a Federal prison cell, but that is exactly what happened to Chuck Colson, and what happened there changed his life forever. Known as President Nixon's ``hatchet man,'' Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the Daniel Ellsberg case during the Watergate scandal and went from White House Special Counsel to incarcerated felon. In 1974, Chuck Colson entered Maxwell Federal Prison Camp in Alabama. This fall from perhaps the closest confidant of the President of the United States to a Federal prison cell is about as far and as deep as anyone can fall. That is what we call hitting rock bottom.…”