John Kerry: “it is a special privilege to join all of you today to honor the life and extraordinary accomplishments of Alan Cranston.…”

“it is a special privilege to join all of you today to honor the life and extraordinary accomplishments of Alan Cranston. As we all know, Alan was a sprinter and--always with an incredible mischievous twinkle in his eye he sprinted through life. I think one of the most enduring images of him is of Alan on the eve of the Iowa caucuses in 1984 at the Holiday Inn in Keokuk, Iowa, sprinting barefooted down the 40-meter hallway, walking back and repeating the exercise for about 40 minutes. It was no coincidence that Alan's favorite hotel in the country, Chicago's O'Hare Hilton, boasts 250-meter hallways. Three weeks ago in California we shared a goodbye to our friend, this sprinter, at a memorial service--calling to mind the many ways he enriched public lives and personal relationships. There in the Grace Cathedral, we heard Colette Cranston say that in death Alan Cranston ``has become my Jiminy Cricket--that little voice in her conscience that says, `Colette, think before you leap.' '' It would not be an exaggeration to say that warning was characteristic of Alan when he served here in the United States Senate.”