On the recordAugust 2, 2011
it is my pleasure but also a sad moment for members of the Foreign Relations Committee to take this time to celebrate the service of and also to salute the retirement of one of the Senate's great staffers: Ed Levine. Ed is retiring this week after a remarkable 35 years of service to the Senate--a lot longer than most Senators get to serve and that most staff up here have the courage to hang in there and serve. In his decades of service, Ed has provided wise and perceptive counsel to two committees, to many Members, and most recently to the Foreign Relations Committee. His deep knowledge of foreign policy and his remarkable sense of this institution are truly going to be missed and I mean missed enormously. He grew up and he went to school here in Washington, DC, before he headed off to Berkeley and then later to Yale. When he was a young man here in this community, he used to ride the streetcar down to Georgia Avenue, where he would watch the Senators play at Griffith Stadium. For those who are too young to remember, there actually was a baseball team called the Senators once upon a time. He did not watch folks here playing at Griffith Stadium. But when the Washington Senators left for good to become the Texas Rangers, I have to reckon that Ed just decided that the U.S. Senators were the only game left in town, and he has been here ever since. He first came to the Senate in 1976.…
