John Kerry: “10 years ago today, this country lost a leader and this Chamber lost a colleague, and Massachusetts lost a favorite son.…”

“10 years ago today, this country lost a leader and this Chamber lost a colleague, and Massachusetts lost a favorite son. Ten years ago today, cancer took Paul Tsongas from us prematurely at 55 years of age. He left three wonderful daughters: Ashley, Katina, and Molly, and his special and extraordinary wife Niki, and he left an enormous number of friends and people whom he touched and affected across the country, those who joined him to help reform our politics. Paul was a very different kind of public person. He walked his own path. He walked to his own tune. Today we remember him and we join the people in Merrimack Valley and across Massachusetts and so many others who came to appreciate and respect him and learned a lot about him through his Presidential campaign. We honor a life that elevated those whom he knew, and the countless people he never met, but whose lives he affected through the things he fought for and believed in. Paul Tsongas inspired with his optimism and his drive, his disarming humor, and his love of causes both distant and local. He was proud of his Greek heritage, proud of his roots as the son of a drycleaner, proud of Lowell, and he became a champion of environmental protection and expanding opportunity so the full measure of the American dream that he came to see as a young person himself was accessible to everybody else. He set a high standard for public service which he continued even after he left the Senate.”