Marty Walsh: “Everyone who has spoken so far from our delegation in New York about Ben Gilman mentioned that Ben was here when we…”

“Everyone who has spoken so far from our delegation in New York about Ben Gilman mentioned that Ben was here when we came. One of the remarkable traditions of any great society is the oral tradition. The intelligence and the traditions and the history of the Congress have been handed down from Ben Gilman's generation to our generation. When I came, Ben took me under his wing immediately because he served with my father, and he still asks about my dad to this day. That is the kind of man that Ben Gilman is. But he took time for everyone, not just his colleagues here in the Congress but for his constituents, for people who came to him from around the world looking for help to support their nascent democratic movement. They always had a listener in Ben Gilman. He has been a legislator, chairing one of the most important committees in the Congress, but he stopped to deal with other Members on issues that were germane and important to his own constituency. When there was a disaster in his district for onion farmers because of bad weather, every single day I saw him on the floor he reminded me not to forget the onion farmers.”