Steny Hoyer: “it is a sad occasion for me to rise at this time to note and to lament the leaving of our colleague, the gentleman from…”

“it is a sad occasion for me to rise at this time to note and to lament the leaving of our colleague, the gentleman from Maryland, Kweisi Mfume. Most of you know that Kweisi Mfume is in many ways the embodiment of the American dream and American ideal. He was a young man, like so many of us when we were young, who had trouble coming to grips with life. I can empathize with that. I am sure many of you can as well. In fact, as a teenager he was, from the perspective of many, a teenager that would not make a positive contribution to his community. The joy of the story is that Kweisi Mfume looked at himself and make a similar conclusion, and decided that that was not the route he wanted to go. Robert Frost wrote a poem ``The Road Not Taken.'' He said in that poem ``I shall be telling this with a smile somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by.'' The road less traveled by, as all of us know who go through a woods, has more briars, has more brambles, has more branches in the way of progress. But if one is prepared to overcome those obstacles, one can prevail and be admired for that victory of the spirit. I am not objective, Mr. Speaker. Kweisi Mfume is my friend. As the dean of the Maryland delegation, I can say with pride and with conviction that Kweisi Mfume has served the citizens of not only his district but of my district and of every district of our State exceedingly well.”