David Durenberger: “last night, at about 8:30, quite a number of us lost a very dear friend to cancer. He was just 47 years of age. He was…”

“last night, at about 8:30, quite a number of us lost a very dear friend to cancer. He was just 47 years of age. He was my friend John Riley, and he was a friend of many of the rest of us here. The members of the Commerce Committee, some of whom are on the floor now, will remember John well as the Federal Railway Administrator, beginning, as I recall, late in 1983, quite a number of years ago. He left that post in April 1989. The next day he was at Arlington Hospital with a brain tumor, of which, by some miraculous positive bent that is John's only, he was cured. But it followed with another one and another one and the third one finally killed him here 5 years after the first was discovered. John was an incredible human being. He was, above all, an optimist. He was a character to many people, but he was a person with whom, if you were lucky enough to have a relationship, you found that relationship a treasure beyond any value, because it is so hard sometimes to discover in the relationships we develop in this body or in a political sense, people whose characters we look up to and whose persona is something to be emulated, and we would like to see our children, our friends, and our constituents. I give notice to my colleagues that there will be a memorial service for John by his family and friends and others in Ardmore, PA, on Friday, at noon, I believe it is, of this week.”