Jim Ramstad: “Bill Emerson was loved by all of us in this body and he will be missed by all of us. We all knew Bill Emerson was a…”

“Bill Emerson was loved by all of us in this body and he will be missed by all of us. We all knew Bill Emerson was a skillful legislator who represented the best in public service. I always knew Bill Emerson the person. He was one of my closest friends here. I knew the loving, caring, honest guy Bill was. He cared deeply about people, all people, from all walks of life. But his passion, Mr. Speaker, was to reach out to people like me, people recovering from alcoholism. Until his cancer incapacitated him, Bill held meetings in his office every Wednesday noon, always there, for all of us, always there with a listening ear, always there to help others still suffering the ravages of alcoholism and drug addiction, always there setting up interventions for families, always there to talk to spouses of Members who are in trouble with this disease of alcoholism. Bill Emerson was a true inspiration to all of us who care about this disease of alcoholism. I am not breaching his anonymity because Bill Emerson has given this talk before, publicly. He was a true profile in courage, a true profile in courage for the way he lived and the way he died. I talked to Bill Emerson a week before he passed on. He said, "Jim, if I'm not going to make it, I'm going to go sober." Bill left us sober, and he left us a wonderful, wonderful legacy, those of us recovering and all of us as well as those still suffering from this disease.”