Bill Bennett: “I had not expected to be here in the Senate today. I had made plans to be in Salt Lake City where the celebrations are…”

“I had not expected to be here in the Senate today. I had made plans to be in Salt Lake City where the celebrations are going on for a historic event marking the 150th anniversary of the entry of Brigham Young into the Salt Lake Valley. As Senate business has been pressing, combined with a bad cold that you can hear in my throat, I decided wisdom meant that I should stay here, even though my heart is in Utah. Mr. President, we have heard a lot from the senior Senator, appropriately, about the trek and what went on. Like him, I have forebears who were part of that great movement, which began with Brigham Young in 1847, but continued until the coming of the railroad in 1869. My grandfather, John F. Bennett, was 3 years old when his parents and his grandparents took him out of the slums of Liverpool, where they were born and raised in what would be considered the lower-lower class, walked across the great American plains to try to find a new life and a new religion in a new place. Out of that family that came from that little boy, who had no education, no hope, and in the class-ridden status of England at the time, no chance of opportunity for advancement, have come two United States Senators, a number of successful businessmen, a series of college graduates, and a tremendous family of achievement and family happiness of which I am a beneficiary.”