Jeff Fortenberry: “When I was about 8 years old, I read a book. It was on a famous New York Yankee first baseman named Lou Gehrig. He was…”

“When I was about 8 years old, I read a book. It was on a famous New York Yankee first baseman named Lou Gehrig. He was nicknamed ``The Iron Horse'' because of his great athletic ability. He could hit, he could field. His durability was legendary. As a great athlete, his character was marked by that ability to adjust and overcome. But then something happened. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis caused Lou Gehrig to lose control of his bodily functions. That famous durability of his was mocked by this cruel, unforgiving, neurodegenerative disease, which is aggressive, that we now know as ALS. There was no cure then and there is no cure now. ALS has also come to be known as Lou Gehrig's disease. But before he died in 1941, Madam Speaker, at a ceremony at the home plate in Yankee Stadium, Lou Gehrig looked up at the crowd and he said: For the past 2 weeks, you've been reading about a bad break. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. That story, Lou Gehrig's story, stayed with me as a child. Now, Madam Speaker, as a Member of the United States Congress, fast forward decades later. This same cruel disease has swept upon my own family and we, as a family, quickly learned about the profound trauma it has caused so many other Americans. ALS takes about 2 to 5 years to destroy a body and exhaust a family. It is 100 percent fatal. Its victims lose the ability to write and walk and talk and eat and move and, finally, to breathe.…”