Representative Heather Wilson: “when Joe Skeen was elected to the Congress, one of the first acts that he introduced in 1981 was legislation to name the…”

“when Joe Skeen was elected to the Congress, one of the first acts that he introduced in 1981 was legislation to name the Federal building in Las Cruces, New Mexico, after the man he replaced, the late-Congressman Harold Runnels, and I believe it is appropriate 23 years later to return the favor. Joe Skeen won his election with a successful write-in campaign. It was only the third such victory in the history of the United States Congress, and during his nearly 22 years in the House of Representatives, he was a defender, a staunch defender, of New Mexico's rural lifestyle and its farming and ranching interests. Even as Parkinson's began to claim his speech in his later years, Joe's sense of humor remained intact, and it is one of the things that all of us here treasure about him. Just about everybody in this body has a Joe Skeen story, something that makes us smile. One always knew if they had to go to talk to Joe about something, they might as well start smiling because before it was over he was going to make them laugh. After 11 terms in the United States Congress, Joe decided to return to his ranch, a place that he described as being "at the center of my upbringing and which shaped my character and principles in life." Joe's ranch in Picacho is 17 miles from pavement, and Joe was never a gentleman farmer. He was a farmer, a rancher and a gentleman.”