Louise Slaughter: “I feel, as I am sure everyone else in the House felt, that I had a very special relationship with Meg. When I first came…”

“I feel, as I am sure everyone else in the House felt, that I had a very special relationship with Meg. When I first came here 12 years ago, I learned that one of the things that freshmen do is have the great honor of presiding over Special Orders. I took to that, it was a wonderful thing for me to be doing, and made so much easier because of Meg. I always relished being able to do it early in the week, because Meg Goetz and Paul Hayes and I share a special passion that we have never discussed with anybody on the floor of the House. That is that we are totally devoted to the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. So even though the issue of the special order was sometimes grim, sometimes not, we always had a fall-back position where we could say, 'Did you get 22 across?' Meg has been, as everyone said before me, a pillar of strength in this House, and the millions of people in this country who understand how this democracy works and the way she has always conducted herself, with extraordinary decorum and with extraordinarily good judgment, know that a lot of good things about this House are because of the dedication and work that Meg Goetz brought to it.”