Marcy Kaptur: “I rise with my colleagues at this very special moment to pay tribute to the dean of the Ohio delegation, always to me…”

“I rise with my colleagues at this very special moment to pay tribute to the dean of the Ohio delegation, always to me our good friend Congressman Louis Stokes. For myself personally, and I know for every single other member of the Ohio delegation, from our great buckeye State, when we came to Congress, Lou Stokes was here. He has always been here. For us as Members, for our State, to imagine Ohio without Lou Stokes is to imagine an Ohio with a piece of its heart missing. And this particular moment of tribute is one of those moments in Congress that each of us who has had the pleasure of working and knowing this man will not forget. Others have detailed the congressional service of our good friend, Lou Stokes, but perhaps it is important to remember that when he was elected to the Committee on Appropriations he was the first African-American ever to serve on this very, very important committee of cardinals rising to be a cardinal in his own right. I think as a woman having had to overcome some of the barriers in my own life, I can somewhat identify, but certainly not completely, with what that must have felt like. I think what has always amazed me about Lou Stokes is what a gentleman he has been. I think the kind of elegance with which he carries himself, the kind of elegance that causes his grandchildren to really smile at him with open eyes, is a quality that all of us truly admire and wish that we had ourselves.”