Glenn English: “Today, Mr. Speaker, the House has the melancholy responsibility to take up a resolution memorializing one of the great…”

“Today, Mr. Speaker, the House has the melancholy responsibility to take up a resolution memorializing one of the great leaders of the Pennsylvania State legislature who passed recently. I am referring to former State Speaker of the House Matthew Ryan whose 41-year extraordinary career, including repeated service as Speaker of the House beginning in 1981, is an extraordinary testament to how so much of our legislative talent and our best legal minds are still concentrated in our State legislatures. I worked for the State House. I knew Speaker Ryan. I knew what an extraordinary individual he was and how, at a time when affiliation with parties is something that has lost public favor, he was one of the finest products of the Delaware County Republican organization, a great friend, an individual who absolutely dominated the State House by the force of his mind and the force of his personality and led it in very positive directions, a man who was far more bipartisan than the reputation of that institution but always a strong Republican and always a strong advocate of creating jobs and of welfare reform. We will miss him dearly. I hope his memory and his example will long be with us.”