Kendra S. Horn: “Ron Packard is truly a man of the House of Representatives. He is a gentleman. He is civility. He is a good listener…”

“Ron Packard is truly a man of the House of Representatives. He is a gentleman. He is civility. He is a good listener, and he has got a ready smile. He won friends all over this Chamber on both sides of the aisle; and, of course, that is what effective legislators do. Of course, when we all learned that he had a total of 44 children and grandchildren, 7 children, 34 grandchildren, and three great grandchildren, we were envious. And I always wondered how he remembered their names. I suspect Jean, his charming wife, maybe put a sort of easel up and when they were coming, said here are the names. Ron, in whatever he did as a legislator here, first on public works, now known as the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, but now on the Committee on Appropriations, he was very fair when he listened to all of us, Democrats, Republicans, Easterners, Westerners, Northerners, Southerners. On appropriations, he brought basic common sense to the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, one of the most difficult committees in this Chamber, because it involves floods, it involves ecology, it involves environment. Ron could deal with all of those pressures. He cared about our troops abroad, in particular. In the period when he was chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Construction, our troops abroad in Korea were in Second World War barracks going to pieces, and Ron knew that should not be.”