On the recordJanuary 25, 1994
I rise with great respect and admiration for Tip O'Neill and to join my colleagues in commemorating his service to the House of Representatives and our Nation. Speaker O'Neill's passing is a historic loss to this Nation and I offer my condolences and warm personal thoughts to the entire O'Neill family. The former Speaker's death was noted throughout our country. For the Record, I include a column from the January 16, 1994, issue of the Oregonian. If We Could Call One Final Witness (By Steve Duin) Tip O'Neill, a hefty argument against term limits, died before they went on trial last week in Seattle. The five-term speaker of the House reached his limit, at 81, in a Boston hospital on Jan. 6. Cancer knocked him down; a heart attack finished the job. Rep. Mike Kopetski, D-Ore., was on one of the four planes that carried House members to O'Neill's funeral Mass in Cambridge. He was one of the lucky ones who slipped inside St. John the Evangelist, the small brick church where O'Neill was baptized, but Kopetski never got comfortable. Bunched outside in the cold, Kopetski knew, were hundreds of mourners who had a better claim to his pew. They were constituents, and Tip O'Neill never shut his door to a constituent.
