Political Quotes

“Monday marked the 10th anniversary of the passing of Luis Ferre. I rise this morning to pay tribute to this giant of a man whom The New York Times called the ``dominant force in the politics, economy and culture of Puerto Rico'' for much of the 20th century. In a real sense, Don Luis personified his beloved Puerto Rico, embodying both its progress and its struggles. He was born in Ponce in 1904, a few years after Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory; was a teenager when island residents were granted American citizenship in 1917; served as a delegate to the convention that drafted Puerto Rico's local constitution in the early 1950s; was elected as the island's governor in 1968; served as a member of the Puerto Rico Senate, including as its president, in the late 1970s and early 1980s; and remained engaged in public life as a revered elder statesman well beyond his formal retirement from politics. Don Luis lived to age 99, but it was the fullness of his life, not its length, that is so remarkable. Trained as an engineer at MIT and as a classical pianist at the New England Conservatory of Music, Ferre was a true renaissance man. He loved ideas, intellectual debate and culture, founding the renowned Ponce Museum of Art; but he was also at home in the practical world of business, taking a small company and transforming it into one of Puerto Rico's most successful conglomerates.…”