Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am very pleased to follow Rhode Island's distinguished senior Senator with remarks about our friend and our former Governor, Bruce Sundlun. As Governor, he served with some of our colleagues who are in the Senate today, including Ben Nelson, who was Governor of Nebraska, and Tom Carper who was Governor of Delaware. They served with Bruce, and he was one of those irrepressible characters they remember very distinctly to this day. Bruce Sundlun had a remarkable Rhode Island life. He was the son of a jewelry store owner, who was the son of an immigrant watchmaker. It turns out that he had real athletic talent. He was a track star, breaking record after record around Rhode Island. It was as a competitor in that era that he first felt the sting of discrimination over being Jewish, and that gave him a lasting characteristic to stick up for the underdog. As I mentioned at his funeral service, he was the opposite of a fair- weather friend. He became a better friend the stormier the weather got around you. He went on, with his great generation, to defend our country and fight for freedom around the globe in World War II. He was a pilot of a B-17, the Damn Yankee, at a time when the life expectancy for bomber crews over Europe was not very long. Unfortunately, his aircraft was shot down and crashed in Belgium. He was able to survive the crash, although, as the pilot, he was the last living person out.…”