John Spratt: “I rise to pay tribute to an old friend and dear colleague. Frank McCloskey and I came to Congress together in 1983, and…”

“I rise to pay tribute to an old friend and dear colleague. Frank McCloskey and I came to Congress together in 1983, and for all the time that he served here, we sat beside each other on the Committee on Armed Services. I enjoyed him as a person. He became a good friend. I admired him as a colleague. I learned a lot from him. Frank was plain and unpretentious, but beneath a serious and even studious sort of demeanor, he was passionate about the things that he believed in and dogged in their pursuit. He stayed on top of the issues. Long before Srebrenica, he was troubled, deeply, personally conflicted about the war and current issues in the Balkans, and he was an early advocate and lone supporter of our intervention there. There were those who said it was not feasible, it was not possible or it was not desirable, but in the long run Frank McCloskey's position was vindicated. Frank McCloskey was not glib. He was not flashy. He was not smooth. He was not, in Sam Rayburn's famous analogy, a show horse, but he was a workhorse.”