Thomas Daschle: “Mr. President, it is with sadness--and tremendous gratitude for the work their lives exemplified--that I add my voice to…”

“Mr. President, it is with sadness--and tremendous gratitude for the work their lives exemplified--that I add my voice to those honoring Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and the extraordinary men and women who died with him on that plane. I am sure each of us will long remember just where we were and what we were doing when we heard that Secretary Brown's plane was missing over Croatia, and then, moments later, when we learned the plane had crashed. In my case, I was at home--packing to leave for Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia myself. So many thoughts raced through my mind. . . . I thought of the meeting I was supposed to have had the following evening in Zagreb with Secretary Brown. I thought of how, just a few weeks earlier, Secretary Brown had helped an electronics company in Rapid City work out the final details of a contract with a group in South Africa, and of all the people in my state who will be able to work because he went the extra mile for us. But mostly I thought, what a loss. What a terrible loss our Nation had just suffered. Ron Brown and the 32 brave Americans who accompanied him on that noble mission to Bosnia represented what is best about our Nation: A "can do" sense of optimism and determination. A generosity of spirit.…”