Michael Burgess: “Mr. Speaker, we can still see their faces. Their friends can still hear their hearty laughter. And their families can…”

“Mr. Speaker, we can still see their faces. Their friends can still hear their hearty laughter. And their families can still feel their embrace. At every mention of their names or reminder of their courage, our hearts ache with the hollow pangs of mourning and our thoughts and prayers turn to their loved ones. For there is no loss like the loss of a hero. And 1 year ago our Nation and our world lost seven. Though they came from different nations, practiced different faiths, and sought answers to different mysteries, the winding road of providence brought them all to one place on earth where their common calling could be answered. They came to Johnson Space Center. And there, at America's great laboratory of the impossible, they trained and studied, alongside the finest collection of public servants that I know, inching ever closer to their dreams and their destiny. And though we still mourn 1 year later, it is their lives that we honor in this resolution, not their loss. Columbia's 'corps of discovery' may be gone, but death has no power over the memory of heroes.”