Jay Rockefeller: “I come to the floor, after many of my colleagues have already said magnificent things, to say a word about a man I…”

“I come to the floor, after many of my colleagues have already said magnificent things, to say a word about a man I revered, worked with, and cherished both in personal and professional terms. That is, of course, John Chafee. There are so many reasons I respected and, in a sense, really loved John Chafee, and do to this minute and always will. Many of them had to do with what it was that he didn't say and what it was that he didn't find a need to do. There was an interesting article in the Washington Post this morning by Mary McGrory that made me think back to the time I was in the Peace Corps. I served with a man who has since died by the name of Marty Grobli. We were working on the Philippines program together. He was an enormous hero of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. He had done works of heroism which I never learned about because whenever as a young person in my early twenties I tried to ask him, because I wanted to learn about it, he said he didn't want to talk about it. I think that is the way of many who have been through searing emotional and physical experiences of danger, of patriotism, of great personal risk--they simply keep it to themselves. There isn't a need to tell others. War is not pleasant. War is destructive; war is carried out in the interests of the Nation or of many nations against one or several others. John Chafee never felt a need.”