Sanford D. Bishop, Jr.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a shepherd who has never left his flock: the Reverend Dr. Bill Edge, Sr., who on October 19, 2026, marked 40 years as pastor of Eureka Missionary Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. A dinner to celebrate this remarkable and singular accomplishment was held on Saturday, October 17, 2026, at Eureka Missionary Baptist Church.

40 years, Mr. Speaker. That is not a tenure. That is a lifetime poured out, Sunday after Sunday, sickbed after sickbed, graveside after graveside, for one congregation on Lily Pond Road that the world may call small, but that heaven has always known to be great.

On October 19, 1986, Bill Edge stepped into the pulpit at Eureka. He inherited a sanctuary built on faith and sacrifice. Under the Reverend Arthur L. Thompson, Sr., the members had purchased two acres on Lily Pond Road in 1975, paid for the land by 1977, and in September 1980 traveled by motorcade from the old church at 307 South Jackson Street to dedicate their new house of worship. They had given what they had. Now they needed a shepherd who would give everything he had.

And he did. Within four years, the congregation gathered to burn its mortgage. In 1991, a steeple rose over Lily Pond Road, pointing every passerby toward heaven. New doors, new heating and cooling, a paved parking lot: one by one, the prayers of the saints became bricks and mortar. But Mr. Speaker, a church is not measured in steeples. In 40 years, a pastor holds infants at the altar and lives to see those same children stand there with infants of their own. He sits with families in hospital corridors at midnight. He stands at the graveside of the very deacons and mothers who first welcomed him, and then he climbs back into the pulpit the next Sunday and preaches hope to the ones they left behind. Dr. Edge has carried those joys and those sorrows for four decades, and he has never once set them down.

Under his leadership, Eureka established its Annual Guest Day and Friends of Eureka Award, Annual Youth Week, Deacon and Deaconess Fellowship Day, Choir Day, Ushers Day, Christmas Candlelight Services, and Honors Day for Vacation Bible School. He organized the Inspirational Choir and the Nurses Unit, and he established the Bernice Mitchell Memorial Outstanding Youth of the Year Award so that the young people of Eureka would always know that their church sees them, believes in them, and expects great things from them. He taught the congregation to honor those who came before. Eureka named its fellowship hall the Mother Mattie P. Davis Fellowship Hall, in tribute to its oldest member, a living reminder that every generation stands on the shoulders of the one before it.

Dr. Edge has never stopped learning, and he has never stopped teaching. He holds a Ph.D. and multiple doctorates in ministry and theology, earning summa cum laude. In 2011, he brought the Southwest Region of Bethany Divinity College and Seminary of Dothan, Alabama to Eureka's own campus, where men and women answering the call may pursue accredited study from the Bible diploma through the doctorate. Today he serves as Dean of Academics for Bethany and as its Albany Dean. Somewhere in Southwest Georgia this Sunday, a pastor he trained will rise to preach, and Dr. Edge's ministry will be multiplied once more.

Eureka calls itself ``The Little Church with the Big Heart,'' and Albany knows it to be true. In 2021, Dr. Edge's congregation organized its Outreach Team to seek out the lost and the struggling, providing meals, clothing, and food boxes throughout the year and through every holiday season. In 2024, Eureka hosted its first community-wide giveaway of clothing, food, and household goods, serving more than 250 neighbors alongside more than 20 partner organizations offering help with housing, health, and so much more. That same year, the church held its first Breast Cancer Awareness Month celebration, bringing voter registration, wellness screenings, and COVID and flu vaccines to the people of Albany.

Mr. Speaker, that is what the Gospel looks like with its sleeves rolled up. Mr. Speaker, no pastor walks 40 years alone, and Dr. Edge would be the first to tell you so. At his side through every sermon, every struggle, and every season of this ministry has stood his beloved wife, Dr. Elois Edge.

Dr. Elois Edge has answered a calling of her own. A midwife since 1978, she has delivered more than 2,000 babies into the waiting arms of Southwest Georgia families. Think of it, Mr. Speaker: while her husband has been shepherding souls, she has been ushering new life into the world. Somewhere in Albany tonight, there are grown men and women, and their own children besides, whose very first moments on this earth were held in her hands.

In 2023, Albany Area Primary Health Care honored her lifetime of service by opening the Elois Edge Health Center, so that her name will keep watch over the health of this community for generations to come. Together, Dr. Bill Edge and Dr. Elois Edge have lived out a ministry of both body and soul. He has stood at the altar; she has stood at the bedside. He has preached of new birth; she has delivered it. Eureka's pastor has never had to carry the weight of this calling by himself, because God gave him a partner equal to the task.

Albany has recognized what Eureka has always known. Dr. Edge received the Key to the City of Albany in 1990, was named one of Albany's Most Influential Men, and was honored with the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dream Award, among many other distinctions. Yet those who know him best will tell you he needs no introduction and no flowery words. His life does the talking. For 40 years, he has lived by a motto drawn from the beloved hymn ``If I Can Help Somebody,'' and he has spent every one of those years doing exactly that: helping somebody and then helping somebody else.

The great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon once counseled, ``A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.'' Mr. Speaker, Bill Edge has never needed marble. For 40 years, he has been carving his name on the hearts of Albany, one baptism, one wedding, one home-going, one helping hand at a time. When Eureka looks back over the road it has traveled, it borrows the words of John Newton: ``Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.'' For 40 of those years, Mr. Speaker, God's grace has walked that road wearing the face of Bill Edge.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife, Vivian and me along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District, the members of Eureka Missionary Baptist Church, Dr. Elois Edge the entire Edge family, the students and faculty of Bethany Divinity College and Seminary, and the entire Albany community in thanking Dr. Bill Edge, Sr., for 40 years of faithful shepherding. It is a profound privilege to recognize a man whose life bears witness to the promise of Scripture, that ``your labor is not in vain in the Lord.'' I thank Pastor Edge on a job well done. He is good and faithful servant.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a woman of grace, grit, and uncommon purpose, Mrs. Billye Suber Aaron, who celebrated her 90th birthday on October 16, 2026, surrounded by family and friends at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, some lives are measured in years. Billye Aaron's life is measured in the lives she has lifted. For nine decades she has carried herself with a quiet dignity that commands a room without ever demanding it.

Billye Jewel Suber was born on October 16, 1936, in Anderson County, Texas, to Nathan Suber and Annie Mae Smith Suber. She came up in the segregated South, where the doors of opportunity were too often closed to a young Black girl with big dreams. She did not wait for those doors to open. She studied her way through them. She attended Clemons School in Neches, Texas, and graduated from Lincoln High School in Dallas in 1954. In 1958, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Texas College in Tyler, Texas. Her promise earned her a fellowship to Atlanta University, where she received her Master of Arts degree in 1960. And she continued her post-graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

She gave her gifts to the classroom first, teaching English in the Atlanta Public Schools and at Spelman College, Morehouse College, South Carolina State College, and Morris Brown College. Generations of students learned from her that words have power, and that a well- prepared mind is something no one can ever take away.

Then, in 1968, she broke a barrier many said could not be broken. Hired as co-host of WSB-TV's ``Today in Georgia,'' Billye became the first African American woman in the Southeast to co-host a daily, hour- long talk show. Mr. Speaker, consider the year. In April 1968, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was struck down in Memphis, and Atlanta laid her favorite son to rest. Just two months later, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. A grieving Nation wondered whether the dream had died with them. Yet in that very year, little Black girls across the South turned on their televisions and, for the first time, saw a face like their own looking back at them with intelligence, poise, and authority. In a season of mourning, Billye Aaron was living proof that the dream was still alive. She later hosted her own weekly program, ``Billye,'' on WTMJ-TV.

The late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, herself a trailblazer, once said she wanted to be remembered as a woman ``who dared to be a catalyst for change.'' Mr. Speaker, Billye Aaron is that woman. She did not simply occupy a seat that had been denied to so many. She used it to change what an entire region believed was possible.

In 1973, Billye married Henry Louis ``Hank'' Aaron. With great pride I note that Hank and I grew up in the same community in the historic neighborhood of Toulminville, in Mobile, Alabama. I knew his family as friends, neighbors, and schoolmates. When Hank chased the most hallowed record in American sports, he did not chase it alone. As hate mail poured in by the bagful and threats were made against his very life, Billye stood beside him. On April 8, 1974, when he hit home run number 715 and broke Babe Ruth's record, the whole world saw the triumph. Billye knew what it had cost. She was his shelter in the storm, his partner in purpose, and the keeper of his peace.

In 1980, Billye turned her talents to opening doors for others, as she became Development Director for the Atlanta branch of the United Negro College Fund. For over fourteen years, she co-hosted the annual ``Lou Rawls Parade of Stars'' telethon, cofounded the Mayor's Masked Ball, and became only the second woman in the organization's history to serve as Vice President of its Southern Region. Every dollar she raised was a dream kept alive and a young person who would not have to choose between hunger and higher learning.

When, she retired in 1994, she did not rest. She and Hank founded the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Foundation, awarding scholarships to low- income children so that they too might develop their talents and pursue their dreams. A longtime member of the NAACP, she chaired its premier fundraiser, the annual Freedom Fund Dinner, for five years, and she was named Director emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Her service has been recognized with the 2003 Martin Luther King, Jr. ``Salute to Greatness'' Award, the YWCA Woman of Achievement Award, numerous honorary doctorates, and the Billye Suber Aaron Pavilion at the Morehouse School of Medicine bears her name.

On January 22, 2021, our Nation lost Hank Aaron. Billye lost her husband of 47 years. She could have stepped back into private grief, and no one would have blamed her. But Billye Aaron did what she has always done. She stood up and has carried his legacy and their shared mission forward with the same steady hand she lent him through every storm. Every scholarship awarded and every young life turned toward possibility is a home run they are still hitting together.

But Mr. Speaker, the title Billye Aaron treasures most is not ``pioneer'' or ``philanthropist.'' It is ``Mother'' and ``Grandmother.'' She is the mother of Ceci Haydel, and she embraced Hank's children, Gaile, Hank, Jr., Lary, and Dorinda, with a love that made one family. She is the proud grandmother of Emily Jewel and Victor Aaron Haydel. They know what the world has only glimpsed: a woman whose strength was never loud, whose love was never conditional, and whose faith has never wavered.

This 90th year milestone also carries an empty chair. Last year, Billye lost her favorite nephew, Nathan Suber, III, who passed away on June 16, 2025, at the age of 74. Nathan served the people of Columbus, Georgia, in my district, with the same devotion to service that runs through the Suber family. He wore the badge as a patrolman and detective with the Columbus Police Department, and he represented District 1 on the Columbus City Council for three terms, from 1994 to 2006, including service as the Council's Budget Chairman. Mr. Speaker, Nathan was also one of my closest friends in public life. He was a man I could call on, a man whose counsel I trusted, and a man whose loyalty never wavered. I miss him dearly. Nathan was not in the room at the Hyatt Regency, but he was not absent. His love for his Aunt Billye, and her love for him were nevertheless felt in every toast and every embrace.

Mr. Speaker, ninety years is a gift from God. But the greater gift has been Billye Aaron herself: to her family, to Atlanta, to the State of Georgia, and to every child who was told ``you can't'' and then met a woman who showed them ``you can.'' She has taught us that true greatness is not found in the spotlight, but in what we do for others after the lights go down.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues in the House of Representatives to join my wife, Vivian, and me; the people of the 2nd Congressional District of Georgia and of this Nation in extending our heartfelt congratulations to Mrs. Billye Suber Aaron on the occasion of her 90th birthday. Moreover, we thank her for a lifetime of extraordinary service to humanity and wish her joy, health, and God's richest blessings in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a man whose life has been a sermon, whose courage has been a testimony, and whose friendship has been one of the great blessings of my own life--the Reverend Rudolph ``Rudy'' Allen of Columbus, Georgia. On Friday, October 9, 2026, family, friends, and admirers will gather at St. Luke Ministry to celebrate his 90th birthday and to officially launch a foundation bearing his name, so that the work he began as a young man will outlive us all.

Rudy Allen was born into a Columbus that did not want him to be free. He grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in a city divided by law and by custom--separate water fountains, separate schools, separate seats, and separate dreams. He graduated from Spencer High School in 1954, the very year the Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that separate could never be equal. But the decision on paper had not yet reached the streets of Columbus, and young Rudy Allen would spend his life helping to carry it there.

He answered the call to ministry and went to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend seminary. It was 1960, and history was waiting for him at a lunch counter. Alongside a young man named John Lewis--who would later become my colleague and my friend in this very chamber--Rudy Allen sat down at counters where he was not welcome, in order to stand up for a people who were not free. He was pushed. He was spat upon. He was arrested twice. And he later said that it was there, in Nashville, that he ``caught fire'' for civil rights. Mr. Speaker, that fire has never gone out.

When he returned home to Columbus, he did not come back to rest. He came back to lead. He was arrested again in his hometown, and he led the boycott that integrated the public buses of Columbus--so that the sons and daughters of domestic workers, mill hands, and laborers could sit wherever they pleased, and ride with their head held high. Every person who boards a city bus in Columbus today and takes any open seat without a second thought is riding on the sacrifice of Rudy Allen.

His work for justice did not stop at the bus stop. Reverend Allen served on the ad hoc committee, alongside Bill Turner and other committed community leaders, that helped bring the Urban League to Columbus--opening doors to jobs, education, housing, and economic opportunity that are still changing lives in the Chattahoochee Valley today. He understood that the right to sit anywhere on the bus meant little without a good job to ride it to.

Rudy Allen was just 19 years old when he first stood to preach the Gospel, and he has not stopped since--more than seventy years of proclaiming the Word. And through it all, he was a shepherd to God's people in his hometown. In October 1961, still a young man with the fire of Nashville burning in his bones, he took up the pastor's staff at Macedonia Baptist Church, serving there until 1963. In June 1967, he was called as Senior Pastor of Greater Shady Grove Baptist Church, where he labored faithfully for more than thirteen years, until October 1980. The very next month, in November 1980, he founded Revelation Missionary Baptist Church and began the longest chapter of his ministry as its founding Senior Pastor--nearly a quarter of a century of preaching, praying, and pastoring, until December 2004. And when most men would long since have laid their burdens down, he heard the call once more and answered it, serving as Senior Pastor of Canaan Baptist Church from January 2011 through December 2013.

Four congregations. One city, More than seven decades of preaching-- and every pulpit he ever pastored was in Columbus, Georgia, the very hometown that once told him where he could not sit, and that he spent his whole life teaching to make room for everyone. He has married the young, buried the old, comforted the grieving, visited the sick, and told generation after generation that they were somebody in the sight of God. He has preached from pulpits, and he has preached with his life--which is the only sermon that never ends.

Mr. Speaker, no man carries a cross like that alone. For every mile of that journey, Rudy Allen had at his side his beloved wife of more than six decades, Gloria. When the jail doors closed and the threats came, when the church meetings ran long and the nights ran longer, when the burdens of the ministry grew heavy, Gloria held him up--in prayer, in patience, and in love. She was the quiet strength behind the pulpit and the steady hand behind the man. In 2022, God called Gloria home, and a part of Rudy's heart went with her. But the love she poured into him did not leave this earth--it lives on in the family they built, in the churches they served together, and in every life this new foundation will touch. On Friday evening, when Rudy's name is lifted up at St. Luke, I believe Gloria will be looking down from glory, smiling, and saying, ``Well done.''

Together they raised a family that is itself a living testament to his faith: the Reverend Rudy Allen, Jr.; the Reverend Valerie Thompson; Kathy Dowdell; the Reverend Vince Allen; Tonya Meadows; the Reverend Marla Allen; and the Reverend Denitra Hardnett. Five of his seven children answered the call to preach--following their father's footsteps into the pulpit, so that the Gospel he proclaimed in Columbus now rings out through his own sons and daughters. When Reverend Allen stepped away from the pulpit of Revelation Missionary Baptist Church, the church he founded, he did what the great ones do--he passed the baton. His daughter, the Reverend Valerie Thompson, took it up as Pastor of that same congregation, and today she also serves as Chief of Staff of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., under the leadership of its President, the Reverend Dr. Boise Kimber, carrying her father's ministry to a national stage. And the legacy rolls on through fifteen grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and four great, great-grandchildren--five generations who will grow up knowing that their patriarch once sat down so that they could stand tall.

Earlier this year, at 89 years of age, Reverend Allen walked through the History Gallery of the Columbus Museum and looked upon the story of his own city--the injustices he endured and the barriers he helped tear down. He did not speak with bitterness. He spoke with candor about the past and with hope for the future. That is who Rudy Allen is: a man who has seen the worst of what people can do to one another, and still believes in the best of what we can become.

Mr. Speaker, I must also speak personally. Rudy Allen is not only a hero of the movement--he is my friend. Some of the sweetest hours of my life have been spent with him on the golf course. Golf is a humbling game, and Rudy has always played it the way he has lived: with patience, with good humor, with an honest count of every stroke, and with grace for a friend who finds the woods a little more often than he would like. Between the tee and the green, I have heard wisdom from Rudy Allen that no seminary could teach and no law book could hold. He has reminded me, more than once, that the game is not won by the long drive but by keeping your head down, staying the course, and finishing what you start. He has done exactly that- with his life.

Mr. Speaker, my late friend and colleague, Congressman John Lewis-- who sat `in at those Nashville lunch counters alongside Rudy Allen more than six decades ago--left this nation a charge: ``Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.'' If ever a life answered that charge, it is the life of Rudy Allen. He made noise for justice in Nashville and in Columbus. He got into good trouble in jail cells and on city buses. And he has spent every day since making the kind of necessary trouble that comforts the disturbed, disturbs the comfortable, and moves a whole community a little closer to the Promised Land.

There are men who read about history, and there are men who make it. Then there are rare men like Rudy Allen, who make history and then spend the rest of their lives quietly making sure the next generation is ready to make some of their own. That is why this foundation matters. It is not a monument to what he has done. It is a promise about what will still be done--in his name, by young people who will never have to sit in the back of a bus, because Rudy Allen refused to.

Mr. Speaker, the old saints used to say, ``Give me my flowers while I yet live.'' Ninety years is a long time to walk with God, and ninety years is a long time to keep the faith. On this milestone birthday, we gather not to mourn, but to say thank you while he can still hear it. I thank Reverend Allen for the jail cells

he entered so that others could walk free. I thank him for the bus seats he claimed so that others could ride with dignity. I thank him for every sermon, every prayer, every round of golf, and every word of encouragement. I thank him for being a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife, Vivian, and me along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's Second Congressional District in honoring the Reverend Rudolph ``Rudy'' Allen--preacher, pioneer, foot soldier for freedom, and faithful friend--in wishing him a joyous 90th birthday, and in celebrating the launch of his foundation. May God continue to bless him, keep him, and give him many more years of good health, good fellowship, and good golf.