Floor Statements

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.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a man whose hands have made Columbus, Georgia, sing for more than three decades: Mr. Dwight Carver Debro, who this past Sunday, October 4, 2026, was honored by Greater St. Mark A.M.E. Church for 32 years of faithful service as its Minister of Music.

Dwight was raised in that church. As a boy, he sat in Sunday School, sang in the choir, looked forward to Vacation Bible School every summer, and served as an altar boy. He was the fifth child of the late Rev. James Debro Sr., who pastored St. Mark and later served as Presiding Elder of the Albany District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Mrs. Anna M. Debro, a teacher in the Muscogee County School District and a devoted leader at Greater St. Mark, who lived to the remarkable age of 104. Faith, service, and music were the air he breathed.

After graduating from Baker High School, Dwight attended Morris Brown College and Columbus College. Then an extraordinary opportunity came: a chance to travel and perform with the band Earthquake. He stepped out on faith and followed the music. Over the years, he shared stages with The Manhattans, The Dramatics, Brass Construction, The Bar-Kays, The O'Jays, Frankie Beverly & Maze, Parliament-Funkadelic, and The Brothers Johnson. He and his band moved to Atlanta chasing a recording contract, and they earned one with Capitol Records as Pure Gold. When management troubles kept the group from the heights it deserved, Dwight refused to let disappointment define him. He formed The Slash Band, which opened for Atlantic Starr, Starpoint, B.B. King, Bobby Womack, and Bobby ``Blue'' Bland, won first place on the television talent competition Discovery, and took home Best Group Vocals in a national competition. He even produced his sister Lisa Dore's album, Totally Yours. Along the way, he met his lifelong idol, Stevie Wonder.

Think about that for a moment. Stevie Wonder, who has never seen a piano key, gave the world `'Sir Duke,'' a joyful tribute to the musicians who shaped him and a reminder that music belongs to everyone who is moved by it. He gave us `'Overjoyed'' and ``As,'' songs that insist that love and beauty outlast whatever life takes from us. Dwight heard those songs as a young man and learned something from them that he would carry for the rest of his life: that a musician's gift does not live in the eyes. It lives in the heart.

Yet Dwight will tell you the greatest turning point of his life did not happen on a stage. It happened in a church. One day, his pastor, Rev. B.A. Hart, said to him, ``It's time for you to give your talents back to the Lord.'' Dwight sat down at the piano at Greater St. Mark, and for more than 32 years he never really left it.

Consider what those years held. He played for the baptisms and the funerals, for Easter mornings and long nights of grief, for weddings and for the weary. He played for the grandmother who needed to feel the Spirit and for the child just learning the hymns. He played when the congregation was full of joy and when it could barely lift its voice. Whatever people carried through the church doors, Dwight met it with music, and more than one broken heart was mended by the sound of his hands on those keys.

His service reached well beyond the sanctuary. He worked with children with autism at the Woodall Psycho-Educational Center and helped young people in recovery at Alchemy, giving patience and hope to those who needed them most. He concluded his professional career with 16 years in the Risk Management Department at Total Systems, retiring in 2013. Throughout, he has been blessed with the steadfast love of his wife, Gwendolyn, and together they have been a loving anchor to a host of nieces and nephews.

This year, as his eyesight failed, Dwight made the hardest decision a musician can make. In April, he stepped away from the keys. I cannot imagine what it cost him. And yet there is something fitting in it. The man who grew up idolizing Stevie Wonder now understands, in the deepest way, that music was never something he saw. It was something he gave. And a church that has been lifted by his playing for 32 years does not forget the sound. It lives in the walls, in the pews, and in every heart that was ever carried on a hymn he played.

Dwight lives by these words: ``Be blessed so you can be a blessing.'' He also reminds all who will listen, ``If God said it. believe it, have faith, and watch it happen!'' Mr. Speaker, Dwight Debro has been blessed, and he has been a blessing to everyone who ever heard him play.

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 Dwight Carver Debro, a living legend, a faithful servant, and a gift to the people of Georgia's Second Congressional District, I thank Dwight for the music. The piano may be quiet now, but we will keep hearing it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to pay tribute to the life and legacy of Reverend Rance Pettibone, Sr., a soldier, a shepherd, a broadcaster, a husband, a father, and a gentleman of the highest order, who has gone home to be with the Lord. Reverend Pettibone passed from labor to reward on September 26, 2026. A home-going service to celebrate his remarkable life was held on Saturday, October 3, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. at Second Bethesda Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. Reverend Pettibone was a man who gave his life away in service: to his country, to his God, to his family, and to the city of Albany, Georgia, which he so dearly loved.

Born in Foley, Alabama, Rance was the biological son of Mazie Bell Dinkins and James Barnett, Sr., and was raised by Ambus and Ruby Pettibone. He carried both families in his heart for all of his days, honoring the parents who gave him life and the parents who gave him a home. In that quiet act of gratitude, we can already see the man he would become: a man who never forgot the people who helped make him who he was.

Reverend Pettibone answered his nation's call and gave more than twenty years of his life to the United States Army. A Vietnam veteran, he served as a paratrooper, an infantryman, a sniper, and a supply sergeant. He knew the weight of a soldier's pack, the roar of an open aircraft door, and the cost of the freedom we too often take for granted. Again and again, he stepped out into the open sky for the sake of a country he loved.

When his uniform was finally folded away, his service did not end. It simply changed its form. For Rance Pettibone had heard another call, the call to serve God and God's people, and he answered that one with the same courage and discipline he had carried into battle.

He served in ministry in Europe, in Savannah, and in Brunswick before making Albany his home. In 2001, he accepted the call to pastor Second Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church, and for more than two decades he led that congregation with dedication, wisdom, and a genuine love for God's people. He was not a pastor who stood apart from his flock. He was also a faithful member of that church family, praying with them, rejoicing with them, and weeping with them. He served alongside his fellow ministers in the Albany Baptist Minister's Conference, always ready to lend his hand and his heart.

His ministry could not be contained by church walls. Every Saturday, his voice reached homes, cars, and kitchens across Southwest Georgia through his radio program, ``Faith, Family, & Common Sense,'' on WZBN 105.5. And on the first Saturday of each month, he gathered the people of Albany to pray for their city, its schools, its leaders, and its first responders. Many a teacher, police officer, firefighter, and public servant went about their work never knowing that a soldier of the cross had lifted them up before the throne of God. WALB rightly honored him as one of its ``Heroes Among Us,'' for that is exactly what he was.

On April 15, 2006, Rance married the love of his life, Sandra, and together they blended their families into seven children, four daughters and three sons. Seven was his favorite number, because he believed it represented completeness, and in Sandra and their children, his life was made complete. He believed that a man's first responsibility was to provide for and protect his family, and he lived that belief every single day.

He also knew sorrow that no parent should ever have to bear. He laid to rest two of his sons, Jason and Sheldon. Yet even through that unspeakable grief, he did not let go of God, and he did not stop pouring love into the family that remained.

Rance Pettibone was a true gentleman. He held doors. He offered his arm to help people down the steps. He was the first to notice when someone needed a seat or a helping hand. His favorite saying was simple: ``Always think of others before you think of yourself.'' He did not just say those words. He lived them.

Reverend Pettibone was preceded in death by his sons, Jason and Sheldon; his biological parents, Mazie Bell Dinkins and James Barnett, Sr.; the parents who raised him, Ambus and Ruby Pettibone; his sister, Zola Prim Anderson; his brother, Prentice Jackson; his brother-in-law, Zeno Green; three great-granddaughters; and other beloved family members.

He leaves to cherish his memory his devoted wife, Sandra; his children, Anissa, Charlet Lewis (Tony), Kendra, Shannon (Rashard), and Rance Pettibone, Jr. (Tina); his daughter-in-law, Sharon Pettibone; his sister, Janice Green; his brothers, James Barnett, Steve Barnett, Melton Barnett (Mary), Louis Dinkins (Jackie), Gary Jackson, and George Jackson, Sr.; 27 grandchildren; 21 great-grandchildren; his mother-in- law, Elizabeth Jones; his sisters-in-law, Patricia Gillison and Jeraldine Jones; his brothers-in-law, Jesse (Vickie), Jimmy (Alfreda), John, and Darryll (Tammie) Jones; and a host of aunts, uncles, cousins, extended family, church family, and friends.

Mr. Speaker, the airwaves are quiet now on Saturday mornings in Albany, and a familiar voice no longer leads the people in prayer on the first Saturday of the month. But the prayers he prayed are still rising. The wisdom he shared is still guiding. And the lives he touched are still bearing fruit.

Rance believed that seven was the number of completeness. And when we look back on his life, we see seven things he gave us in full measure: faith, family, service, sacrifice, wisdom, kindness, and love. His was a life made complete.

The soldier who once leapt from aircraft into the open sky has made his final jump. And this time, there was no uncertainty about where he would land, for the Lord Himself was waiting to receive him and to say, ``Well done, thou good and faithful servant.'' Like the Apostle Paul, he could say. ``I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.''

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife Vivian and me, along with more than 765,000 people of Georgia's Second Congressional District, extend our deepest condolences to Sandra, to his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, to the Second Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church family, and to all who loved him. We pray that they will be comforted by the God he served so faithfully. I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the life and legacy of Reverend Rance Pettibone, Sr., a true American hero and a faithful servant of God.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church of Columbus, Georgia, as its congregation celebrates 126 years of faithful service to God and to the people of the Chattahoochee Valley. A worship service to celebrate this momentous accomplishment was held on Sunday, September 27, 2026, at 2:00 pm. For me, this is not simply a tribute to a church; it is a tribute to my church home--the place where I sat in the pews for 24 years, where I was fed, corrected, comforted, and sent.

Mr. Speaker, every great story has humble beginnings, and Fourth Street's story began under a fig tree. In 1900, a few devoted men and women gathered beneath a fig tree on Third Avenue in Columbus to worship God under the leadership of the Reverends John Bellamy and Willis Carter. They called themselves Mt. Canaan Baptist Church. They had no building. They had no pews. They had no steeple, but what they had was faith.

The very next year, in 1901, Reverend Bellamy led fifteen faithful souls to worship beneath a bush arbor on Fifth Street--open sky above, wooden benches below--as the New Mt. Canaan Baptist Church. Later that year, the Reverend Pearson was called as pastor, and under his leadership that littLe band of believers did something remarkable. They bought a tract of land for 50 dollars. 50 dollars, Mr. Speaker. For people only a generation removed from slavery, that was not a small sum. That was a sacrifice. On that land they raised a humble shelter for worship, and that shelter became Fourth Street Baptist Church.

The prophet Micah wrote, ``But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.'' Those first saints sat under their fig tree. And for 126 years, Mr. Speaker, no one has been able to make Fourth Street afraid.

In 1961, the Lord sent Fourth Street a young preacher from the Pumpkin Bottom community of Phenix City, Alabama--the Reverend Johnny H. Flakes, Jr. He would remain its pastor for 51 years, while also shepherding Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Phenix City for fifty-three.

Dr. Flakes was a preacher, a teacher, an evangelist, and--as anyone who ever heard him will tell you--a soloist who could sing the Spirit into a room. But he never believed the Gospel stopped at the church door. He was a leader in the NAACP, a pivotal force in establishing the Urban League of Columbus, and a cofounder of One Columbus, which worked to bridge the racial divide in our city. He chaired the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, American Baptist College in Nashville.

And when hate tried to make Fourth Street afraid--when the church was firebombed--Dr. Flakes did not flee, and he did not falter. He stood. He stood for Fourth Street, and he stood for every other church that faced the same terror.

With his beloved wife, Mother Robena Gaines Flakes, at his side for 58 years, Dr. Flakes led Fourth Street's founding of Fourth Street Towers in 1972, bringing affordable housing to the families surrounding the church. The congregation raised its Christian Education Building in 1977. And in 1992 it opened the Fourth Street Day Care, with Mrs. Flakes as director--the first day care center in the State of Georgia to receive the Center of Distinction Award.

Mr. Speaker, I must speak personally now. For 24 years, Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church was my church home, and Dr. Johnny H. Flakes, Jr. was my pastor. Before many people knew my name, Dr. Flakes knew me. Through trouble or triumph, he was always available, and he always gave me wise counsel. And Mrs. Flakes--Mrs. Flakes was like a mother to me.

When I think about the man I have tried to become, in public life and in private faith, I cannot separate it from the lessons I learned in those pews on Fifth Street. When Dr. Flakes went home to be with the Lord on November 12, 2012, a part of my own heart went with him. But I have learned, Mr. Speaker, that when God calls a shepherd home, He does not leave the sheep without a shepherd.

Dr. Flakes encouraged his children not to be carbon copies of him, but to glean from his wisdom and follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. His son has done exactly that.

The Reverend Dr. Johnny H. Flakes, III, was once a football standout at Tuskegee University--the school's all-time return specialist and a member of its Athletic Hall of Fame. Mr. Speaker, a return specialist, is the one who catches what has been sent to him and carries it forward--through traffic, against opposition, toward the goal. And that is precisely what Pastor Flakes has done with the mantle his father placed in his hands.

He earned his Master of Divinity from the Morehouse School of Religion at the Interdenominational Theological Center, a master's degree from the University of Iowa, and a Doctor of Ministry from Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology. He pastored Mount Gilead Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta and served as co-pastor alongside his father before taking up the pulpit at Fourth Street. Today, with his wife, Jacqueline, beside him, he chairs Fourth Street Towers and the Fourth Street Daycare and Academy, and he serves our community through the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, the John Amos Center Advisory Board, Historic Columbus, and so much more.

The Word of the Lord declares, ``The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace.'' Under Pastor Flakes, the latter house is building on a glorious foundation.

Mr. Speaker, 126 years ago, there was a fig tree. Then there was a bush arbor. Then there was a 50-dollar lot and a humble shelter. Today there stands a great church at 222 Fifth Street--with housing for families, a school for children, and a pulpit that has never stopped proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

``Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses''--Reverend Bellamy, Reverend Carter, Reverend Pearson, those first fifteen members, Dr. Johnny H. Flakes, Jr., and generations of saints who have gone on before--I believe that cloud of witnesses is looking down on Fourth Street today. And I believe they are well pleased.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife, Vivian, and I, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District, in congratulating Pastor J. H. Flakes, III, the officers, and the entire membership of Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church on 126 years of faith, sacrifice, and service. May God continue to bless this house--my house--for generations yet to come.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a soldier, a scientist, a builder of communities, and a faithful servant of God-- Lieutenant Colonel John David Hawthorne, Jr., United States Army, Retired, of Albany and Baconton, Georgia, who entered eternal rest on Saturday, September 12, 2026, at the age of 77. His family and friends will celebrate his life on Thursday, September 24, at Saint Mary Missionary Baptist Church in Baconton, and on Friday he will be laid to rest with military honors at Andersonville National Cemetery.

Mr. Speaker, John Hawthorne was born on November 14, 1948, the eldest of six children of the late Rosa and John D. Hawthorne, Sr. He grew up in Highlands County, Florida, in the years when the law of the land said that a child like him should be kept apart. In 1966, he walked across the stage at Lake Placid High School as the only African- American graduate in his class.

Picture that young man, Mr. Speaker. A cap and gown. A diploma in his hand. And not one face in the rows behind him that looked like his own. He could have carried that loneliness as a wound. Instead, he carried it as an assignment--and he spent the rest of his life making certain that the young people who came after him would never have to walk across that stage alone.

He went on to Florida A&M University and to Tuskegee Institute, and in 1971 he graduated cum laude from Florida A&M with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics. That same year he was named a Distinguished Military Graduate, and on July 29, 1971, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. Years later, he earned a Master of Business Administration from Albany State University, an institution I am proud to represent.

Mr. Speaker, few Americans have lived a life of such remarkable range. As a young engineer trainee, he worked on NASA's Apollo Saturn program--a young Black physicist from rural Florida, helping this Nation reach for the moon. He served as a zone manager for the Lincoln Mercury Division of Ford Motor Company, and he held management positions with Procter & Gamble.

But it was in uniform that his country asked the most of him, and he gave it. Across 26 years of active and reserve service, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of Field Artillery. He graduated from the Pershing Missile School and, while stationed in Germany during the Cold War, became one of the first African-American officers to command a Pershing missile unit--entrusted with some of the most consequential weapons this Nation has ever fielded. He completed the Army's Command and General Staff College, attended the Department of Defense and U.S. Army Europe Race Relations School, and later served as Deputy Commandant of the 3294th United States, Army Reserve Forces School. He retired from military service on November 14, 2008--his 60th birthday.

Mr. Speaker, a man with that record could have gone anywhere. John Hawthorne came home to his neighbors.

He served the City of Albany as Deputy Director of Community and Economic Development and as manager of its business incubator, and he taught business to the students of Albany State. In Florida, he served the City of Sarasota as Deputy Director of Planning and Redevelopment, led Highlands County Habitat for Humanity as its Chief Executive Officer, managed construction and assets for the Sarasota Housing Authority, and founded AHED Consulting Services. A Governor of Florida appointed him to the Board of Directors of the Florida Housing Finance Corporation.

Mr. Speaker, I want this House to understand what those titles meant.

When John Hawthorne opened a place for young people, he named it the ``Outer Limits Teen Center.'' It is no accident, I think, that a man who had worked on the rockets that carried America to the outer limits of what it believed possible would give that same name to a place for teenagers--because he believed their limits were out there too, farther than anyone had ever told them. Yes, he also ran an ice cream parlor, because a man who understood rockets also understood what a scoop of ice cream means to a child on a hot Georgia afternoon.

The man who once helped build machines to reach the moon spent the last chapters of his working life helping families reach something closer to home, and in its own way just as hard to reach: a front door with their own key. There are families in Georgia and in Florida tonight who sleep beneath a roof they can call their own because John Hawthorne believed they deserved one and would not rest until they had it.

Beneath every uniform and every title was a man of faith. At New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Baconton, he served as Vice Chairman of the Deacons' Ministry and as Special Assistant to the Pastor. He served on the board of the Mitchell County House of Hope in Camilla. A man who had commanded soldiers and missiles in Germany was content to serve as a deacon in a country church in Mitchell County. That, Mr. Speaker, is what greatness looks like when it kneels.

He was a proud member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated, whose brothers will gather to bid him farewell.

For all the Nation knew him to be, to the people who loved him most he was simply husband, dad, granddad, and great granddad. He was the devoted husband of Iris Allison Hawthorne, his partner in faith and in life. He was counselor, protector, encourager, and friend. He shared what he knew with anyone willing to learn, and he left every room, every organization, and every person better than he found them.

Mr. Speaker, the Apostle Paul, near the end of his own life, wrote words that might have been written for John Hawthorne: ``I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.''

On Friday, the Army he served for 26 years will lay him to rest at Andersonville National Cemetery, in the Second Congressional District of Georgia, with the honors he earned. A bugle will sound. A flag will be folded and placed in the hands of those who loved him. The young man who once walked across that stage alone will be surrounded, at last, by generations of Americans who answered the same call he did.

Somewhere beyond the reach of any rocket he ever helped to build, I believe he has already heard the only words that ever truly mattered to him: ``Well done, thou good and faithful servant.''

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife Vivan and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District in honoring the life and legacy of Lieutenant Colonel John David Hawthorne, Jr. We extend our deepest condolences to his

wife, Iris; to his children; and grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and to all who loved him. We pray that they will be consoled and comforted by an abiding faith and the Holy Spirit in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor my dear friend, Attorney Virgil L. Adams of Macon, Georgia, upon his selection by the Central Georgia Council, Boy Scouts of America, to receive its Distinguished Citizen Award--an honor reserved for those whose service has made Middle Georgia a better place to live, to work, and to raise a child.

Mr. Speaker, Virgil Adams is a son of Macon. He is also a proud son of Albany State University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1977 with a degree in psychology before earning his Juris Doctor from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University in 1980. He began his legal career as an Assistant District Attorney for the Macon Judicial Circuit, where he tried some of the most serious cases in that community, and in 1987 he entered private practice. Today he is a partner in the firm of Adams, Jordan and Herrington, P.C., with offices in Macon, Milledgeville, and Albany, where he has spent four decades standing beside families who suffered catastrophic loss and had nowhere else to turn. He also served for many years as County Attorney for Bibb County.

Mr. Speaker, the legal profession has taken careful notice of him. He was named Lawyer of the Year by the Macon Bar Association in 2001. He has held Martindale-Hubbell's highest AV rating throughout his career, has been named a Super Lawyer since 2012, and has been recognized among the Top 100 Trial Lawyers by the National Trial Lawyers Association. He served on the Board of Governors of the State Bar of Georgia, which honored him for his leadership in 2014 and presented him its Tradition of Excellence Award in 2020. In 2017 he was inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers--an honor extended by invitation only--and in 2023 he was appointed Chairman of its Georgia State Committee. In 2025, the Macon Bar Association presented him with the Judge William Augustus Bootle Professionalism Award. But Mr. Speaker, the Boy Scouts did not choose him for what hangs on his wall. They chose him because of a small chair in an elementary school classroom.

Through the 100 Black Men of Macon-Middle Georgia, of which he is a charter member, Virgil Adams mentors students at Bruce Elementary School. So it is that a man who has stood before juries in cases of life and death, a man whose calendar is claimed by trustees and boards and bar associations across this state, will fold himself into a chair built for a seven-year-old and read a book out loud, one page at a time, and listen while a child reads it back to him. That child does not know he is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. That child does not know what an AV rating is. That child knows only that a grown man came, that he sat down, and that he came back again the next time. Mr. Speaker, the Scout Oath asks a young person to promise ``to help other people at all times.'' Virgil Adams has been keeping that promise in Middle Georgia for 40 years, and he has kept it most faithfully where no camera was rolling and no fee was charged.

He has given that same measure of himself to NewTown Macon, to the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, which he chaired, to the Board of Trustees of Mercer University, to the Albany State University Foundation, to Middle Georgia Justice, to Macon Hope, and to First Tee--Middle Georgia. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated. And together with his wife, Paula Shipp Adams, a retired educator, he has invested in the Otis Redding Center for the Arts--so that in the city that gave the world Otis Redding, another Macon child with a gift and no other door might find one open.

Mr. Speaker, the bar of this state has taken notice of that work as well. Virgil Adams was recently presented the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 26th Annual Justice Robert Benham Awards for Community Service--the highest recognition conferred through those awards. The Benham Awards were established in 1997 by the Executive Committee of the State Bar of Georgia to honor lawyers and judges who have made outstanding contributions in service to their communities, and they

carry the name of the Honorable Robert Benham, who in 1989 became the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court of Georgia and who served as its Chief Justice from 1995 to 2001.

Mr. Speaker, that is a fitting name to attach to this man's life. Justice Benham reached a place on that Court where no one who looked like him had ever stood, and he spent his years there making certain he would note the last. Virgil Adams has done the same work in the courtrooms of Middle Georgia. He earned an award given in Justice Benham's name the only way it can be earned--not by what he has won, but by what he has given away.

Mr. Speaker, the founder of Albany State University, Dr. Joseph Winthrop Holley, gave his memoir a title that has outlived him: ``You Can't Build a Chimney from the Top'' Dr. Holley opened that school in 1903 with almost nothing, in a Georgia that had no intention of helping him, because he understood that anything built to stand must be built from the bottom--one stone, one child, one year at a time. Virgil Adams is what that chimney looks like when it is finished. To his everlasting credit, he keeps climbing back down to the bottom to lay stone for somebody else.

Mr. Speaker, I have known Virgil Adams a long time, and I can tell this House that the honor he receives tonight is not the beginning of his service. It is only Middle Georgia's belated way of saying thank you.

Therefore, 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 in congratulating Attorney Virgil L. Adams upon receiving the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Central Georgia Council, Boy Scouts of America, and upon his recognition with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 26th Annual Justice Robert Benham Awards for Community Service, in thanking Paula and their family for sharing him with us, and in wishing him continued success in all his future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Albany Technical College of Albany, Georgia, on the occasion of its 65th anniversary.

Mr. Speaker, in 1961 this institution opened its doors as the Monroe Area Vocational Technical School with 175 students. One hundred seventy-five. In a segregated South Georgia, in a year when very few people in authority believed that the children of sharecroppers and mill hands and domestic workers needed anything more than a strong back, somebody in Albany, Georgia, decided otherwise.

The Albany Area Vocational-Technical School followed shortly after, and in 1972 the two schools were joined together at the campus the college occupies today. In July of 1988, with the formation of what is now the Technical College System of Georgia, the school became Albany Technical Institute and was charged with serving a seven-county region--Baker, Calhoun, Clay, Dougherty, Lee, Randolph, and Terrell-- some of the most rural and most economically challenged counties in the United States of America. And on July 6, 2000, having met the standard set by the General Assembly in House Bill 1187 to award the associate degree, Albany Technical Institute became Albany Technical College.

Mr. Speaker, 65 years is a long time to keep a promise. It has been kept by every person who ever led this institution by President Howard Water, by President Wayne Israel, by President Nathaniel Cross, by President Alvin Anderson, by President Dr. Anthony O. Parker, and today by Dr. Emmett L. Griswold--and by every instructor who ever stood in a shop with a clipboard and refused to let a student quit.

Mr. Speaker, you cannot tell the story of this college without telling the story of two men.

Dr. Anthony O. Parker became the fifth president of Albany Technical College in 1995, arriving in a community still digging itself out from the great flood of 1994, and he led the rebuilding. He stayed for 27 years--the longest-serving president in the history of the college and the longest-serving president in the entire Technical College System of Georgia. He built the enrollment. He built the buildings. He built partnerships with the Marine Corps Logistics Base and with industry across this region. He was among the first technical college presidents in Georgia to raise a million dollars in private money for his campus. And he never stopped fighting for adult learners--for the grown man and the grown woman who walked in for a GED and walked out with a career.

Mr. Speaker, in November of 2011, I stood on that campus as Albany Tech dedicated its new library and media center in Dr. Parker's honor. I read a tribute to him into this very Record that day, and I presented him a flag that had flown over this Capitol in his name. He told us then why that building meant what it meant to him: his mother had been a librarian, and as a boy he was made to stop at the county library and study on his way home before he was ever allowed to go outside and play. He said that at the time he did not appreciate it. He said that he had come to appreciate it very much.

Mr. Speaker, on the morning of June 6, 2022, Dr. Anthony Parker passed away. He was 69 years old. He did not retire. He did not slow down. He had plans on the books for the next 5 years. He simply did not come to work one morning, and Southwest Georgia has not stopped missing him since.

Here, Mr. Speaker, is the part of this story that I want the House to hear.

In 2004, a man named Emmett Griswold walked through the front door of Albany Technical College to teach criminal justice. He had come out of law enforcement and corrections--a probation and parole officer for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, a deputy warden for the Georgia Department of Corrections--a man whose working life had been spent among people the world had already given up on. He was a native of Milledgeville who had made Albany his home.

He held his bachelor's and master's degrees from Albany State University, and he would go on to earn his doctorate from Valdosta State.

Dr. Parker took him under his wing. And Dr. Griswold rose--department chairman, dean of academic affairs, vice president for academic affairs, executive vice president--every rung of it, at the same institution, for 18 years.

When the college lost its president without warning, Albany Tech did not have to look outside for somebody to carry it. He was already there. On November 1, 2022, Dr. Emmett L. Griswold became the sixth president of Albany Technical College, standing on the foundation laid by his mentor and his friend.

Mr. Speaker, that is what 65 years of an institution actually looks like. Not a building. Not a seal. A man who taught, mentored, and believed in another man--who then took up the same work and kept the doors open for the next one.

Those doors, Mr. Speaker, have never asked a single student what their father did for a living. They have opened for the single mother working nights. For the man laid off at 45 who had to start over. For the young person nobody expected anything from, who is today a lineman, a nurse, a welder, a diesel technician, a logistics specialist--who owns a home, pays taxes, and raises children who will never know what it was to go without.

That is the harvest of 65 years in Southwest Georgia.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Albany Technical College on sixty-fiye years of service, in commending President Emmett L. Griswold, his faculty, his staff, and his Board of Directors, in honoring the memory of Dr. Anthony O. Parker and all who led before him, and in wishing this great institution many more years of transforming lives across Southwest Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a remarkable daughter of the State of Georgia, Ms. Johnnie Brooks Booker of Atlanta, on the occasion of her 85th birthday. A celebration of her birthday was held on Saturday, September 12, 2026, at the Whitley Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, Johnnie Brooks was born on July 31, 1941, in Forsyth, Georgia, to Willie Floyd Brooks and Lillian Goodwyne Brooks Graves. I would ask this House to sit with that date for a moment. Nineteen forty-one. In Georgia. A Black girl, born in a small middle Georgia town, into a state that had already written her ceiling before she drew her first breath--a state where she could not have been served at a lunch counter in her own hometown, could not have used the front door of most buildings on Main Street, and could not have expected the country of her birth to make room for her. Nobody asked that child what she intended to do about it. She told them anyway.

She went to Hampton Institute in Virginia and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in social sciences and sociology. She went on to the Atlanta University School of Social Work--now Clark Atlanta University--and earned her Master of Social Work in community organization. And then, Mr. Speaker, she went to work, and she did not stop for sixty years.

She began with the New York Department of Welfare. She taught in the Manpower Development and Training Program in Washington, D.C. and joined the D.C. Department of Rehabilitation in 1964. She served with the Neighborhood Youth Corps. She worked with the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, then the Western Regional Office of the National Urban League, and then the Urban League's Washington Bureau.

She entered the federal service at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board as Director of Consumer Affairs and Civil Rights. In 1989 she was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 1991, she joined the Resolution Trust Corporation as Vice President of the Division of Minority and Women`s Programs. When that agency closed its doors, she moved to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity, where she served until her retirement in 1996.

Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to notice something about that list. Consumer Affairs and Civil Rights. Minority and women's programs. Equal Opportunity. Community Organization. Look at every title she ever held. That woman spent her entire working life standing in doorways and holding them open for people who were never supposed to get through.

Mr. Speaker, the late Shirley Chisholm sat in this very House, and she left behind a line that the women who came after her have carried like a lantern: ``if they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.''

Johnnie Brooks Booker heard that. But she was never once satisfied to bring a single chair for herself. She brought them by the truckload. She set them up around the table. She called in people whose names were nowhere on the invitation--and then she taught them how to sit there like they belonged, because they did. She was not finished.

In 2001 she came home to Georgia and became the Global Director of Supplier Diversity at The Coca-Cola Company, where she served for a decade. In that role she built a mentoring program for minority- and women-owned business enterprises because she understood that a contract without capacity is a courtesy, and she was never interested in courtesies. She wanted those firms to be able to bid the next job, and the one after that, without her. Mr. Speaker, in 2007, came the moment I want this House to remember.

When The World of Coca-Cola Museum was built in Atlanta--that great glass house where one of the most famous American companies on earth tells the story of itself--Johnnie Brooks Booker made certain that minority developers and minority contractors were in the room, on the plans, and on that job site.

Think about what that means. A little girl born in Forsyth, Georgia, in 1941, who as a child that could not walk into a drugstore in her own town and sit down and order a CocaCola--that same woman, 66 years later, helped decide who would build the house that Coca-Cola tells its story in.

Mr. Speaker, that is not irony. That is what a life of purpose looks like from the far end of it.

She retired from Coca-Cola in 2012, at an age when most people are owed their rest, and promptly founded The Johnnie Booker Group, where she serves as President and Chief Executive Officer to this day.

Her service has extended to the American Society for Public Administration, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, The Links, Incorporated, the National Council of Negro Women, the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Hampton University Alumni Association, the Utopian Literary Club, and Circle-Let's of Atlanta. She has served on the boards of the National Minority Supplier Development Council, the Women's Business Enterprise National Council, Women in Housing and Finance, Women of Washington, the Delta Research and Educational Foundation--the philanthropic arm of her beloved sorority--and the Fort Valley State University Foundation--an institution in the district I am privileged to represent, and one more place where she invested herself in young people she would never meet.

She has been recognized with two Congressional Resolutions of this House, named Hampton University Alumna of the Year in 2009, and honored with the Community Service Award of the Black Law Students Association at Quinnipiac University in 2022. In 2023,

she sat for an oral history with The History Makers--so that her voice will still be telling this story long after all of us in this Chamber have finished ours.

Mr. Speaker, she is the mother of S. Courtney Booker, III and the grandmother of Dalyn and Aiden. I would say this to those two grandchildren: the world will tell them a great many things about what they can and cannot become. Their grandmother has already proven every one of them wrong. They come from somebody.

Mr. Speaker, on the 31st of July, Ms. Johnnie Brooks Booker turned 85 years old. She has lived long enough to see a great deal of what she fought for, and she is still at her desk. Georgia gave her to the Nation, and she has spent 85 years giving back more than she ever received.

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 in wishing a happy 85th birthday to Ms. Johnnie Brooks Booker of Atlanta, Georgia, in thanking her for a lifetime of extraordinary service to this country, and in wishing her continued health, joy, and many more years among the people who love her.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a man I have known, admired, and leaned upon for the better part of my life in public service--the Honorable Ed Harbison, Dean of the Georgia State Senate, who gave thirty-four years to the people of the Fifteenth Senate District. The community he served for a lifetime gathers once more to say thank you Mr. Speaker, some men are handed a title. A rare few are handed a trust. Ed Harbison was handed a trust, and he never once set it down.

Long before he ever rose to speak beneath the Gold Dome, Ed Harbison wore the uniform of the United States Marine Corps. He went to Vietnam. He came home with a Purple Heart and with wounds that no ceremony can undo. I begin there, Mr. Speaker, because everything that followed makes sense only in that light. A young man who was willing to lay down his life for strangers came home and spent the lest of his days giving his hours, his patience, and his heart to his neighbors. For Ed Harbison, service was never a campaign word It was a scar he carried and a promise he kept.

Mr. Speaker, I know the seat Ed Harbison held, because I sat in it before him. When the people of Georgia sent me to this House in 1993, I left that Fifteenth District seat behind--and I did not leave it to chance. I left it to Ed. For thirty-four years, West Central Georgia has been better for that decision than for almost any I ever made. He became the longest-serving member of that chamber and its Dean, the senator other senators went to when a room needed wisdom, steadiness, and a conscience.

And what he built will outlive all of us. It was Ed Harbison who carried the legislation making Georgia a Purple Heart State, so that no veteran's sacrifice would pass unmarked. It was Ed Harbison who established a separate Veterans Court, so that men and women who had served would be met with understanding rather than indifference. It was Ed Harbison who founded the Georgia Military Veterans Hall of Fame, of which he is himself a proud member. He won a contracting preference for businesses owned by disabled veterans. He fought to see that veterans received fair academic credit for the training and sacrifice of their service. He chaired the Senate Committee on State Institutions and Property, served as Vice-Chairman of the Veterans, Military, and Homeland Security Committee, and led the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. And before any of it, he served his community as a broadcast Journalist, as second vice-president of the Muscogee County School Board, and on the Columbus Charter Review Commission.

Mr. Speaker, if you want the true measure of Ed Harbison, do not look at the headlines. Look at the quiet bills--the ones that never made the evening news. In 2008 he sponsored a law to cut through the red tape that was punishing the children of military families, boys and girls uprooted from state to state through no fault of their own and made to start over again and again. Nobody was marching for those children. Ed Harbison simply saw them, and he wrote a law so that the moving would not cost them their education. He authored the legislation consolidating Chattahoochee County and Cusseta, strengthening the very ground his people stand on. And he fought for the emergency call boxes along Interstate 185 from LaGrange to Columbus--a small thing, Mr. Speaker, until it is your mother stranded on the shoulder of that highway after dark, and then it is the whole world.

That was always his instinct: the traveler in the dark, the soldier far from home, the child who needed one grown person in his corner. The people of Chattahoochee, Macon, Marion, Schley, Talbot, Taylor, and Muscogee Counties did not merely have a senator who represented them. They had a senator who belonged to them. Ed has said the rule he lived by came from his mother, who taught him to do unto others as he would have them do unto him. For thirty-four years he did exactly that-- quietly, faithfully, and without ever needing the credit.

Mr. Speaker, no honest account of this good man is complete without the love that carried him. Ed shared his life and his calling with his beloved late wife, Cecilia, who sustained him through every long session and every hard campaign, and who paid the private price that public service always exacts at home. Though she is no longer with us, I have no doubt she is present in every room where his name is called, and that she looks on him with pride. And anyone who knows Ed Harbison knows what his son, Edward, means to him. Above every title he has earned, every gavel he has held, and every honor he has received, Ed Harbison is a devoted father. The same tenderness he wrote into the law for a stranger's child, he has lived out every single day for his own. A man may give thirty-four years to his state, but the truest accounting of him is the love he gives his family--and by that reckoning, Ed Harbison is a wealthy man.

Mr. Speaker, there comes a moment in every life of service when a man must lay the work down and trust others to carry it forward. Ed Harbison has come to that moment, and he comes to it with his head high and his hands clean. He has called his years in the Senate the greatest honor of his life. Mr. Speaker, the honor was ours. It belonged to every family made stronger, every veteran finally seen, every neighbor who knew that somewhere under the Gold Dome there was a man who would do right by them when nobody was watching.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues in the United States House of Representatives to join my wife, Vivian, and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's Second Congressional District, in honoring the extraordinary life and service of State Senator Ed Harbison. We thank Ed, for the wounds he carries and the country he served. We thank him for the seat he tended and the trust he kept. We thank him for thirty-four years of doing unto others. May God bless him, may God bless the State of Georgia, and may He grant his every good and peaceful day he has so richly earned. Well done, my friend. Well done.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a full heart to pay tribute to a friend of more than fifty years, and a man who has spent his entire life standing beside families on the hardest days they will ever know. On December 31, 2026, Councilor Bruce H. Huff, Sr., will conclude more than fifteen years of distinguished service as City Councilor for District 3 of the Columbus Consolidated Government. Columbus will be poorer for his leaving and richer for his having served.

Mr. Speaker, I did not meet Bruce Huff at a ribbon cutting. I knew the Huffs long before there was a councilman among them. I knew his father, Charles E. Huff, Sr., and his mother, Malinda H. Huff--people of quiet dignity who built something in Columbus that money cannot buy and politics cannot manufacture. I have watched this family for half a century--through funerals and weddings, through campaigns and crises. When you have known a family that long, you stop grading them on their best day; you know what they are like on their worst day. And I can tell this House that the Huffs of Columbus, Georgia, are the same people in the daylight that they are in the dark.

Bruce is the middle son, and the second-generation owner of International Funeral Home. Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to understand what that means in a Black community in the American South. The funeral director is not merely a businessman. He is the first to arrive when the worst thing has happened. He is the one who comes at two o'clock in the morning, who sits in the kitchen with a widow who does not yet know how she will pay for anything, who makes certain that a mother who had very little in this life is carried out of it with dignity. Bruce Huff has done that work for decades--not for applause, and often not for payment--because his father did it before him.

That work shaped everything else. Bruce graduated from Hardaway High School in 1975 as an honor student and three-sport letterman, then earned his degree from Florida State University in 1980, lettering four years in baseball. Then he came home. Sitting with grieving families, he saw a need no one else was meeting. So, he became a licensed insurance agent, founded Huff's Insurance Service in 1987, and in 1992 merged it with the family funeral home so that no family would be left choosing between a decent burial and next month's rent. In 1996 he earned his degree from Gupton-Jones College of Funeral Service. To this day he works side by side with his brother, Charles E. Huff, Jr., carrying forward what their parents began.

Mr. Speaker, a man who has spent his life burying his neighbors comes to public service with a different set of eyes. When Bruce Huff took his seat on that Council, he already knew District 3 by heart--every street, every corner, every family. For more than fifteen years he did the patient, unglamorous work of making his district a place where people could live well and not merely be laid to rest.

The list is extraordinary. The Fort Benning Gateway at I-185 and Victory Drive. The Brown Avenue Bridge. The Follow Me Trail. Streetscapes on Wynnton Road, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, and on Fort Benning Road. The I-185 interchanges at Custer Road and at Cusseta Road. The Buena Vista Road Spiderweb and Corridor improvements. A new Spencer High School. The Muscogee County School District Athletic Complex. Hundreds of millions of dollars--but Mr. Speaker, Bruce Huff never talked about the money. He talked about the child who could finally walk to school on a sidewalk, the grandmother whose street no longer flooded, the young man who could reach a job because the road finally went through.

And he gave himself away outside the Council chamber, too--at St. James AME Church, where he served on the Trustee Board; in Columbus State University's Teen Achievers Program; as president of Sally Little League, where he taught somebody else's boys how to hold a bat and how to lose with grace; in the Delta Iota Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated; and in Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons, Electric City Lodge No 322. He was named Mortician of the Year by the Georgia Funeral Service Practitioner Association in 2009--though every honor I have handed him felt small next to what he had already given.

Mr. Speaker, none of it would have been possible without his family. Bruce is married to Charonda D. Huff, who has carried the weight of public life alongside him. They are the proud parents of two sons, Anthony and Bruce, Jr., and the doting grandparents of Denim. I want that grandson to know something one day, when he is old enough to read these words in the permanent record of the United States Congress: your granddaddy spent his life carrying other people's sorrow so they would not have to carry it alone.

Bruce, you have wiped away a great many tears in Columbus, Georgia. Allow an old friend to shed a few on your behalf. You have earned your rest. But knowing you, I do not expect you to take much of it.

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 Councilor Bruce H.

Huff, Sr., for more than fifteen years of faithful service to District 3, and for a lifetime of quiet, sacred work on behalf of families in their darkest hours. May God bless him, his wife Charonda, their sons, their grandson, and the city that is better because Bruce Huff answered when he was called.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to honor the life, the service, and the enduring legacy of my predecessor and my friend, the Honorable Charles Floyd Hatcher, who passed from labor to reward on September 1, 2026, in Alexandria, Virginia, surrounded by the family he adored. He was 87 years old. A funeral service to celebrate his remarkable and purpose filled life will be held on Thursday, September 10, 2026, at the Camilla United Methodist Church in Camilla, Georgia.

Charles Hatcher was born on July 1, 1939, in Doerun, Georgia, to Clifford Edward ``C.E.'' Hatcher and Agnes Faircloth Hatcher. He was a son of the soil in the truest sense--raised among the peanut fields and dirt roads of Baker and Mitchell Counties, in a corner of Southwest Georgia where a man's word was his bond and a neighbor's trouble was your own. He carried that country's upbringing with him for the rest of his days. No matter how many decades passed or how many miles he traveled, Charles Hatcher always found his way back home.

He answered his country's call first, serving in the United States Air Force from 1958 to 1962. He then earned his bachelor's degree from Georgia Southern University and his law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1969. He built a thriving law practice in Albany, but the courtroom could not contain a calling that large. He served the people of Georgia in the State House of Representatives from 1973 to 1980, and was then elected to this body, where he represented Georgia's Second Congressional District for six terms.

Mr. Speaker, in these halls Charles Hatcher was a champion of the farmer, the rural family, and the small-town South. He understood that the peanut growers and row-crop farmers of Southwest Georgia were not statistics in an agriculture bill--they were his people. When his service in this House concluded, he did not retire from the work. He continued it as a presidential appointee at the United States

Department of Agriculture during the Clinton administration, still fighting for the land and the people who work it.

I would be remiss, Mr. Speaker, if I did not speak plainly about something. In 1992, Charles Hatcher and I were opponents for this very seat. Elections in our part of Georgia are hard-fought, and ours was no exception. But when it was over, Charles Hatcher showed me--and showed our district--the kind of man he was. There was no bitterness in him. There was no small-mindedness in him. He handed me a district he loved and a people he had served faithfully, and he wished me well in doing it. In almost fifty years of public life, I have learned that you can measure a man's character by how he carries a loss. By that measure, Charles Hatcher was a giant.

The titles never defined him. What defined him was the way he made people feel. He never met a stranger. He had a gift--and I mean a genuine gift--for making a person feel welcomed, valued, and heard. Whether he was walking the marbled halls of this Capitol, sitting at a kitchen table or visiting with his neighbors at Marina Towers, Charles Hatcher built relationships and brought people together In retirement he enjoyed his golf, but he never stopped giving himself away. He delivered for Meals on Wheels. He gave his time to charitable causes. He was a faithful member of Washington Street United Methodist Church in Alexandria, Virginia.

Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey once said that the moral test of government is how it treats those in the dawn of life, the children; those in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped. Mr. Speaker, Charles Hatcher passed that test--not only as a legislator casting votes on this floor, but as a man carrying a hot meal up a walkway to somebody who had nobody else coming. That is what a public servant looks like when the cameras are gone and the title has expired.

The greatest beneficiaries of his love were the family he treasured. He is survived by his beloved wife, Krysta Harden; his sons, Chuck and his wife, Tracey, and Jon and his wife, Kris; his five grandchildren, Ansley, Chase, Boone, Tingen, and Walker; and his brother, Marcus Hatcher and his wife, Joy. He was preceded in death by his daughter, Polly Hatcher--a grief no father should have to carry, and one he bore with quiet grace--as well as his parents, C.E. and Agnes Hatcher, and his siblings, Clifford ``Bubba'' Hatcher, Irma Carr, Grace Adkins, and Glenn Hatcher.

Mr. Speaker, the peanut fields of this country will bloom again this year, and the men and women who work them will never know all that Charles Hatcher did on their behalf. That is the nature of faithful service--most of it goes unseen and unthanked. But it is written down somewhere, and it is written down here today.

Therefore, on behalf of my wife, Vivian, and me along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's Second Congressional District, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the extraordinary life of the Honorable Charles Floyd Hatcher, in extending our deepest sympathy to Krysta and to the entire Hatcher family, and in saying of this good and faithful servant: well done.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of Lieutenant Colonel Berry Henry Henderson, Jr., United States Army, Retired, of Columbus, Georgia, who passed peacefully on September 4, 2026, at the age of ninety-three--twenty-three days short of his ninety-fourth birthday.

Berry Henderson was born on September 27, 1932, in Athens, Georgia, and he came of age in a country that would ask a great deal of the young men of his generation. He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from North Georgia College in 1953, and he answered that call by putting on the uniform of the United States Army--a uniform he would wear for the next twenty-two years.

He became an aviator. Over the course of his career he logged more than three thousand hours in the air as both an airplane and a helicopter pilot. And in 1965--the year this Nation began pouring its sons into Southeast Asia--Captain Henderson found himself in Vietnam, commanding a Chinook company.

Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to sit with what that means. The Chinook crews of 1965 flew into places nothing else could reach. They carried ammunition and artillery forward into positions that were already under fire, and they came back out carrying wounded men who had run out of every other option. Those pilots did not get to choose their weather, and they did not get to choose their landing zones. They went where they were told, and they went because somebody on the ground was waiting.

There are men alive in this country today--grandfathers now, great- grandfathers--who never learned Berry Henderson's name and never will. But they came home. Some of them came home because of the company he led and the standard he held them to. That is a debt that does not appear on any ledger, and it is the kind of debt this Nation has never found a way to repay.

He later served as an instructor for the Command and General Staff Officer Course, teaching the officers who would lead the Army after him. He retired in 1975 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Mr. Speaker, he did something I find quietly beautiful. A man who had spent twenty-two years flying human beings through fire spent the rest of his life helping families find a place to come home to. In 1977 he joined three partners in organizing Showcase Realty. He became a real estate instructor. He served as president of his local board. He was named dean of the Georgia Real Estate Institute, and he rose to serve as president of the Georgia Association of REALTORS. He had carried men out of danger; now he handed families the keys to their front doors. In every organization he ever joined, he rose--not because he sought the title, but because people watching him decided he ought to have it.

He was also, by every account, a man who knew how to enjoy the life he had fought to protect. He and his beloved Marcella traveled the world together. He loved Cadillacs, and he loved horses--a helicopter pilot with a weakness for horsepower of every kind. Fifty-two years he had with her. When she went on ahead of him, he carried her with him for the rest of the way.

Mr. Speaker, there is one more thing I would ask this body to consider. Berry Henderson's son, B.H. ``Skip'' Henderson III, serves today as the 70th Mayor of the City of Columbus, Georgia. And in the biography that introduces the Mayor to the citizens he serves--the official page, the one on the city's own letterhead--there is a sentence that says simply that the Mayor is the son of Army veteran Berry Henderson.

A grown man, the chief executive of one of Georgia's great cities, and when he tells his city who he is, he begins with his daddy. That is not a line a public relations office writes. That is a son telling the truth about where he came from.

Lieutenant Colonel Henderson is survived by his son, Skip, and his wife Karon; his daughter, Susan Henderson; his granddaughter, Kyle Henderson, and Mike Karam; his grandson, Joe Henderson, and McKenna; his great-grandson, Burke Karam, his niece, Kathleen Hughes; and several great nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his wife of more than fifty-two years, Marcella; his parents, Berry and Jo Henderson; and his sister, Mary Ann Henderson.

After more than three thousand hours in the air, he has flown his last mission. He is cleared to land. And Marcella has been waiting a long time at the end of that runway.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues in the House of Representatives to join my wife, Vivian, and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's Second Congressional District in honoring the life of Lieutenant Colonel Berry Henry Henderson, Jr., and in extending our deepest sympathy to Mayor Henderson and to the entire Henderson family.

Mr. Speaker, 2 days ago, Georgia lost a true public servant and leader. Former Congressman Charles Hatcher was born in Georgia, served our country in the United States Air Force, earned his law degree, and returned to Southwest Georgia to practice his profession.

He served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1973 to 1980 and subsequently in the U.S. House of Representatives, this House, from 1981 to 1992. He loved rural, Southwest Georgia. During his years of public service, he was a champion for agriculture and rural development.

While we competed in the 1992 Democratic primary for Georgia's Second Congressional District, which I won, I was glad to have his support and counsel, nonetheless, as I started my tenure on Capitol Hill. He and his wife, the Honorable Krysta Hardin, became friends of longstanding, and I will always cherish that friendship.

He continued to serve Americans as a Presidential appointee in the U.S. Department of Agriculture during both Clinton administrations, and he continued to serve the Virginia community in which he resided thereafter, volunteering his time with a number of local charities, including Meals on Wheels, and through his local church, the Washington Street United Methodist Church in Alexandria.

He leaves behind a legacy of love and compassion through his work and the relationships that he built.

I extend my heartfelt condolences to his wife, Krysta; his children; his grandchildren; and loving family; as well as all of those whose lives he touched and helped make better. I will miss him dearly.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Austin Scott), my colleague and friend.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the Members of this House and all persons in the Chamber rise for a moment

of silence in memory of the Honorable Charles Hatcher.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back.