Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Georgia, the Honorable Everton Blair, Jr., be permitted to take the oath of office today.

His certificate of election has not arrived, but there is no contest and no question has been raised with regard to his election.

Mr. Speaker, as dean of the Georgia congressional delegation, I am pleased to welcome Dr. Everton Blair, Jr., as the newest member of our delegation, representing Georgia's 13th Congressional District.

Our delegation is diverse, consisting of ordinary citizens with an extraordinary passion for improving lives and representing the great State of Georgia. Most of all, regardless of our differences, we consistently and tirelessly pursue common ground, uplifting our communities and addressing their needs and interests.

Everton is 34 years old, born and raised in Gwinnett County in the metro Atlanta area. His parents are both Jamaican immigrants. His father is a computer scientist and his mother a pediatrician.

Everton earned a B.A. in mathematics from Harvard College; a master's in policy, organization, and leadership from Stanford University; and a doctorate of educational leadership from the Harvard Graduate School as a Presidential Public Service Fellow.

He taught for 2 years in the Atlanta public school system through the Teach America Program, and in 2018, at the young age of 26, he ran for a seat on the Gwinnett County Board of Education, defeating a longtime incumbent and becoming the youngest and first person of color to serve on the board. Moreover, he was unanimously selected to chair that board and led the Gwinnett system through the COVID-19 pandemic.

In April 2025, along with several others, he filed to run for a seat in the 120th Congress for the 13th Congressional District that was represented by our late colleague David Scott.

Sadly, David passed and Everton announced that he would run in the special election for the remainder of David Scott's unexpired term, which he won last month.

We welcome this dynamic, young leader to the Georgia delegation and to this House as he begins his service to the people of Georgia's 13th Congressional District for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Blair).

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a man who has spent half a century doing the hardest and holiest work there is--the Reverend Ronald G. Toney, who retires after fifty years in the gospel ministry, thirty-three of them as pastor of the historic Lizzie Chapel Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia. An event to celebrate his remarkable ministry was held on August 22, 2026, at the Tubman Museum in Macon, Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, when we mark a man's retirement in this Chamber, we usually recite a list. I want to do something different, because a list will not hold what this man has done.

Ronald Toney is a son of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Now, Mr. Speaker, I want the House to sit with that for a moment. For the better part of the last century, the road out of Georgia ran north. Our people packed what they could carry and rode toward Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee looking for wages and dignity that this State would not give them. That was the Great Migration, and it emptied a great deal of talent out of the South.

Ronald Toney ran that road in reverse.

He was born up North, where our people had gone for refuge, and he came back down here--to Georgia, to the Black Belt, to the small cities and the working neighborhoods--and he gave this State fifty years of his life. He came back to the place his generation was told to leave. That is not a career decision, Mr. Speaker. That is a calling.

He came by way of Morehouse College, where he graduated cum laude with a degree in religion. As a Morehouse man myself, I know that house does not hand out that Latin honor lightly. He went on to study at the Interdenominational Theological Center and at Columbia Theological Seminary, both in Atlanta. He believed--rightly--that a called man still owes God a trained mind.

His ministry began in Milwaukee in 1976 at Greater Galilee Baptist Church, and continued at Damascus Baptist Church, where he served as assistant pastor. He came to Georgia in 1981 as an associate minister at Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta. In 1985 he was called to his first pastorate, Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Thomson, Georgia. And in April of 1993, he was called to Lizzie Chapel Baptist Church in Macon, where he has stood ever since.

Mr. Speaker, thirty-three years in one pulpit is a rarer thing than this body may realize, and I want to say plainly what it costs and what it builds.

Thirty-three years means he baptized children who came back and asked him to marry them and then brought him their own babies to bless. It means he stood over the caskets of the mothers of that church--the women who fed him, corrected him, and prayed him through his first years--and he preached them home one by one. It means he sat in hospital rooms at two o'clock in the morning with families who had nobody else to call. It means there are men and women walking around Macon today who made it through the worst season of their lives because a preacher would not stop calling the house.

A pastor who stays that long stops being a hired man and becomes family. That is what Ronald Toney became to Lizzie Chapel.

And he never confined the ministry to the sanctuary. In McDuffie County he served as president of the Ministerial Association, president of the County Health Coalition, and president of the NAACP branch-- because he understood that a shepherd who will not fight for the flock outside the gate is no shepherd at all. In Bibb County he served on the board of Citizens Advocacy and on the Economic Opportunity Council. He gave his time to the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia as an instructor in the Congress of Christian Education and later as president of the Tenth District Congress, and he served as Second Vice Moderator of the Union Baptist Missionary and Educational Association of Middle Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, two of his services tell me the most about the man. He sat on the board of the Crisis Line and Safe House, and on the board of the Family Counseling Center. Any pastor who has been at it long enough knows the truth those two boards represent: that some of the people singing in the choir on Sunday morning are going home to houses that are not safe. Ronald Toney did not merely pray about that. He got up and took a seat at the table where something could be done about it.

And he founded the Gifts of Grace Foundation--a name that tells you everything about how this man understood his own life. Not gifts he earned. Gifts of grace.

Mr. Speaker, none of this was done alone. For all of these years, Reverend Toney has been supported by his wife, Patricia, whose name appears on no program and in no minutes, but without whom none of this record exists. And it was done alongside their four children--Jason, Ronald D., LaTai, and Erika--who shared their father with a congregation for their entire lives, and who gave up Sunday dinners and family evenings and a father's undivided attention so that other people's families could be held together. The pastor's family pays a bill that nobody itemizes. Let this Chamber itemize it today.

Mr. Speaker, a man can retire from a pulpit. He cannot retire from what he has already built. The counseling he gave is still working. The children he baptized are still standing. The church he served is still open. Fifty years of that does not stop when a man steps down; it simply keeps walking around Middle Georgia in the shape of other people's lives.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, whom the world still calls the Prince of Preachers, once said of his own life's ambition:

``I know of nothing which I would choose to have as the

subject of my ambition for life than to be kept faithful to

my God till death, still to be a soul winner, still to be a

true herald of the cross, and testify the name of Jesus to

the last hour.''

Mr. Speaker, that was Spurgeon's ambition. By the grace of God, it has been Ronald Toney's record.

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 honoring the Reverend Ronald G. Toney for fifty years of faithful service in the gospel ministry, for thirty- three years of devoted pastoral leadership at Lizzie Chapel Baptist Church, and for a lifetime given to the people of Georgia and beyond. We wish him and Patricia every blessing in this new season, and we say to him what he has spent a lifetime helping other people become ready to hear:

Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a son of Middle Georgia whose life's work has been to make certain that his neighbors were seen--Mr. Alex C. Habersham, founder and publisher of the Macon- Middle Georgia Black Pages, which this week marks thirty-five years at the Tubman Museum in Macon under the theme ``35 Years Strong: Honoring Our Past, Powering Our Future.''

Mr. Speaker, thirty-five years is a long time to keep a promise.

Alex Habersham was born and reared in Macon, in Tindall Heights-- built in the 1940s as the city's first public housing development for Black families. He graduated from Ballard-Hudson High School, went on to Savannah State University to train as a teacher, and then did what too few do: he came home. He came back and taught at the very high school that raised him.

But first, Mr. Speaker, we need to talk about the 1960's.

When Macon integrated its public schools, Alex Habersham was among the first Black educators transferred to Lanier High School. Think about what that asked of a young man. He walked into a building that had not been built with him in mind, in a city that had not yet made up its mind, and he stood before other people's children and taught them anyway. No cameras. No ceremony. Just a Black teacher with a lesson plan, doing the quiet, dangerous work of desegregation one class period at a time.

That is not on any plaque. But it belongs in this Record.

He built his teaching on a principle he still quotes today: you take a person from the known to the unknown. You start where they are. You do not shame them for where they are. You walk them somewhere better. That is how he taught. That is how he has lived.

Mr. Speaker, he was also an entrepreneur, and not a cautious one--a flower shop, a newspaper, a car wash, a transportation company, a radio and television repair shop, and in 1972, Habersham Records, a music store many in Macon still remember. So, he learned the hard lesson from the inside: you can serve your people well and still be invisible. Known on your street. Unknown in your city. A landmark to your neighbors and nowhere at all on paper.

So, in 1991, Alex Habersham did what his people have always done in this country when the record left them out. He started his own record.

He started it on Cotton Avenue--today D.T. Walton Sr. Way--the historic heart of Black commerce in Macon. He did not build the Black Pages beside that tradition. He built it inside of it.

Mr. Speaker, in 1912, a woman born Sarah Breedlove--the world came to know her as Madam C.J. Walker--rose uninvited at the National Negro Business League convention, because no one had thought to put her on the program. She told that room she had come up from the cotton fields to the washtub to the cook kitchen, and then, she said, she promoted herself into business. And she left them a sentence that has outlived every man who tried to ignore her:

``I got my start by giving myself a start.''

Mr. Speaker, that is the whole story of the Black Pages. Alex Habersham did not wait to be written into somebody else's book. He gave himself a start--and then spent thirty-five years handing that same start to everybody else.

There is a lineage here, and Mr. Habersham names it himself. A generation before, when a Black family could not be certain where they might safely stop for gasoline or a night's rest, a little green book told them where they would be welcome. That book helped our people survive. Alex Habersham published one that helped our people prosper. Both did the same holy work--they wrote down the names.

And what a record it has become. More than thirty editions. More than a thousand Black-owned businesses. Nine counties across Middle Georgia. Physicians and barbers, churches and bookstores, contractors and caterers--alongside scholarship notices and memorial tributes. A directory, Mr. Speaker, is never only a directory. It is a declaration. It says: this business is real. This family is here. This work is worthy of the ink.

Nor did his love for young people ever stay inside a classroom. He co-founded the Adopt-A-Role-Model Program, so a young man in Macon could sit across from a professional in his field and see with his own eyes that such a life was possible. He established Bird City Energetics. And for years he has instructed in the State Bar of Georgia's BASICS Program--a program with a recidivism rate of seven percent. Let that number sit for a moment. Behind it are men who came home and stayed home. Mothers who stopped waiting by the phone. Children who got their fathers back.

He has chaired the Macon-Bibb County Board of Tax Assessors, served the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, published the Macon Courier, and hosted Macon's Call to

Action. He has been honored by the NAACP, by our Secretary of State as an Outstanding Georgia Citizen, by the United States Small Business Administration as Minority Small Business Champion of the Year, and by his brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, incorporated.

But the awards on the wall are rarely the real story. The real story is usually standing beside him. And so today I also honor his beloved wife, Mrs. Myrtle Habersham. Every deadline he met, she met with him. There is no honest accounting of these thirty-five years that does not have Myrtle's name in it.

Mr. Speaker, it is fitting--almost providential--that this celebration is held at the Tubman Museum, because that building exists for the same reason the Black Pages exists. Both are houses of memory, built by people who understood that if we do not write it down, they will say it never happened.

And there is one more thing this House should know. The 2026-2027 edition is the last one that will ever be printed. Beginning in 2027, The Black Pages is moving to a digital platform--an app, an online marketplace, a new way for a small business with no website of its own to be found. Mr. Habersham is not retreating. He is doing in 2026 exactly what he did in 1991: going where his people are.

But that means the volume in his hands this evening is the last of its kind.

One day, Mr. Speaker, a young woman in Macon is going to open that final printed edition. She will run her finger down a column of small print. And she will find it--her grandmother's shop. The address. The telephone number. Proof, in black ink, that her people were here, that they built something, that they mattered enough to be listed.

She will never meet the man who put that name on the page. But she will weep over it just the same.

That is what Alex Habersham has been doing for thirty-five years. Not selling advertising. Preserving evidence--evidence that in Macon, Georgia, Black enterprise was never a footnote. It was a foundation.

The Book of Proverbs tells us that a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children. Alex Habersham is leaving Middle Georgia an inheritance we can hold in our hands.

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 in congratulating Mr. Alex C. Habersham on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Macon-Middle Georgia Black Pages. I would also like for them to join us in thanking Mrs. Myrtle Habersham for her partnership and her sacrifice, and in wishing them both many more chapters yet to be written.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and may God bless the Habersham family, may God bless the city of Macon, and may God continue to bless these United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to honor a man who spent his whole life mending the hearts of others--Mr. Robert ``Bob'' Hutchinson, Sr., who was called home to glory on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, at the age of 77, in the city he loved and served for so long, Albany, Georgia. There are homes across Southwest Georgia tonight where the light seems a little dimmer, because a man who spent his life turning the lights on for children has finally laid down his own. A homegoing service to celebrate his remarkable life was held on Saturday, August 1, 2026, at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia.

Bob was born on July 19, 1949, in Ocala, Florida, to the late Clemm and Ethlene Blakely Hutchinson. He answered a calling early and never once stopped serving. After graduating from high school in 1967, he enlisted in the United States Army and gave to his country the same devotion he would later give to a generation of children who needed him more than they had words to say. For more than forty-five years, Bob made a quiet holy promise to every child who crossed his path--that no matter where they came from, no matter what they carried, they would have a safe place to belong, a mentor who believed in them, and a chance to become who God made them to be.

His life's work found its home in Albany, at the Cedar Avenue Boys and Girls Club and there it grew into a legacy that touched an entire region. Rising to Director of Operations and ultimately to Chief Professional Officer, Bob led the Boys and Girls Clubs of Albany and from three locations to eleven, until more than five thousand young people were being loved, fed, taught, and lifted every single day. He planted Club sites in schools, in churches, in housing communities-- anywhere a hurting child might be--because he could not bear the thought of one boy or one girl being too far from a hand that would reach for them. And in 1995, he flung the doors open to girls as well, because in Bob's heart there was not one child on this earth who did not deserve to be believed in.

The world gave Bob its honors, and they were many--Leadership Albany, the Law Day USA Liberty Bell Award, the Herman Prescott Award, the David Roark Light the Path Award, and in 2016, induction into the Georgia Boys and Girls Club Hall of Fame. He earned every one. But Mr. Speaker, I stand here to testify that Bob Hutchinson's name is written in a greater Hall of Fame than any this world can offer.

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews records what the saints have long called the Hall of Faith--God's own roll call of the faithful. By faith Abraham. By faith Moses. By faith Sarah. These are the men and women who, Scripture says, ``all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.'' And of one of them the Word says something that could have been written for Bob Hutchinson himself: ``he being dead yet speaketh.'' Mr. Speaker, that is Bob. He is gone from us--but he is not silent. He still speaks. He speaks every time a child he mentored chooses hope over despair. He speaks every time a young man who had no father remembers the man who chose to father him anyway. He speaks in ten thousand lives, and he will go on speaking long after every one of us in this Chamber has been forgotten.

You do not measure a man like Bob by buildings or by plaques. You measure him by the frightened child who walked through a Club door with his head down and walked back out with his head up. You measure him by the boys and girls--now grown into teachers, ministers, business owners, mothers, and fathers--who still cannot speak his name without their voices breaking. Somewhere tonight there is a grown man who learned to tie his shoes, to shake a hand, to look another person in the eye, because Bob Hutchinson took the time. That man will carry Bob with him to his own grave, and hand him to his children after that. This is the true Hall of Fame--the one written not in bronze, but in the living hearts of the people he refused to give up on.

Through all of it, beside this remarkable man stood the love of his life, his devoted wife of fifty-five years, Lula Peterson Hutchinson. Fifty-five years. Through every trial and every triumph, she never let go of his hand. Together they raised three children--Rodney, Michelle, and Robert, Jr.--and were blessed with four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. And among the countless he fathered was his devoted protege, Marvin Laster, who loved him not as a supervisor but as a daddy. When a man's employees weep for him like sons, they have learned everything they will ever need to know about how he lived.

Mr. Speaker, the Scripture says we are surrounded by ``so great a cloud of witnesses.'' Bob Hutchinson has taken his place in that number now. And so, on behalf of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District, I ask my colleagues to join my wife Vivian and me, along with the more than 765,00 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District in mourning his loss and celebrating his life. To Lula, to his children, grandchildren, and to the countless sons and daughters of Southwest Georgia who called him family--we grieve with them, and we thank God for the gift of him. Rest now, Bob. Well done, good and faithful servant. He has fought a good fight, he has finished his course, he has kept the faith--and generations yet unborn will rise up and call him blessed.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life, the artistry, and the abiding legacy of Osceola Marie Macarthy Adams, a daughter of Albany, Georgia, and to recognize the dedication of a Georgia historical marker placed in her honor in Albany, Georgia on August 1, 2026, through the devoted labor of the Albany Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.

Mr. Speaker, she was born on June 13, 1890, in Albany, Georgia, to Charles Hannibal Macarthy and Julia Ann Johnson Macarthy. She was raised at the corner of South Jackson Street and West Highland Avenue, in the neighborhood our people have always called the Harlem District of Albany. Her father was a life insurance executive who believed that a child's mind was the only inheritance a Black family in South Georgia could not be dispossessed of, and he raised his daughter accordingly.

She was schooled here at home, at Albany Normal School, the institution that would grow into Albany State University. She went on to the preparatory school at Fisk University, and then to Howard University, where she studied ancient Greek and philosophy and took her place in the Class of 1913.

Mr. Speaker, 1913 was no ordinary year in the life of this woman, and it was no ordinary year in the life of this Nation. On January 13, 1913, on the campus of Howard University, Osceola Macarthy and twenty- one other young women founded Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated--an organization that today numbers more than a thousand chapters on four continents and has poured more than a century of scholarship, service, and public witness into the life of this Republic. And barely seven weeks later, on March 3, 1913, she and her sisters took their place in the Woman Suffrage Procession down Pennsylvania Avenue, on the eve of a Presidential inauguration, in a city that would have preferred they march at the rear or not at all. That march was the first public act of the sorority she helped to found. It was also, Mr. Speaker, the act of a twenty-two-year-old Black woman from Albany, Georgia, demanding a ballot that her own hometown would not honestly hand her for another fifty-two years.

She married Dr. Numa P. G. Adams, who would become the first African- American dean of the Howard University College of Medicine. She taught at Bennett College. And then she went north to New York and became, under the stage name Osceola Archer, one of the first Black actresses to appear on a Broadway stage, in the 1934 production of ``Between Two Worlds.''

But her greatest work, Mr. Speaker, was not the applause she received. It was the applause she made possible for others. As director of the Studio Theatre School at the American Negro Theatre, she trained a generation that would change the face of the American stage and screen--among them Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Ruby Dee. She directed some three dozen productions at the Putnam County Playhouse and is believed to have been the first African-American director in American summer stock. She directed ``The Glass Menagerie.'' She directed ``A Streetcar Named Desire.'' She directed ``The Diary of Anne Frank.'' In 1978, her sorority created ``The Osceola,'' an award bearing her name and given for distinguished achievement in the arts, and the AUDELCO awards recognized her as an outstanding pioneer. She died on November 11, 1983, at ninety-three years of age.

Mr. Speaker, permit me a personal word. There is something almost unbearably tender about the geography of this woman's life.

She was born in the Harlem District of Albany, Georgia--and she made her name in Harlem, New York. She carried the name of her neighborhood a thousand miles and gave it back to the world as art.

She never got to see this day. She never got to see her name in iron on a Georgia roadside. When she was a girl on South Jackson Street, there was no marker in Albany with a Black woman's name on it, and no reason for a child to imagine there ever would be. When the Albany Movement filled the jails of my hometown in 1961 and 1962, she was seventy-one years old and far away, watching her city on the evening news, and no one thought to put her name on anything. She died with the marker unmade. But her sorors did not forget. The daughters of Delta remembered what Georgia had not yet recorded. And so a marker now stands where the house once stood.

Mr. Speaker, I want this Chamber to see what I see. I see a little girl in Albany, Georgia--maybe eight years old, maybe nine--walking past that corner on a Saturday morning with her grandmother's hand in hers. She stops. She sounds out the letters. And she learns, on the very ground where she is standing, that a Black girl from her city, from her neighborhood, from her streets, once helped found a sisterhood that circled the globe, once marched for a vote she could not cast, once stood on a Broadway stage where no one like her had stood, and once taught Sidney Poitier how to say a line.

That little girl will walk away from that marker taller than she came. And that, Mr. Speaker, is what a marker is for. We do not set these stones for the dead. The dead are past our praise. We set them for the living, and for the ones not yet born, so that no child of Albany ever again has to be told what she can become--she can go read it for herself, on the corner of South Jackson and West Highland.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife Vivian and me along the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District in honoring the memory of Osceola Marie Macarthy Adams; in commending the Albany Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, and all who labored to see this marker raised; and in celebrating a daughter of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District whose life reminds us that greatness has a birthplace, and that it is our solemn and joyful duty to mark it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a woman whose life has spanned a century of American history, and who has spent nearly every year of it giving something away--knowledge, kindness, service, and love. Today, July 21, 2026, Mrs. Lovye Williamson Cochran of Albany, Georgia, celebrates her 100th birthday.

She was born on July 21, 1926, in Reidsville, North Carolina, the firstborn daughter of Weldon and Hessie Williamson, and the eldest of four girls. She was raised in a home where education was not a luxury but an inheritance, and she took that inheritance seriously. She graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Reidsville, then went on to Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina--that historic institution which has been turning out Bennett Belles of uncommon dignity and backbone for generations. She later earned her master's degree from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, also in Greensboro. In an era when this Nation placed obstacle after obstacle in the path of a young Black woman seeking to be educated, Lovye Williamson simply kept walking.

In 1950, she married Mr. Benjamin Franklin Cochran, Jr., and together they made their life in Albany, Georgia. Mr. Cochran became Albany's first Black professional photographer. Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to understand what that meant. In those years, a Black family's wedding, a Black child's graduation, a Black church's anniversary, a Black mother's Sunday best--these were not events the wider world considered worth preserving. Benjamin Cochran preserved them anyway. He spent his life making sure that our community could see itself, and see itself beautiful. And while he was capturing the faces, his wife was in the classroom shaping the very children whose portraits he took. He kept the pictures. She helped make the people in them.

Mrs. Cochran is a retired educator, and in Southwest Georgia that title carries a particular weight. There are grown men and women in Albany today--parents, deacons, business owners, public servants--who first learned to believe in themselves in her classroom. A teacher's monument is not made of stone. It walks around, and it talks back, and it raises its own children the way she taught it to.

She and Mr. Cochran raised three children--Beverly, Juanita, and Benjamin, III--and she is the proud grandmother of Anthony. For decades she has lived on Lily Pond Road in Albany, which the older residents still remember as Westbrook Road. Mrs. Cochran is the longest surviving resident of that street. She has watched the road change its name, watched the houses change hands, watched the city change around her-- and through all of it, she never changed who she was.

Her service did not end at the schoolhouse door. Mrs. Cochran has given her time and her judgment to the community's institutions, serving on the Board of Directors of the Boys and Girls Clubs and with the Albany ARC, known today as the Arc of Southwest Georgia. Mr. Speaker, those two commitments say something about the shape of her heart. She gave herself to children who needed somewhere safe to go after the last bell, and she gave herself to citizens with developmental disabilities--neighbors whom too much of the world has been content to overlook. She never overlooked anybody.

Mrs. Cochran is a devoted member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, and remains active in the sorority at 100 years of age. She holds the honored designation of Delta Dear.

Mr. Speaker, among Mrs. Cochran's sorors in Delta Sigma Theta was the late Honorable Shirley Chisholm of New York, the first Black woman elected to this body and the first to seek the presidential nomination of a major party. Congresswoman Chisholm gave us a definition of a life well spent that has never been improved upon: ``Service is the rent that you pay for the space that you occupy here on this earth.'' By that measure, Mr. Speaker, Lovye Williamson Cochran does not owe this world one thin dime. She paid her rent in full--in classrooms and in church pews, in board rooms and in her sorority and on her street, in the raising of three children and in a hundred years of quiet, faithful, unglamorous good. She paid it early, she paid it often, and she is paying it still.

This evening, more than 200 Deltas of the Albany community are gathering at the Galleria on Dawson Road to celebrate her. They have made only one request of those who come: bring flowers. Not gifts. Flowers--in her own words, so that she can smell them, while she is living.

Mr. Speaker, there is a whole sermon in that sentence. Too often in this country we save our finest words for funerals. We wait until a woman can no longer hear us to say what she has meant to us. We send the roses to the graveside when we could have set them on the kitchen table. Mrs. Lovye Cochran, at 100 years old, has taught this community one final lesson, and it may be the most important one she has ever given: love people out loud, and do it while they are here to enjoy it.

So tonight the flowers will come. And she will hold them, and she will smell them, and she will know--beyond any possibility of doubt-- exactly how much she is loved.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife Vivian and me, on behalf of the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District, in extending our warmest congratulations to Mrs. Lovye Williamson Cochran on the occasion of her 100th birthday. We thank her for a century of faith, family, teaching, and service. We salute her children, her grandson, her sorors, and her neighbors. We pray God's continued blessing upon her in the years yet to come.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart, but with profound gratitude, to honor the life and legacy of one of Southwest Georgia's most devoted public servants, the Honorable Russell Thomas, Jr., former Mayor of Americus, Georgia, who departed this life on Wednesday, July 8, 2026, at the age of 91. A memorial service celebrating his extraordinary life will be held on Tuesday, July 21, 2026, at Americus First Methodist Church, with Reverend Tom Dowdy and Reverend Daryl Brown officiating.

Russell Thomas, Jr. was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 22, 1934, to Dr. Russell Thomas and Margaret Camp Thomas. In 1939, the family returned to Dr. Thomas's hometown of Americus, and from that day forward, Russell Thomas and Americus, Georgia belonged to one another. He graduated from Americus High School in 1952, earned a degree in Agricultural Management from Auburn University, where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and completed his military service as a medic in the United States Army Reserve.

Mayor Thomas built his career in agriculture and forestry, owning Thomas Farms, Inc. with his family and founding or co-owning Americus Creosote Company, T&T Logging, and Georgia Forest Products. But to Russell Thomas, the land was never merely a business. Long before conservation of the longleaf pine ecosystem became a national cause, he was protecting the native longleaf stands at Thomas Farms, quietly practicing the belief that productive timber management and wildlife conservation should go hand in hand. He was a steward in the oldest and truest sense of the word--a man who understood that we do not really own the land; we hold it in trust for our children.

The people of Americus first elected Russell Thomas, Jr. as their Mayor in November 1979. and he served from 1980 to 1988. They called him back in 1993, and he served again from 1994 to 2001--fifteen years in all of steady, visionary, and selfless leadership. In his first term, he worked with the City Council to confront substandard housing and expand housing opportunity. He would later join with Millard Fuller and Habitat for Humanity on the Sumter County Initiative, an audacious campaign to eliminate substandard housing in Americus and Sumter County--a partnership that helped make our corner of Georgia a beacon to the world for what neighbors can accomplish when they take up hammers and hope together.

Mayor Thomas may be best remembered for leading the multi-year effort to restore the historic Windsor Hotel. When many said the grand old landmark could not be saved, Russell Thomas simply refused to give up-- and today the Windsor stands as the crown jewel of downtown Americus, a monument in brick and mortar to one man's stubborn faith in his hometown. He was likewise instrumental in the restoration of the Rylander Theatre, establishing it as the center of the performing arts in Americus, for which he received the Lifetime Friend of the Rylander Award in 2016. Under his leadership, in 2000, Americus was designated one of the first ten Georgia Cities of Excellence. In 1994, in recognition of his public service, the City of Americus named its public safety building the Russell Thomas, Jr. Public Safety Building-- an honor rarely bestowed upon the living and richly deserved.

His service extended far beyond City Hall. He served on the Americus Board of Education from 1972 to 1980; as chairman of the Sumter County Board of Tax Assessors from 1976 to 1980; on the board of directors of The Charles L. Mix Memorial Fund, including more than twenty years as its chairman; on the South Georgia Technical College Foundation Board of Trustees; and on the governing board of the Rosalynn Carter Institute at Georgia Southwestern State University. Elected to the Board of Directors of Citizens Bank of Americus in 1985, he served as Chairman of the Board from 1985 to 1999--a period in which the bank was rated the number one community bank in Georgia--and remained on the board until 2025, serving his community's financial wellbeing across five decades.

Mr. Speaker, the record of offices held, and buildings restored tells us what Russell Thomas did. But it does not tell us who he was. Who he was could be found in his office at the back of the old Americus Hardware Store--another of his renovations--where, long past the age when most men retire, friends and neighbors stopped by daily to talk politics, business, and the affairs of the town he loved. Who he was could be found in his backyard, where this former mayor and bank chairman raised tomatoes and waged a good-natured annual contest with the backyard animals to see who could reach the ripe ones first. And who he was could be found riding the dirt backroads of Thomas Farms in his old Tahoe, with his faithful dog Barnabas at his side.

It is said that throughout his life, and in its most difficult times, Russell found solace and peace driving those backroads. And Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleagues to sit with that image for a moment. Here was a man who buried a beloved wife, Andrea, after forty-five years of marriage; a man who bore the deepest grief a parent can know in the loss of his son, Russell, III; a man who carried the weight of a city on his shoulders for fifteen years. And when the sorrows came--as they come to every life--he did not grow bitter, and he did not withdraw from the people. He drove out to the land, under the longleaf pines he had protected, with his dog beside him, and he made his peace--and then he came back to his beloved Americus, and went back to work, and kept on serving. That quiet resilience, that faithfulness that outlasted heartbreak, is the truest measure of the man, and it is the inheritance he leaves to all of us who remain.

Russell Thomas, Jr. was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Andrea Patterson Thomas; his son, Russell Thomas, III; his parents, Dr. Russell Thomas and Margaret Camp Thomas; his sister, Margaret T. Sullivan; and his brothers, Frank Gordon Thomas and John Laurence Thomas. He leaves to cherish his memory his children, Mary Frances ``Mimi'' Thomas, Anne Camp Thomas, Beth Thomas Cheek (James), and John Braxton Thomas; his daughter-in-law, Angie Ballard Thomas; eight grandchildren: ten great-grandchildren; and a host of nieces, nephews, cousins, stepchildren, extended family, and friends who loved him dearly.

Mr. Speaker, the Scriptures teach us in Matthew 25:21, ``Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.'' Russell Thomas, Jr. was faithful--faithful to his family, faithful to his land, faithful to his hometown, and faithful to the God he served. On behalf of my wife, Vivian and the more than 765,000 residents of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District, I extend my deepest condolences to the Thomas family, and I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the life, the legacy, and the extraordinary public service of the Honorable Russell Thomas, Jr.--Mayor, steward, builder, and friend--a good and faithful servant who has entered into the joy of his Lord.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart, and on behalf of a grieving community, to honor a man whose life enriched my district, my state, and indeed this entire Nation--Mr. Benjamin A. Holden--who departed this life on June 10, 2026. at the age of sixtythree. On Saturday, June 20th. his beloved famijy, his Columbus community, and friends from across this country gathered at the Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church in Columbus, Georgia, to celebrate his remarkable life and lay him to rest.

Mr. Speaker, Ben Holden believed, with his whole heart, in the power of two things--stories, and people. And across sixty-three years, he gave his life to both.

His own story began far from Georgia, in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was born on June 3, 1963, to Lorine and Percy Holden. He found his calling early. At just seventeen years old, he was already a cub reporter in the sports department of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, covering high school athletics--and his gift was so evident that it earned him a scholarship from the Pulitzer family to attend the University of Missouri. It was there, in 1983, that he became a proud member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, joining the ranks of the Divine Nine that so many of us hold dear. He went on to the University of California at Berkeley, earning both his law degree and his M.B.A., and meeting the love of his life, Melanie.

And then Ben Holden became one of the finest journalists of his generation. As a Los Angeles-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal, he chronicled the most consequential stories of his time--the painful aftermath of the Rodney King trial, the O.J. Simpson case that gripped the entire nation, and more. His front-page Journal piece dissecting the staggering economics of the Simpson spectacle--which he wittily titled ``O.J. G.D.P.''--earned him a national journalism award. He was a truth-teller, Mr. Speaker, and he told the truth with style.

But Ben understood that journalism is more than a profession--it is a pillar of freedom itself. A licensed attorney in both California and Georgia, he gave himself to the cause of a free press and an accountable judiciary. As director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for the Courts and Media, he carried the First Amendment far beyond our borders. On behalf of our own State Department and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, he traveled to Kosovo--a young nation still struggling to trust its own institutions-- and there he trained its judges, its prosecutors, and its journalists in the principles of liberty, because he believed a free press and an honest court were essential to that fragile republic's democratic future. And right here at home, from 2004 to 2010, he led the newsroom of our own Columbus Ledger-Enquirer through one of the most turbulent eras journalism has ever known.

He gave the next generation his wisdom, too, on the faculties of the University of Illinois and Northwestern University's storied Medill School of Journalism, where he taught young people that the press is the only profession the Constitution itself protects by name. And he fought for his students as if they were his own children.

But Mr. Speaker, of all the chapters in Ben Holden's remarkable story, the one he loved the most was written right here in Columbus, Georgia. Nelson Mandela taught the world that ``education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world''--and Ben Holden took up that weapon on behalf of children too often overlooked. In 2009, he founded a nonprofit he called Columbus Scholars. He carried a simple and stubborn conviction--that the only thing standing between a bright child who makes it and a bright child who does not is somebody willing to support them. And he did not merely say it. He spent more than forty years of his life proving it. Partnering with Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Chattahoochee Valley, Columbus Scholars pairs economically disadvantaged young people with mentors and with scholarships--and in just seventeen years, it has raised more than one million dollars and lifted more than one hundred students toward a future they could not have reached on their own.

Think of that, Mr. Speaker. A man who had reported on the most powerful people in America, a man who had trained judges across an ocean, found his deepest joy in a Columbus child with ability and empty pockets--and in becoming the very support that child needed. He helped those young people write brand-new stories for their lives.

And there is one last story I must share. The celebrated poet and author Maya Angelou once wrote that ``there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.'' Mr. Speaker, Benjamin Holden refused to carry his story to the grave. In his final days, he completed the draft of a novel he called Spirit of St. Louis--the tale of two first generation Black men coming of age in America, navigating race and class and the long odds of making it as an outsider. In so many ways, it was his own story. He did not live to see it published. But his family has vowed to finish what he began and bring his words into the world--and so this storyteller, who gave his life to telling the stories of others, will at last have his own story told.

For that is who Ben Holden was. A devoted husband to Melanie, his wife of thirty-one years. A loving father to his daughter, Joy. A brother, an uncle, and the very heart of a family that gathered for reunions they lovingly called ``Fling Dings.'' He was a man who never missed a birthday, a wedding, or a ballgame--a faithful Atlanta Hawks seasonticket holder who lived and died by his Missouri Tigers and his Northwestern Wildcats.

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 life and legacy of Benjamin A. Holden. We give thanks for a life lived with conviction, with generosity, and with an unshakable faith in the power of stories and of people to make this world better. On behalf of Georgia's Second Congressional District, I extend my deepest sympathy to his wife, Melanie; to his daughter, Joy; to his entire family; and to the countless students and colleagues whose lives he forever changed. Their loss is immeasurable. But the truth he defended, the students he lifted, and the love he gave will go on speaking long after his pen has been laid down.

Well done to Ben, and I wish him eternal rest. We will help tell the rest of his story.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart, and with deep grdtitude, to honor the life and the lasting legacy of a beloved matriarch of Columbus, Georgia, Mrs. Mary Lizzie Pickett Quiller, known and loved by all who knew her simply as ``Honey.'' After a remarkable life that spanned a full century, Mrs. Quiller was called home to her reward on June 10, 2026, at the age of 100 years old.

On Friday, June 19th, her family, her friends, and her community gathered at Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church in Columbus, Georgia--the very church home she faithfully served for more than 60 years--to celebrate her life and to lay her to rest. It is only right that this body, and this Nation, pause to remember a woman who gave 100 years of her life to her family, her faith, and her community.

Mrs. Quiller was born on September 15, 1925, in Bullock County, Alabama, one of seven children raised by their devoted mother, Georgie Pickett. Of those seven, she and her sister, Annie Watkins, were the last two who remained--and today, with Honey's passing, her sister carries on as the last leaf on that family tree.

Mr. Speaker, in the final season of her long life, Mrs. Quiller left her family a simple and humble request. She said: ``Let the works I have done speak for me.'' So, on the floor of this House today, I intend to honor that wish. I rise to let her works speak.

Let her works speak of a young girl who became a second mother before her time. By her own sister's loving account, Honey helped care for her siblings through all their childhood years--and she went right on caring for them even after their mother, Georgie, passed away. When the family needed someone to hold it together, she was the one who stepped forward. And that was the pattern of her entire life.

Let her works speak of a woman who, as I would describe her, simply was not a quitter. She believed in bettering herself, and through hard work and quiet determination she did exactly that. Mary Quiller earned an Associate Degree in Business from Albany State, a Master of Cosmetology, and a tailoring certificate. She refused to let her beginnings set the limits of her life.

Let her works speak of a wife and a mother. She was the beloved wife of George Quiller and the devoted mother of two children, Jean and Jerry. And Mr. Speaker, I must pause here, because there is no heavier burden a parent can be asked to carry than to bury a child--and Mrs. Quiller knew that sorrow. for her beloved son, Jerry, preceded her in death. Yet somehow, by the grace of God, she kept right on standing, kept right on serving, and kept right on pouring her love into everyone around her. A heart that knew that depth of grief and still chose to give is a heart worthy of honor before this Nation. She is survived by her devoted daughter, Mary, her sister Annie Watkins, her grandson, Jeremy Quiller, her great grandchildren, and her great-great grandchild, who carried her name and her spirit forward.

Let her works speak of a faithful and tireless servant of God. For more than 60 years, Mrs. Quiller was an active member of Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church--the very sanctuary that will receive her home this Friday. She gave herself to that congregation in nearly every way a person can: as Assistant Superintendent of the Sunday School, as a Sunday School Teacher, as a member of the Choir, as a Cub Scout Leader shaping young boys, and as Mission President. Her church family saw clearly what kind of woman she was. They named her Woman of the Year back in the 1990s, and they lifted her up in honor once again in 2024.

Let her works speak of a true pillar of her community. In her neighborhood, the saying simply went that if you wanted something done, you called Mrs. Quiller. She was the one who got it done--and for that faithful service, she was presented the ``Giving Your Best Award.'' She also gave her time to the people of her city as a member of the Keep Columbus Beautiful Board. Her motto, plain and powerful, was to work every day at improving the quality of life--not only for herself, but for everyone around her.

Mr. Speaker, let her works speak of her character. Mary Quiller was a woman of unshakable honesty. If she believed you needed to hear a hard truth, she loved you enough to tell it to you--whether you wanted to hear it or not. And yet, when she did good for others, and she did a world of good, she never once advertised it. She gave in quiet. She helped in secret. She believed, too, that you do not chase after material things simply to keep up with the people around you; you live within your values, and you spend on what truly matters. Hers was a life of substance, never a life of show.

Mr. Speaker, the great Shirley Chisholm--the first Black woman ever to serve in this very House--once said that: ``Service is the rent we pay for the space that we occupy here on this Earth.'' By that measure, Mary ``Honey'' Quiller paid her rent in full, with interest. In the words of the old gospel hymn, ''She has paid her title clear.'' For 100 years she served--her family, her church, and her community--and she asked for nothing in return.

Mr. Speaker, Mary Lizzie Pickett Quiller asked that her works speak for her. And oh, how they speak. They speak in the brothers and sisters she mothered. They speak in the students she taught and the scouts she led. They speak in the church she served for six decades, in the community she made more beautiful, and in the countless souls she lifted without ever once asking for the credit. Her works are speaking still--and they will go on speaking long after every one of us is gone.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues in the U.S. 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 and legacy of Mrs. Mary Lizzie Pickett Quiller. I extend my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to her surviving daughter, Mary Quiller, her surviving sister, Annie Watkins; to her grandchildren; to her Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church family; and to the entire Columbus community that loved her so dearly and for so long. She was, in the truest sense of the word, a phenomenal woman, and we were blessed to share this Earth with her for 100 years.

She was a caregiver, a scholar, a servant, and a saint whose good works will keep right on speaking for her, just as she asked. May she rest in peace and may the God she served so faithfully for a century welcome her home with the words she earned: ``Well done, thou good and faithful servant.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart, and with a gratitude that runs deeper than these few words can carry, to honor the life of a giant of Georgia public service, a peerless gentleman, and a man I was blessed to call my colleague and my friend--the Honorable Lawrence Cohen ``Larry'' Walker. Jr., of Perry, Georgia.

Larry passed away peacefully at his home on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, surrounded by the family he loved, at the age of 84. A funeral service to celebrate his remarkable and purpose-filled life was held on Sunday, June 14,

2026, at the Perry United Methodist Church. Some losses are not just the loss of a man. They are the closing of an era.

Larry Walker was born on March 9, 1942, in Perry, Georgia, to the late Lawrence Cohen Walker, Sr., and the late Hilda Gray Walker. He was a son of Houston County from his first breath to his last--a native, a lifelong resident, and a fierce and faithful champion of his hometown for every one of his 84 years. He graduated from Perry High School in 1960, where his classmates, even then, saw what the rest of Georgia would come to know, and elected him Senior Class President. He went on to the University of Georgia, where he earned both his Bachelor of Business Administration and his Juris Doctorate in 1965--and where he became, and remained until his final day, one of the most devoted Bulldogs the good Lord ever made.

Mr. Speaker, consider what this young man did with the years that followed. In January of 1966, at just 24 years of age, Larry Walker was appointed the very first Municipal Court Judge in the history of Perry. Twenty-four years old, sitting in judgment, trusted by his neighbors. In 1975, he was appointed Perry City, Attorney--a charge he and his beloved brother David would carry together for 40 years. Forty years. Two brothers, serving one city, side by side. That is not a job. That is a covenant.

In 1972, the people of Houston County sent Larry Walker to the Georgia House of Representatives, to fill the seat left vacant by a young man named Sam Nunn, who was on his way to the United States Senate. And there, under the Gold Dome, Larry Walker became a legend. He served 32 years in that chamber--and for 16 of them, half his entire tenure, he served as House Majority Leader. Sixteen years carrying the burden of leadership, holding the floor, holding the line, holding people together.

Now, Mr. Speaker, allow me a personal word. I came to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1977. And it was there, as a young legislator finding my footing, that I came to know Larry Walker. We did not always come from the same place. We did not always see every issue through the same eyes. But I tell you what I learned from that man across those years: Larry Walker never once made a difference of opinion into a difference of respect. He could disagree with you on Tuesday and break bread with you on Wednesday and have your back on Thursday. He believed--he truly believed--that we were all sent there to do the people's work, and that the people deserved leaders who could find the higher ground together. He taught a whole generation of us how to do this work with grace. I am a better public servant today because Larry Walker showed me how it was done.

And he had something to show for it. You see it when you drive into Perry today and you see the Georgia National Fairgrounds and Agricenter standing tall--that is Larry Walker's vision made real. That community draws families and livelihoods and pride from Frito-Lay--that came to Perry because Larry Walker willed it there. He did not just hold an office. He built things. He left his hands' print on the soil of his home, and that print will outlast us all.

After his service in the General Assembly, Larry was elected to the Georgia Transportation Board and was later appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue to the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia-- still serving, still giving, still working for a state he loved. Through it all, in every chamber and on every board, Larry Walker was known for the rarest gift in public life: the ability to build relationships, to bring people together, and to work through their differences for the good of Georgia and for the good of his beloved Perry.

But Mr. Speaker, if you had asked Larry Walker who he was, he would not have started with any of that. He would have told you he was a husband. A father. A man of faith. He was a lifelong and active member of Perry Methodist Church, where he and his wife Janice sat together in the Pathfinders Sunday School Class. He gave himself to the Perry Kiwanis Club, and he helped found Crossroads Bank, which grew into Security Bank, because he believed in his community's future enough to invest in it himself.

And oh, how he loved Janice. In 1964, Larry married Janice Knighton-- the love of his life--and they shared 61 years together. Sixty-one years, Mr. Speaker. They raised four children--Larry III, Wendy, Russell. and John Gray--and every one of them still calls Houston County home. Think on that a moment. In a restless world that scatters families to the four winds, Larry and Janice built a place so full of love that their children never wanted to leave it. He was a devoted family man who treasured nothing more than the activities of his nine grandchildren and his three great-grandchildren--there in the bleachers, there at the livestock shows, there for every one of them.

He loved simple, sacred things. He loved working on the farm alongside Janice. He loved hunting dove and quail in the Georgia mornings and sharing his fishing ponds with anybody who'd come sit a while. He loved his dog Lizzy and he loved his cows. He loved watching the youth show their livestock at the Ag Center he helped create. He loved his Perry Panthers and his Westfield Hornets, and of course, always and forever, his Georgia Bulldogs.

That, Mr. Speaker, is a life. Not a career--a life. Whole, and rooted, and good. Larry was predeceased by his parents, and by his brother David--his partner of 40 years--and by brothers-in-law Bob Kelly and Jeff Knighton. He leaves behind his devoted wife of 61 years, Janice Knighton Walker; his children Larry III and Adrienne, Wendy and Bob, Russell and Krissy, and John Gray and Sharon; his nine grandchildren: his three great-grandchildren; his sister Lynda, his brother Charlie, and a host of family and friends across Georgia who loved him.

And Mr. Speaker, the truest measure of a man is found not only in what he built, but in what he past on. So let it be recorded that the Walker name still answers the roll call beneath the Gold Dome: Larry's son, Larry Walker, Ill, now serves in the Georgia General Assembly--the very institution his father loved and shaped--carrying his daddy's legacy of honorable service forward into a new generation. What a gift, to a father, to know the work goes on.

Mr. Speaker, the Book of Proverbs tells us that ``the memory of the just is blessed.'' Larry Walker was a just man. He kept faith with his God, with his family, with his hometown, and with the people he served. He showed us that you can hold great power and still hold great kindness; that you can disagree without dishonor; that a life lived close to home can touch the whole of a State.

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 life of the Honorable Larry Walker, Jr. to Janice, to his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and to the whole community of Perry that he loved so well: the prayers of this House are with you. You did not lose him. You will carry him--in every fairground he built, in every quail field at dawn, in every Bulldog Saturday, in every kindness he ever showed. Heaven has gained a gentleman, and Georgia will not soon see his like again.

May he rest in peace and rise in glory. And may God bless the memory of Larry Walker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a Marine, a public servant, a friend, and a man who has carried a sacred trust for more than three decades--the Honorable Ed Harbison, the Dean of the Georgia State Senate, who is retiring after thirty-four years of faithful service to the people of the 15th Senate District. This evening, at the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia, the people he has served for a lifetime will gather to thank him.

Mr. Speaker, before Ed Harbison ever cast a vote beneath the Gold Dome, he wore the uniform of the United States Marine Corps. He went to Vietnam. He bled for this country and came home with the Purple Heart. I say this first because it explains everything that came after. The young man who was willing to give his life for strangers would spend the rest of it giving his days for his neighbors. Service was never a slogan to Ed Harbison. It was a wound he carried and a vow he kept.

I know this seat that Ed has held, Mr. Speaker, because I once held it myself. When the people of Georgia sent me to this House in 1993, I left behind the 15th District seat in the Georgia Senate. I did not leave it to chance. I left it to Ed Harbison--and for thirty-four years, the people of West Central Georgia have been the better for it. He took the work and he never put it down. He became the longest- serving member of that chamber, its Dean, the man other senators turned to when they needed wisdom, steadiness, and a conscience in the room.

And what he built will outlast us all. It was Ed Harbison who carried the legislation making Georgia a Purple Heart State, so that no veteran's sacrifice would go unmarked. It was Ed Harbison who established a separate Veterans Court, so that the men and women who served would be met with understanding instead of indifference. It was Ed Harbison who founded the Georgia Military Veterans Hall of Fame, an institution of which he is himself a proud member. He championed a preference in state contracting for businesses owned by disabled veterans, and he fought to see that veterans received fair academic credit for the training and sacrifice of their military service. As Chairman of the Senate Committee on State Institutions and Property, as Vice-Chairman of the Veterans, Military, and Homeland Security Committee, and as a former Chairman of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, he was a careful steward of the public trust and a steady voice for those too often unheard. And before he ever reached the Gold Dome, he gave his community his service as a broadcast journalist, as second vice-president of the Muscogee County School Board, and on the Columbus Charter Review Commission.

But perhaps the truest measure of Ed Harbison is found not in the grand bills but in the quiet ones. In 2008, he sponsored a law to cut through the red tape that punished the children of militaIy families, boys and girls who, through no fault of their own, were uprooted from state to state and made to start over again and again. Ed Harbison saw those children, and he wrote a law so moving would not cost them their education He authored the legislation consolidating Chattahoochee County and Cusseta, strengthening the very ground his people stand on. He fought for the emergency call boxes installed along Interstate 85 from LaGrange to Columbus--a small thing, until it is your family stranded on the side of the road, and then it is everything. That was Ed Harbison: always thinking of the traveler in the dark, the soldier far from home, the child who needed someone in his corner. Mr. Speaker, the people of Chattahoochee, Macon, Marion, Schley, Talbot, Taylor, and Muscogee Counties did not have a senator who simply represented them; they had one who belonged to them. Ed once said the lesson he lived by came from his mother, who told him to do unto others as he would have them do unto him. For thirty-four years, he did exactly that--quietly, faithfully, without ever needing the credit.

Mr. Speaker, no account of this good man would be complete without the family he built and the love that has held him. Ed shared his life and his calling with his beloved late wife, Cecilia, whose love and steadfastness sustained him through every long session and every hard- fought campaign. Though she is no longer with us, her spirit has walked beside him in all of it, and I have no doubt she looks upon him with pride today. And anyone who knows Ed Harbison knows the love he carries for his son, Edward. Above every title he has earned 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 measure of him is the love he gives his family and by that measure, Ed Harbison is a rich man indeed.

There is a moment that comes to every man who has given his life to service, when he must finally lay the work down and trust others to carry it forward, Ed Harbison has reached that moment, and he reaches it with his head high. He has called his time in the Senate the greatest honor of his life. Mr. Speaker, the honor was ours. The honor belonged to every child whose family was made stronger, every veteran who was finally seen, every neighbor who knew that somewhere under the Gold Dome there was a man who would do right by them when no one was watching.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues in the United States House of Representative to join my wife Vivian and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District in honoring the remarkable service of State Senator Ed Harbison. I thank Ed for the wounds he carried and the country he served, I thank him for the seat he tended and the trust he kept. I thank him for thirty-four years of doing unto others. May God bless him, may God bless Georgia, and may He grant him the long, peaceful rest he has so richly earned. Ed Harbison completed his service well done. Well done.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 8646. As ranking member of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, I am deeply disappointed by this bill because it fails every American who relies on us for safe food and medicines, resilient farmlands, and vital rural infrastructure.

The FY 2027 House Agriculture appropriations bill is 4 percent below the FY26 enacted levels, a cut of $1.1 billion. It makes substantial reductions across rural development, farm production and conservation, nutrition, and foreign aid programs.

Most notably, House Republicans are proposing to drastically reduce fruit and vegetable benefits for 5 million low-income women, infants, and children in the WIC program. With funding for WIC below 2026 and rising food costs, the National WIC Association says it is quite possible that State agencies will have to turn away eligible families for the first time in 30 years.

To my Republican colleagues and the American people, I ask, does this make sense? Do we not want fresh and healthy food for women, infants, and schoolchildren? Do we want to keep turning this country back instead of moving it forward?

While there is an unauthorized war in Iran, a single week's spending for the war could fully fund WIC for almost an entire year. What is worse, the Department of Defense admits that 25 percent of our servicemembers and military families do not have access to sufficient quality food to meet their basic needs.

The majority is willing to spend billions of dollars overseas but not willing to feed the American troops fighting the war?

This bill not only hurts those struggling to afford to put food on the table, but it also hurts our farmers. There were 46 percent more farm bankruptcies in 2025 than the year before, and the issue is getting worse. USDA's own economists expect farm income to decline by $4.1 billion from 2025 to 2026.

Just as our producers are getting hit with increased fuel and input costs from this unauthorized war and chaotic tariffs, this administration has gutted the experienced Federal workforce and shuttered offices when our producers and rural communities need them the most.

My colleagues and I across this country have gotten calls from farmers and ranchers who tell us that they are showing up to closed or understaffed Farm Service Agency, Rural Development, and Natural Resources Conservation Service offices. The staff they have worked with for years are disappearing, and the cuts to staffing in this bill at those very agencies will only make it harder for them to get the support that they need.

House Republicans also cut funding for water and wastewater grants for poor rural communities, slashing the programs by nearly 50 percent. These are basic human needs, quality-of-life necessities, and essential drivers for local job creation. There are still communities in rural areas across this country that don't have acceptable drinking or wastewater services that need these grants desperately.

This bill slashes rural broadband investments by 20 percent, rural business development grants by nearly 30 percent, and rural energy programs by 50 percent.

We cannot shut the door on our rural communities at a time when we need to do the opposite: invest in research at our land-grant universities and in rural development, preserve our farmland and forests, and ensure the safety of our food, medicine, and medical devices.

This bill is really about everyone. Everyone eats the food we produce. Everyone needs safe medicine and clean water. Everyone relies on affordable fuel and utilities. Unfortunately, the bill before us does not meet our country's needs.

The bill cuts funding for both the Office of Inspector General and the Office of Ethics at USDA, which are responsible for rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse. It slashes funding for the Office of Civil Rights. It nearly does away with the Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement, which means less transparency and less accountability to USDA stakeholders.

I appreciate very much the hard work of the Appropriations Committee staff and their ability to work so quickly after the much-delayed Presidential budget request. On the minority side, I thank Martha Foley, Marie

Gualtieri, and Alex Swann. For the majority, I thank Pam Miller, Elizabeth Dent, Judd Gardner, Nick Seelinger, and Sykes Connell.

I also appreciate my colleague, Dr. Harris, very much for agreeing to keep essential funding for rural housing, senior food aid, and the McGovern-Dole food assistance intact. It is simply unfortunate, though, that the bill does not extend the same benefits to nutrition assistance, food security initiatives, and USDA operations.

I am very appreciative of the conversations that we have been able to have with Chairman Harris and the hard work with Chairman Cole and Ranking Member DeLauro in trying to get to a point where we can do what we need to do for the American people through this funding bill.

At this time, I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill and look forward to working with both sides to craft a better bill for our constituents and the American people.

Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, the chairman has said that spending on WIC in 2026 was lower than in 2025. I point out that there was a government shutdown from October 1, 2025, to November 12, 2025. In October, faced with running out of funds, States asked infant formula companies to send out rebates faster so they could keep running their programs. Using the formula rebates made the average per-person food cost in October 2026 $9 lower than in 2025. But if you discount that month, the average monthly food cost in 2026 was higher than in 2025, not lower. We will do what we always do, and we will get the most accurate estimate for conference from the USDA, and we will use that number.

I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the distinguished ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee.

Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), who is the distinguished ranking member of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee and a member of the Agriculture Subcommittee.

Madam Chair, it is interesting, looking at the State of Missouri from which Mr. Alford resides, they will lose, in terms of wastewater, $5,567,000 under this bill as compared to last year. In the Fourth District of Missouri, he will lose $467,000.

Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Mrs. Fletcher).

Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bynum).

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I am really deeply disappointed in the bill. I am just reflecting on the reductions in this bill for rural water and waste disposal grants, 44 percent over last year.

If you look at what is happening with the chairman's district over in Maryland, the State of Maryland will lose $2.203 million for rural water and waste disposal grants and in the First District, it is $1.340 million of that.

The losses for rural energy for America and the REAP program are being cut 50 percent. That is really not doing right by our people in rural America. Being able to lower their energy costs, being able to help our farmers reduce the costs of their production, particularly at this time with the tremendous challenges that our farm communities are facing with costs, it just doesn't make sense to me.

At a time when our farmers are struggling, our rural communities are being left behind, and our families all across America are facing rising costs, this bill moves us in the wrong direction. We should be strengthening the programs that support agriculture, nutrition, and rural America, and we shouldn't be weakening them.

Mr. Chair, for these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill and to come together to work toward a measure that truly meets the needs of America's farmers, families, and our rural communities.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of the amendments. The amendments include bipartisan and noncontroversial proposals that have been agreed to by both sides. I support adoption of the amendments, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), my friend and fellow Blue Dog.

Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Sykes).

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez).

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a full heart to honor a man who has walked this earth for one hundred years--one hundred years of faith, family, perseverance, and love--my dear friend, Mr. James A. Bussey, Sr. On Saturday, May 30, 2026, family, friends, and a grateful community will gather at the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia, to celebrate a century of a life well lived. There are few honors in this chamber greater than the privilege of paying tribute to such a man.

David Viscott once wrote, ``The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.'' For one hundred years, James Bussey has been giving his gift away--quietly, faithfully, and with a joy that has touched everyone fortunate enough to cross his path.

James Andrew Bussey was born in the red clay of Harris County, Georgia in 1926, into a world that too often refused to see him for the remarkable man he would become. He graduated from Spencer High School in 1944 and earned his way to Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he studied for a year before marrying Ms. Marguerite Lindsey in 1947. Together they made their home in Columbus, Georgia, and together they built a life on faith and hard work.

To support his young family, James worked two jobs week after week, refusing to let his children inherit anything less than the best of him. But in those years, the cruelty of racism shadowed every effort he made. In 1957, hoping to find dignity for his labor, he packed his hopes and headed north to Washington, D.C., where he took a position at the Washington Hotel. There he discovered, with a quiet and aching grief, that his weekly paycheck was less than that of his White co- workers. He returned home to Georgia--not defeated, but determined.

What followed is the story of a man who refused to let bitterness take root where faith had been planted. James Bussey found work as a Mail Handler with the United States Postal Service, and he carried the mail of his neighbors with a pride that turned an ordinary job into a daily ministry. He sang as he walked the East Highland route--a route he loved because it carried him past the homes of his mother and grandmother. He stopped for those who could not read their own mail and read it aloud to them. He wrote letters back for those whose hands could no longer hold a pen. Each Christmas, his city honored him by inviting him to drive the postal vehicle in the Columbus Christmas parade, where children waved and neighbors smiled at the sight of a man they all knew and loved.

He retired from the Postal Service in 1976--but James Bussey was not finished. At an age when most men rest, he enrolled in college. In 1988, he walked across the stage at Columbus College to receive his Bachelor of Arts degree, fulfilling a dream that decades and circumstances had once placed out of reach. He became a proud brother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated, and to this day he lives by its call to brotherhood and service to all mankind.

Since the late 1940s, the pews of St. James AME Church have known the warmth of his voice. He serves as an officer, a faithful Son of Allen, and a soloist whose songs have lifted countless Sunday mornings toward heaven. He has welcomed visitors to his city as an Ambassador of the Columbus Visitors Bureau. He has graced the stages of the Liberty Theater, the Three Arts Theater, and the Columbus RiverCenter. And at one hundred years old, Mr. Speaker, James Bussey can still be found on the dance floor at the local senior center, ballroom dancing with a grace that puts younger men to shame.

With his late wife Marguerite, who preceded him in death, James was blessed with four children. He has known the particular sorrow that no parent should have to bear, having laid to rest his beloved son James Jr. and his cherished daughter Margaret--names he still speaks with tenderness, lives he still carries within his own. His daughter Janet and his son Michael remain to carry his name and his witness into another generation. He has been a grandfather and a great-grandfather, a brother in Christ, a neighbor, and a friend.

I have known James Bussey and his family for more than sixty years. In all that time,

through every season of my own life, I have never once known him to speak an unkind word, to turn away a soul in need, or to lose his faith in the goodness of God. He is, without exaggeration, one of the finest human beings I have ever had the privilege to know. Whatever I have learned in this life about quiet dignity, about endurance, about loving one's neighbor--I have learned in no small part from watching him live.

Our Lord said, ``He that is great among you shall be a servant, and he that is greatest among you shall be a servant unto all.'' For one hundred years, James Bussey has shown us what that scripture looks like when it puts on shoes and walks among us.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that my colleagues in the United States House of Representatives join my wife Vivian and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District, in extending our deepest love and warmest wishes to Mr. James A. Bussey, Sr., as he celebrates a full century of grace this Saturday at the Columbus Museum. May the God he has served so faithfully continue to bless him, to keep him, and to make His face shine upon him today, tomorrow, and for every precious day still to come.

Happy 100th Birthday, my dear friend. The world is a kinder place because you walked through it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heart that is heavy beyond measure, and yet overflowing with gratitude to a gracious God, to honor the life, the ministry, and the enduring legacy of a man I have been blessed to call my friend, my brother, my teacher, and my faithful companion for more than fifty years--the Reverend George Phillip Shoultz, Jr., of Columbus, Georgia. A home-going service to celebrate his remarkable life will be held on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at the Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church in Columbus, Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, when I think of George Shoultz, I do not think of his many accomplishments, though they were many. I think first of a friend. I think of a brother. I think of the man who, more than half a century ago, sat in the same Sunday School class with me at the Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church, and who one day, by God's providence, would rise from the pew beside me to stand at the front of the classroom as my Sunday School teacher. That is who George Shoultz was to me. He was the friend who became the teacher. The brother who became the shepherd. The companion who walked with me on every road I have ever traveled in public life.

Mr. Speaker, George was born on November 14, 1951, in Savannah, Georgia, the fourth of six children born to George Phillip Shoultz, Sr., and Cora Bell Shoultz. From his earliest days, he understood the meaning of hard work and family responsibility. Even as a young man at Tompkins High School, he worked to help support his family--a quiet sacrifice that would come to define his character. After graduation in 1969, he managed a Burger King and worked at Joe's Picnic, and he went on to study Accounting at Savannah State College, where, in a Sociology class in 1970, he met the love of his life. Miss Betty L. Martin. On July 29, 1972, George and Betty were joined in holy matrimony--a union that would last a lifetime and bless this world with three children. George, III, Brandi, and Geoffrey, and four beautiful grandchildren who were the very light of his eyes.

Mr. Speaker, George Shoultz was a businessman of rare vision. He climbed the ranks at Heykow, Inc., from a local store in Savannah to becoming a regional buyer and district manager. In 1975, he arrived in Columbus, Georgia, to serve as Managing Partner of the iconic Sol & Harry's menswear store. And on January 1, 1983, through grit, faith, and sheer determination, he and his family purchased that beloved institution outright. For more than four decades, G. Shoultz & Company has clothed the men of Columbus with dignity and distinction. He was named Outstanding Business of the Year by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1983, and Regional Retail Minority Entrepreneur in 1985. But ask anyone who walked into his store, and they will tell you-- George did not just sell suits. He extended credit when a young man could not afford one for a job interview. He prayed with customers who were grieving. He turned his clothing store into a ministry of dignity.

Mr. Speaker, our friendship was forged in the house of the Lord. For more than twenty years, George and I worshiped together at Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church in Columbus, Georgia. We sat in the same pews. We sang from the same hymnal. We sang and travelled with the choir. We bowed our heads in the same prayers. We sat in the same Sunday School class, week after week, year after year, opening the Word of God together. And there came a day when the Lord raised up our beloved George to teach that very class--and I, who had sat beside him as a fellow student, now sat as his student. He taught the Scriptures the way he lived them: with reverence, with humility, with conviction, and with a love so deep you could feel it in every word he spoke. I am a better man because George Shoultz shared with me the Word of God. I am a better servant of people because of what I learned saw in George.

Mr. Speaker, our bond was woven through every chapter of our lives. He trusted me as his attorney, as I had the honor of representing him and his family in matters of business and matters of life. He trusted me with his counsel; I trusted him with my soul. There are not many men in this world whom you could trust unconditionally. George Shoultz was such a man. We watched each other's hair turn gray, and we thanked God for every gray strand of it.

Mr. Speaker, when I first stepped into the arena of public service in 1976, seeking election to the Georgia State House of Representatives, George Shoultz was there. He was a young businessman then. I was a young lawyer. And he stood beside me--not because he had anything to gain, but because he believed. He believed in the calling. He believed in the work. He believed that representation mattered. And from that very first campaign, in 1976, all the way through every election I have ever waged--every State House race, every State Senate campaign, every single congressional election from my first run in 1992 to this very day--George Shoultz was there. Not for a season. Not for a cycle. For a lifetime.

Mr. Speaker, during my very first campaign for the United States Congress in 1992, George Shoultz served as my Transportation Coordinator--the man who organized and directed our fleet of volunteer drivers to take me from town to town as I campaigned to become the congressman from the 2nd Congressional District of Georgia. And he dispatched them by phone from his counter at Sal and Harry.

And how we would talk politics, Mr. Speaker. How we would talk. On the phone late into the evening, over coffee in Columbus, on the church steps after Sunday service, at the back counter of Sol & Harry's with a customer waiting--George had a mind that was sharp as a blade and a heart that was tender as a child's. He understood the long arc of the moral universe, and he believed, as Dr. King believed, that it bends toward justice. But he also knew that it does not bend on its own. He believed it must be pulled, prayed over, and pushed by faithful hands. His hands were among the most faithful I have ever known. He served as Captain of the Dimon Precinct for Mayor Bill Feighner. He worked tirelessly for Councilman Nathan Suber. He stood with Reverend Jesse Jackson, and on the night this Nation elected Barack Obama as President of the United States. George Shoultz and I wept together as men who had lived to see what our fathers and mothers had only dared to dream. In 1991, he joined the bus ride through Forsyth County--an act of moral courage that I shall never forget so long as I draw breath.

Mr. Speaker, above every title George Shoultz ever earned in business or in civic life, he wore one with greater pride than all the rest: servant of the Most High God. Ordained to the ministry in the late 1990s, Reverend Shoultz served Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church in nearly every capacity a man can serve--as Deacon, as Sunday School Teacher and Superintendent, as Chairman of Transportation, as Chairman of Mission, as overseer of the church's radio ministry that carried the Word of God across the airwaves of Georgia on JOY FM and FOXIE 105. He served in the Inspirational Choir, the Evangelism Ministry, the Benevolence Ministry, and the Stewardship Ministry. He also served as Associate Pastor of Spirit, Truth, and Liberty Ministries International. There was no task too small, no hour too late, no soul too lost for Reverend Shoultz to serve.

Mr. Speaker, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once preached words that could have been written about my friend George Shoultz:

``Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You

don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have

to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You only

need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.''

--Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., February 4, 1968

Mr. Speaker. that was George Shoultz. A heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. He never sought greatness, and yet greatness found him--because he gave himself away in service to others, day after day, year after year, for a lifetime.

Mr. Speaker, there is a particular ache that comes when you lose a friend you have

known across the long arc of a lifetime. It is the ache of fifty years of memories. It is the ache of remembering a young man sitting beside you in a Sunday School class and knowing that the seat will be empty now. It is the ache of picking up the phone to call him with news, only to remember that he has gone home. It is the ache of every campaign yet to come, every election night yet to be, every Sunday service--and knowing that George Shoultz will not be there. But, Mr. Speaker, I take comfort in this: he will be there in spirit. He will be there in every Scripture I remember from Sunday School. He will be there in every pew at Fourth Street where his prayers still linger like incense. He will be there in the laughter of his grandchildren. He will be there.

His beloved wife of more than fifty years, Betty--walked every step of this journey by his side, from a Sociology class at Savannah State College in 1970 to the threshold of eternity--my heart is broken with hers. To his children, George, III, Brandi, and Geoffrey; to his precious grandchildren, George, IV, Emira, Lydia Grace, and Amira; to his surviving siblings; and to his Fourth Street Missionary Baptist Church family who loved him so well--I offer my deepest condolences and the prayers of a grateful Nation. Their loss is immeasurable. But take comfort, dear ones, in the promise we read in 2nd Timothy: he has fought the good fight, he has finished the course, he has kept the faith. And henceforth, there is laid up for him a crown of righteousness.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to join my wife Vivian and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District in honoring the life and legacy of the Reverend George Phillip Shoultz, Jr. I have lost more than a friend. I have lost a Sunday School teacher who opened the Scriptures to me. I lost a client who trusted me with his affairs. I lost a campaign warrior who carried me from the State House to the U.S. House across fifty years and countless elections. I lost a brother who walked with me through every season of my life. Columbus lost a pillar. Georgia lost a giant. The Kingdom of God gained a saint. I ask my colleagues to join me today in honoring the extraordinary life of Reverend George Phillip Shoultz, Jr.--a husband, a father, a grandfather, a businessman, a deacon, a minister, a teacher, a freedom fighter, and, to me, simply, my beloved friend.

Well done, my, brother. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. May he rest now, in the arms of the Savior he served so faithfully. Until that great gettin' up morning--until we meet again on that beautiful shore--rest, dear friend. Rest.