Vito Fossella

Madam Speaker, I submit the following:

Bill Number: H.R. 2638.

Account: Military Construction, Army Reserve National Guard.

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: New York National Guard.

Address of Requesting Entity: 330 Old Niskayuna Road, Latham, NY 12110.

Description of Request: $2.955 million will be used for the establishment of an additional Civil Support Team. This team, located within the New York City metropolitan area, ensures that the top terrorist target in the country, New York City, has an immediate and prepared asset, ready at a moments notice, if a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, high explosive, CBRNE, incident were to occur.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, it's been suggested that September 11 was a tragic day. Indeed it was. But the reality is there were thousands of individual tragedies that occurred.

Time has given us the perspective to look back and understand what really happened. It has given us the ability to look back and see how individual families have dealt with their loss. Staten Island and Brooklyn alone lost more than 300 people. If you go drive around the streets of Staten Island today, you will see street names with the names of those lost on September 11 as a constant reminder of the extent of the carnage and the damage.

I have been to memorial runs. I've seen scholarships offered in the names of the deceased. I've seen families try to tell their young children, who are probably too young at the time to understand, what it meant when Daddy wasn't coming home anymore, when Mom wasn't coming home. These children are at an age now that they can begin to appreciate that they'll never have a dad again. There were hundreds of them on Staten Island alone and thousands across the country of young children who lost their fathers and lost their mothers.

The role we have here is very simple, I think. That is to protect the American people and to ensure an attack like that never happens again. The most powerful way we can memorialize September 11, and as our own private thoughts and prayers and to offer to extend a helping hand to those in need, but as Members of Congress I think we have a solemn responsibility and duty to stand up against the evil, against our true enemies who want not to just destroy this country but our way of life, and forever may we remember those who paid so dearly with their lives on September 11, 2001.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a constituent who has faithfully served the people of Staten Island for many years, Dr. Ralph Messo.

Born on Staten Island in 1961, Dr. Messo was inspired by the compassion and caring nature of the physicians he encountered as a young boy. After graduating from Wagner College, Dr. Messo pursued and was awarded a degree in Osteopathic Medicine from the University of New England in 1989. Dr. Messo was drawn to osteopathic medicine and its holistic approach to treatment--care that extended beyond the patient to his or her entire family.

After medical school, Dr. Messo returned to New York to care for the residents of Staten Island. Over the years, he has earned the respect and gratitude of my constituents across the Island through his generous spirit, his caring nature and unyielding commitment to health care in the borough. Dr. Messo's gentle demeanor and reassuring tone provide comfort to all his patients--the new mothers and fathers struggling to navigate the sometimes choppy waters of parenthood . . . and seniors who may need extra reassurance and a sympathetic ear.

He is currently the president of the Richmond County Medical Society, serves as councilor to the American College of Physicians, is an attending faculty member at both of Staten Island's medical centers, and sits on the Medical Advisory Board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He served as the assistant director of the Internal Medicine/Pediatric residency program at Staten Island University Hospital from 1993-2007 and was recently appointed Adjunct Clinical professor at Tourocom, a new medical school in Harlem, New York. In addition, Dr. Messo has been given The Consumer's Research Council of America's ``Top Physician'' award, the Peter Barbero Humanitarian Award, and was named ``America's Top Pediatrician'' in 2007 and 2008.

Dr. Messo continues to give back to his profession, lending his years of experience to young medical students and residents--the physicians of tomorrow who work alongside him, share in his knowledge and learn that caring for a patient is as much about listening as it is about treating.

For his decades of service to the Staten Island community, I ask that my colleagues join with me in honoring Dr. Ralph Messo and thanking him for his dedication to health care.