The Hill News

Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), delivered remarks today on the House floor honoring the service of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

None of us on this Floor are talented enough to summon the rhetoric that all of us feel in our hearts. We have young men and women, arrayed on the fields in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other troubled spots in the world. They are fighting for freedom and democracy and too many of them are injured on those fields. Our beloved colleague, Gabrielle Giffords, was injured on the field in the exercise of that democracy. And in being injured, she has become an example for us, for all Americans, indeed all the world, of courage, of clarity of purpose, of grace, of responsibility, of a sense of duty which she exercises this day.

I love Gabby Giffords. I was honored when she first ran for office before she was elected, to go to her district, as I have done for so many others in this country, to stand by her side, to walk down the! streets of her community with her, to see in her the beauty not only of person. Many of us see the outward visage, but Gabby's beauty is in the heart, in the soul, in the spirit. The House of Representatives has been made proud by this extraordinary daughter of this House, who served so well during her tenure here, who felt so deeply about her constituents and cared so much for her country. Gabby, we love you. We have missed you.

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