Last WWII Veteran In Senate Dies: Frank Lautenberg 1924-2013

     I hope we can take a moment, in between the all of the shallow chatter about who will replace him, to pay some respect to a man who never forgot where he came from.  He had to support his family by working nights and weekends at the age of 19, after his father passed away from cancer.  He went to college on the GI Bill, which allowed for him to ultimately make a name for himself in business as a CEO.  It is those kinds of experiences that he brought to the Senate.  His understanding of opportunity was informed by the lasting memory of adversity overcome, rather than by some abstract ideal.  There is no ideological framework that can remain faithful to it.  He knew our understanding of opportunity must answer to the reality of those who attempt to meet it.  He stood at that door as an example of one of those who always made an effort to keep it open for the rest of us.  As the last World War II veteran in the Senate, his death marks the end of an era.  Dr. Samuel Johnson once remarked that coming into contact with your own mortality has a way of concentrating the mind.  The priorities of veterans like him, and others who served in that war, were born of that kind of concentration.  He will be missed.