Memorial Addresses Remarks by Representative Hope Of Kansas Mr. SPEAKER: In the death of ULYSSES SAMUEL GUYER this House lost one of its ablest and most beloved Members. All of us who worked and served with him during his years in this body lost a great and dear friend. Mr. GUYER was a statesman, a great orator, an able legislator, and an accomplished scholar. He was gifted in many ways but perhaps his greatest gift was his gift for friendship. He loved people. That is one reason for his outstanding success as an educator in his early life. It accounted for much of his political success. Everywhere he went he made friends. He not only made them, but kept them. This Mr. GUYER'S father was a minister of the Gospel. meant, as is frequently the case, that the family lived in a number of different communities while Mr. GUYER was a youth. To his dying day he retained friendships with people whom he had known and met in those communities where his father had preached. In his young manhood Mr. GUYER was for 5 years principal of the high school at St. John, Kans., in my congressional district. Those years meant a great deal to him. The associations which he formed then with his pupils and their parents were lifelong. Notwithstanding the fact that he left St. John more than 40 years ago and never returned there to live, he always seemed to regard that spot as home, and it was his expressed wish that he be buried in the cemetery there by the side of his parents. I doubt if any teacher ever took more genuine interest in his pupils not only while they were in school but throughout their lives than did Mr. GUYER. Until his last illness he kept in close and constant touch with all of his former pupils, some of whom were scattered to the far ends of the earth. With many of them he carried on a regular correspondence and he shared their sorrows and joys as only a friend could do. Mr. GUYER's sincere affection for the beautiful little city of St. John and its people reflected the simplicity, friendliness, and goodness of his nature. These qualities were readily apparent to all of those with whom he was associated. Mr. GUYER and I came to the Seventieth Congress together. Previously he had served during a part of the Sixty-eighth Congress as the successor to his friend and fellow townsman, Col. E. C. Little. Before coming to Congress my acquaintance with Mr. GUYER had been slight. I soon learned to know him and love him, and as the years went on our friendship became stronger and dearer. I often sought his advice and counsel, which was always freely and unselfishly given. Mr. GUYER was an authority on the history of Kansas and the United States. He was exceedingly well versed in world history. He revered his country and its institutions. He was an authority on the Constitution. During the last years of his service here he took a great interest in the painting by Howard Chandler Christy entitled "The Signing of the Constitution of the United States." That picture was painted in Washington and while the work was in progress there was hardly a day in which Mr. Guyer did not visit the studio. When the painting was unveiled he was one of the speakers and delivered a masterly address. Mr. GUYER was a great orator in every sense of the word. He was a moral crusader. Yet, he was never a fanatic nor a crank. He sincerely believed in national prohibition and devoted many of the best years of his life to fighting for it. He was a strong advocate of woman's suffrage when the issue was not popular. Yet, no matter how controversial the issue, Judge GUYER retained the friendship and respect of his opponents. His kindly, friendly nature made it impossible that it could be otherwise. Above all, Mr. GUYER was a Christian gentleman. His early environment of plain living, and high thinking, as the son of a minister of the gospel influenced his entire life. After his father's death his devotion to his mother was outstanding and characteristic. In 1919 Mr. GUYER was married to Della Alforetta Daugherty. His home life was happy and congenial. Mrs. Guyer was an ideal helpmeet, taking an interest in all of his political and legislative activities. To her goes our deepest sympathy in her loss and bereavement. Mr. HOPE. Mr. Speaker, under leave to extend my remarks, I include a copy of the eulogy delivered by Hon. Clyde M. Reed, United States Senator from Kansas, at the funeral services for our late colleague, ULYSSES S. GUYER, at St. John, Kans., on Tuesday, June 8, 1943: EULOGY BY SENATOR REED It is the custom of the Congress of the United States to do honor to those of its Members who die while in service, and the custom is that Members of both Houses shall accompany the mortal remains of the departed Member to the place of his final interment. And so, I come here in company with your own Congressman, Clifford Hope; with the Congressman from the Emporia district, Mr. Rees; the Congressman from Oklahoma, to the south of you, Mr. Rizley; the Congressman from Colorado, Mr. Chenoweth; and my colleague, Senator Butler, of Nebraska. We brought back the remains of your friend, who was once your close neighbor. There must be a something about communities as there is about individuals. Communities have individuality and characteristics as like and as unlike each other as humans are like and unlike each other. Judged by appearance and contact, and our knowledge of Mr. GUYER, St. John must be an unusual place, a community with its own individuality. In all of the years that I have known him I can't recall a conversation with him of more than, we'll say, 10 minutes, but that he mentioned St. John and his years here in St. John. I think that is a common experience among his friends. He didn't live here many years, yet the years that he did live here seem to have left a deeper impression upon his character and personality, and certainly upon his thoughts, than the years he lived in any other place. It must be an unusual community that can do that to any man. I believe this town was named after a former Governor of Kansas, John P. St. John. Governor St. John came to fame and remained in memory principally because of his vigorous advocacy of that one principle in Kansas from which there has never been any formal and official variation in the last 60 years. That is the principle of prohibition. It was his favorite subject. As the town of St. John was the favorite conversation piece for Mr. GUYER, prohibition, perhaps, was his favorite subject for public addresses. I don't think he ever missed an opportunity to talk about prohibition. So, again I think of Mr. GUYER in his career, in his individuality, coming back to Kansas, to St. John, and to the individuality of a different community. We brought back your friend, a kindly man. I should say kindliness and friendliness and sincerity were his distinguishing characteristic. There are those of us who may have been, and are, impelled by motives of combat or self-interest or ambition, but here was a man whose guiding qualities of life were friendly services. He never was too busy to be friendly. He never forgot to be kind. These qualities are, I think, rather distinguishing characteristics of the community of which he was so fond, and of which he so proudly claimed to be a part. In the last two days, his colleagues, including myself, have traveled half across a continent to bring him back to you. We left a pulsing crowd, a tense city, the Capital of this country, and by virtue of that, the Capital of the World. The Capital of this country is the stage on which there is being hammered out the destiny of the world. It is a crowded, tense, forum across whose stages are walking the most powerful characters in current history. In these two days, my colleagues and myself, with what is mortally left of ULYSSES SAMUEL GUYER, have come to this peaceful place; quiet and lovely; a land of far horizons where the landscape continually unrolls until it meets the bending sky, a contrast in every way, mentally, spiritually, and in the physical aspect, from those scenes we left two days ago. A modern master of English has described that contrast in language, which so well befits the occasion, and the man we brought back to you, and the difference between these two worlds, that I shall repeat these words of Kipling: "The tumult and the shouting dies; Remarks by Representative Springer Of Indiana Mr. SPEAKER: With a deep sense of the great personal loss that we have sustained, I rise to add by humble tribute to the life, character, and achievements of my warm and devoted friend, the late ULYSSES SAMUEL GUYER, of Kansas. I express my deep gratitude for this high privilege of expressing by testimony the very high esteem and the deep and abiding affection with which our colleague of former days was held by the Members of the House of Representatives, and with that treasured memory I speak these few chosen words of my colleague. May I say that Judge GUYER, as we affectionately called him, was a good citizen, an outstanding American patriot, an outstanding statesman, and a fine and loyal friend. Representative GUYER was born in Indiana. Later, with his parents, he went to Kansas where he grew into manhood; there he attended the public schools, and there he met and knew the people; he loved the people of his great State, and there he became a teacher, a lawyer, the mayor of his great city and later the people sent him as their representative in the National Halls of Congress. I first met him, when I came to Congress, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, in the House. In our work on that committee we became fast friends. Quite soon I recognized in him those rare qualities which especially appeal to us; he was a man of high character, whose honesty and sincerity of purpose was never doubted. I knew him in those intimacies of a favored friend, in which those closer contacts are forever reserved for but a few, and I knew him in the stress of turmoil and anguish when the constant concern was that our country survive, and that our people go forward as a free and enlightened race. His constant endeavor was to aid all |
