following in the footsteps of great leaders before him, sam rayburn, john quincy adams, carl vincent, it is now don's solemn duty to help foster a climate of civility in the congress and to hold our colleagues accountable. why are you laughing, don? for the behavior of raising a high standard for this body. i told don i will tell you this story when i just congratulated him. don has been very helpful to us army post from an to a kind of national park. i hope you consider that part of your legacy that you were part of establishing that in san francisco. i am ready to welcome you anytime you are ready for that, don. but in the course of our conversations over those times, i noticed one day that don had on this beautiful tie. it had like a bald eagle. it had a baby seal. it had these beautiful animals on it. and i said, oh, don, what a lovely, beautiful environmental tie you have on. e said, i call it lunch. again, we know that don young will always honor the important obligations as he always has and now his new obligations as dean of the house of representatives. that's historic. congr

ask you, you were 10 or 11 when you went to the funeral of sam rayburn. you mentioned your dad was involved in politics. do you remember that? secretary perry: oh, yeah. i never met a republican or anybody that would admit to be until i was in my 20's, after i -- i really didn't pay to politics, you know, going through, my dad was a county commissioner. we were democrats. again, the first republican was in in my home county 1990 when i ran for agriculture my wifeoner and organized the republican primary. a part of texas texas-- and just knowing history, the whole secession the united states, the reconstruction -- republicans were not very well texas. of in ronald reagan made ok to be a republican. a huge fan ofwas ronald reagan's. was really -- there just weren't any republicans. fan of samas a big rayburn's. selflesst he was a public servant and when he died he said, you know what, we're ourg to load up and go pay respects to a great texan, great public servant so we hopped in, i don't know, in 1961, whatever we were driving. like a 1959as chevrolet as i

following in the footsteps of great leaders before him, sam rayburn, john quincy adams, carl vincent, it is now don's solemn duty to help foster a climate of civility in the congress and to hold our colleagues accountable. why are you laughing, don? for the behavior of raising a high standard for this body. i told don i will tell you this story when i just congratulated him. don has been very helpful to us army post from an to a kind of national park. i hope you consider that part of your legacy that you were part of establishing that in san francisco. i am ready to welcome you anytime you are ready for that, don. but in the course of our conversations over those times, i noticed one day that don had on this beautiful tie. it had like a bald eagle. it had a baby seal. it had these beautiful animals on it. and i said, oh, don, what a lovely, beautiful environmental tie you have on. e said, i call it lunch. again, we know that don young will always honor the important obligations as he always has and now his new obligations as dean of the house of representatives. that's historic. congr

whole situation, to me, is the fact that when they came to harry truman, he was having drinks with sam rayburn at the white house, and they said you must go to the white house immediately, it's a crisis. very important, don't tell anyone. he got there, he was brought in to eleanor, and she took his hand and said, harry, the president is dead, you're now the president. and trueman, being as decent -- truman being as decent a guy as he was said to her, mrs. roosevelt, is there anything i can do for you? and he said, harry, is there anything i can do for you? you're the one in trouble now. [laughter] so these were two lovely, decent people with hard edges too, see? >> alma, in the front row. >> i grew up in the era of -- [inaudible] how did people feel at that time in realtime? they adored him, they worshiped him. he was the father of america. and his dignity, his voice perhaps not having, not having the benefit of television -- >> no. >> -- and all the high-tech stuff that we have now. i had never -- when he died, i remember i felt that i had lost as did everyone i knew had lost a grandfather. a

the center of things and a measure of that situation to me, when they came to harry truman, with sam rayburn at the white house, you must go to the white house immediately, don't tell anybody, and took his hand and said you are now the president and being as decent a guy as he was, said to her mrs. roosevelt is there anything i can do for you? she said is there anything i can do for you? you are the one in trouble now. these were different people. the part i just took. >> i grew up in the era of franklin roosevelt's. how did people feel at that time? >> they adored him, worshiped him, the father of america and his dignity, his voice, not having the benefit of television and high tech stuff we have now. when he died, i felt i had lost as did everyone i knew had lost a grandfather, only 63. he had so adored, so idolized -- the same situation arose with president kennedy. in the spirit of patriotism, caring about america, how do you compare the two people, it was devotion, what was it about those two men, after the entire nation. >> so important, saw these men and leaders, some concern, the wel

basically he spent this time in washington in the subterranean office of sam rayburn, the democratic speaker of the house, drinking bourbon. and it was at one such gather gathering he got a call from the white house to come, and he had no idea what this was because he was rarely summoned to the white house, and he went to the white house and when he won't home tot evening to his small apartment on connecticut avenue, he was president of the united states. now, harry truman, interesting -- here you see him being sworn in. harry truman faced his great conundrum. the war was winding down. would soon be over. we solved the depression by going to war. now the war was over. are we going to back into depression? so he wanted to gear up to gipp up government to make certain that we wouldn't get back into depression. we had the g.i. bill, which allowed 8 million to 9 million servicemen to go to college. took them out of the employment ranks. also for -- we began to shift to a more knowledge economy, health by the depression and war, but that would become more and more prominent in the 1950s a