It was a great honor to sit on the House Transportation Committee when Jim Oberstar was its chairman.
Chairman Oberstar, who passed away Saturday, served on the committee from the beginning of his congressional career in 1974 until he left Congress in 2011.
He was a personal mentor and a devoted friend to me. Even more important, he played a critical role in nearly every piece of transportation legislation enacted into law during his tenure. Transportation programs, railways, highway, water infrastructure, the Coast Guard and maritime projects all have the imprint of Chairman Oberstar on them.
Of particular significance to North Texas was a victory he helped orchestrate in 2007. President George W. Bush had vetoed a water resources bill that contained funds for repairing infrastructure in Dallas necessary to prevent serious damage if the Trinity River flooded. It was Chairman Oberstar, despite being absent from the chamber because of surgery, whose passion fueled our efforts to lead a bipartisan movement that culminated in Bush’s veto being overridden.
Chairman Oberstar was a thoughtful policymaker — one who spoke six foreign languages fluently — and his impact on transportation and infrastructure issues reached beyond the shores of our country.
While chairman, he appointed me to chair the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. With that appointment, I became the first woman and the first African-American to head the subcommittee. I learned much of what I know about the difficult and arduous issues that the committee concerns itself with while serving under the leadership of this man, who was one of the most thoughtful and fair-minded committee leaders in congressional history.
Minnesota sent Chairman Oberstar to Washington for 18 terms, and his long tenure afforded him exceptional power and influence. An unwavering Democrat, he was nonetheless able to work with members on both sides of the aisle. His personal friends included Democrats and Republicans alike.
He credited his way of doing business and his ability to work with others of divergent views to his mother, a former factory worker, and his father, a mine union organizer who devoted much of his time to fighting for worker safety and increased wages.
Chairman Oberstar never lost the common touch. He believed that at the core of the American economy were the people who needed to travel safely each day from their homes to their places of employment and back. Those people needed safe roads, tunnels, highways, bridges and modes of transportation that they could rely upon.
He worked very hard to ensure that safety. And for that, all Americans, whether they knew him or had never uttered his name, owe Chairman Oberstar a tremendous debt of gratitude. He served all of us, and he served us with distinction and grace. May God rest his soul.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News
