EDITORIAL: Luminary Lantos: A great patriot retires
Manchester [New Hampshire] Union Leader, January 4, 2008
CALIFORNIA Democrat Tom Lantos announced Wednesday that he will retire from Congress at the end of his term to concentrate on the newest battle of his courageous career: fighting cancer. We received this news with sadness, yet we know that if anyone can go one on one with cancer and win, it is Lantos.
Few members of Congress have been as passionately pro-American as the remarkable Tom Lantos. At age 16 he fled the Nazis, twice escaping labor camps after the invasion of his native Budapest. After teaching economics for 30 years at San Francisco State University, in 1980 he decided to run for Congress against an incumbent Republican so formidable that no other Democrat would take him on.
Lantos won, and he's been a scourge of fascists, Communists, Islamic terrorists and other of America 's enemies ever since.
The first Holocaust survivor elected to Congress, Lantos brought a unique understanding to the debates over America's place in the world in the last three decades.
"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress," he said. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."
America should be grateful for the selfless and tireless work Tom Lantos has done on its behalf. We know that in addition to his public service he has raised his daughters to be proud patriots as well.
We thank Rep. Lantos for his many contributions to his country, and we pray that God's blessing extends to him and his family as they face this challenge.