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Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am delighted to have the chance to follow my senior Senator to add a few words about Bill Middendorf and celebrate the fact that the newest Arleigh Burke-class missile destroyer of the U.S. Navy will be named the USS J. William Middendorf.

Bill was Secretary of the Navy and U.S. Ambassador--a very distinguished career. If you go back to the time that he was Secretary of the Navy, the sequence was Paul Ignatius, who went on to become President of the Washington Post and an Assistant and Under Secretary of the Army; followed by John Chafee of Rhode Island, who went on to serve with great distinction in the U.S. Senate; followed by, if I recall correctly, John Warner, who became a very distinguished Senator representing Virginia; and then in that line came Ambassador Middendorf. So, clearly, the name selection follows an impressive tradition of service by some impressive Navy Secretaries.

Ambassador Middendorf was born in Baltimore, actually, and served in World War II as a naval engineer officer and navigator, and, after a successful business career, he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands in 1969 and then served as Under Secretary of the Navy.

In 1974, Ambassador Middendorf was appointed by President Nixon to serve as the 62nd Secretary of the Navy, and, in that capacity, he did something very important for Rhode Island, which was to champion the Navy's submarine program, including overseeing the creation of General Dynamics Electric Boat's Quonset Point location, a facility which Senator Reed has done so much to make a powerful economic engine in Rhode Island and a powerful shipbuilding facility to make sure that America's power overseas is at its apex.

This Quonset Point facility is a very important legacy, and I am delighted to join my senior Senator in wishing Ambassador Middendorf-- Secretary Middendorf--congratulations on the keel laying and, very soon, a happy 100th birthday.

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