Congratulating Romeo Lucchesi

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend Romeo Lucchesi, the Visual Information Specialist at the Lt. Col. Luke Weathers Jr. VA Medical Center in Memphis, for his successes in video marketing and film-making. Earlier this year, he won a Gold Aster Award for excellence in healthcare advertising for his special video production ``A Tribute to Lt. Col. Luke Weathers Jr.'' Earlier this year, he also won an Emmy Award for his documentary video essay ``The Green Beret Who Fought Muhammad Ali.'' Lt. Col. Luke Weathers, Jr. was a Tuskegee Airman from Memphis. During World War II, Weathers was credited with shooting down German planes while protecting U.S. Army Air Corps bombers. As a result of his stellar flying record, he earned an Air Medal with 7 Clusters, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the American Theater Ribbon Victory Medal WWII. After the War, he worked for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and eventually returned to Memphis, where he continued to support African Americans in the military, aviation, and elsewhere. Lt. Col. Weathers's inspirational story moved me to introduce legislation to rename the Memphis VA after him. Lucchesi produced a memorial video of Lt. Col. Weathers for a renaming ceremony of the Memphis VA Medical Center in July 2023. ``The Green Beret Who Fought Muhammad Ali'' tells the story of Memphis native Henry Hooper, a Booker T. Washington High school graduate who enlisted in the Marines and later joined the U.S. Army's Special Forces Green Berets. As a Green Beret, he was invited to the U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials in 1960 held at San Francisco's Cow Palace, where he sparred with Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, who won the Gold Medal in the light heavyweight division in the Rome Olympics later that year. Hooper describes the fight in the film, explaining that for a split second, he took his eyes off Ali, and got knocked down. Ali won the match on a technical knock out. Hooper spent 11 years on active duty, some of it in Vietnam, while Ali resisted the draft and was charged with draft evasion in a case later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Hooper later became a Secret Service agent and was assigned White House duty during the Carter Administration. At a state dinner to which Muhammad Ali had been invited, Ali approached Hooper saying he was sure they'd met before. Hooper said they'd met at the Cow Palace and they embraced. Hooper's colleagues asked about the encounter because they had never heard the story of the boxing match. As Hooper explains it, he didn't talk about it: ``I lost. I got beat . . . but he (Ali) remembered.'' Hooper, now a retired insurance agent in Memphis, is finally getting the adulation as a veteran that he deserves, and it is thanks to Mr. Lucchesi's talented filmmaking. The six-minute documentary can be viewed on the Medical Center's Facebook page. Romeo Lucchesi's talent is apparent, and I am pleased that he is working at the Lt. Col. Luke Weathers Jr. VA Medical Center, helping to tell the stories and honor those who have sacrificed to protect our freedoms. I congratulate him on his successes and look forward to seeing what else he has in store for us.

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