Murphy on the U.S. Senate Floor: When They Made Edith Prague, They Broke the Mold

Press Release

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Friday honored the life and legacy of Edith Prague, the former commissioner of aging and a member of the Connecticut Senate and House of Representatives who passed away on Thursday. Murphy and Prague served in the Connecticut State Senate together.

"When they made Edith Prague, who died Thursday at the age of 96, they broke the mold. I am confident of this because in my 48 years on this earth I have never ever met another person like her. I knew Edith Prague as my colleague in the Connecticut State Senate, where she served from 1994-2012, retiring as the oldest member of that chamber at age 86," Murphy said. "She was a friend of mine and a mentor. She modeled a form of public service for me that I will be eternally grateful for. There was no one in Connecticut public life as persistent, as dogged, as forceful as Edith Prague. She woke up every day thinking about the plight of workers, the poor, and the elderly."

"And she did all of this with her trademark wide-grin smile, her big laugh. She was a consummate pain in the ass, but everybody loved her because though she worked on issues with such gravity and seriousness and controversy, she brought such transparent outward joy to her work. She knew she was a pain, and she chuckled when people tried to push her aside because she just knew she would outlast them," Murphy said.

Murphy continued: "I think about her a lot when I work on the issue of gun violence. It wasn't one of the issues that drove Edith, but some days it's hard to keep going on an issue like this when so little progress is being made nationally. But then I think of Edith who never ever gave up when a thing was the right thing to do in her mind. And her memory will keep me going, and I know it will keep a lot of other people going in Connecticut who knew her."

"Edith was one of a kind and the impact she left on people who knew her, like me, and the people who never met her, like those she fought for, is indelible," Murphy concluded.

Click here to watch Murphy's floor speech in full.

"When they made Edith Prague, who died Thursday at the age of 96, they broke the mold. I am confident of this because in my 48 years on this earth I have never ever met another person like her. I knew Edith Prague as my colleague in the Connecticut State Senate, where she served from 1994-2012, retiring as the oldest member of that chamber at age 86.

"She was a friend of mine and a mentor. She modeled a form of public service for me that I will be eternally grateful for. There was no one in Connecticut public life as persistent, as dogged, as forceful as Edith Prague. She woke up every day thinking about the plight of workers, the poor, and the elderly. She had an acute sense of the injustice done to those who labored in difficult jobs, those making poverty wages, and those people who were living on fixed incomes. And when she believed that a cause was right, she would not back down.

"In 1991, Governor Lowell Weicker hired her to be his Commissioner of Aging and then a year later he fired her because when he told her that she needed to fold her agency into a bigger department to save money, she refused. When she was elected to the State Senate, she was a tireless worker, a fighter for workplace safety laws, for raising the minimum wage, and for elderly nutrition programs.

"When she believed that a cause was just, nothing could stop her. She was relentless. I remember sitting in these closed-door Democratic caucus meetings with her, and she would introduce a bill at the beginning of the session, usually a bill way ahead of its time, expanding workers' rights or increasing supports for the elderly, and every week at every meeting, she would argue the case, and she wouldn't stop talking until she had persuaded at least one additional State Senator in the room to support her bill.

"At the beginning of the session, Senate leaders would tell her, no, Edith, we are not doing that bill this year, or we just can't afford it, and she just wouldn't listen. She never saw a stop sign. I've never seen anybody like this. She never saw a stop sign when there was something worthwhile to be done for the vulnerable. She would bring that bill up over and over and over again and eventually she would wear everybody down, and she would get it done.

"She was in her 70's when I met her, and she had twice as much energy and stamina as I did. She was a force of nature. The last major bill she passed, she was 86 years old, it was a landmark piece of legislation granting homecare workers the ability to organize and collectively bargain. She fought for the bill's uncertain passage all year, and then she stood on her feet for six hours defending it in a marathon Senate debate.

"And she did all of this with her trademark wide-grin smile, her big laugh. She was a consummate pain in the ass, but everybody loved her because though she worked on issues with such gravity and seriousness and controversy, she brought such transparent outward joy to her work. She knew she was a pain, and she chuckled when people tried to push her aside because she just knew she would outlast them.

"I learned so much from her. She took me under her wing, she treated me so kindly when I came to the Senate as a naive 29-year-old. She believed in me, and her confidence meant the world to me. Her energy and enthusiasm for the causes she worked on gave me energy and enthusiasm for the things that mattered to me.

"I think about her a lot when I work on the issue of gun violence. It wasn't one of the issues that drove Edith, but some days it's hard to keep going on an issue like this when so little progress is being made nationally. But then I think of Edith who never ever gave up when a thing was the right thing to do in her mind. And her memory will keep me going, and I know it will keep a lot of other people going in Connecticut who knew her.

"Longtime political reporter Mark Pazniokas, writes for the Connecticut Mirror, he wrote a beautiful story about Edith this week. And I'll close with what he wrote:

"Edith Prague did not go gentle, anywhere. She lived Dylan Thomas's poetry, his belief that "old age should burn and rave at close of day." She fought governors, fellow lawmakers and, most consistently, the notion of retirement, a status finally imposed on her by a confluence of strokes and concerns of family and physician.

""My only choice is to retire or drop dead. I have to retire. Believe me, I don't like it. That's my baby -- that department,' Prague told The Day of New London when she left state employment as the 88-year-old commissioner of aging in 2014. "Lots of people look forward to retirement, but I'm not one of them."

"Prague was 86 and the oldest member of the General Assembly when she announced she would not seek reelection to the Senate in 2012, a year in which she played a visible role in the abolition of the death penalty and took the lead on a bill that gave collective bargaining rights to certain home-care workers and daycare providers.'

"Edith was one of a kind and the impact she left on people who knew her, like me, and the people who never met her, like those she fought for, is indelible. I yield back."

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