Political dignitaries from both sides of the aisle including former President Bill Clinton and former House Speaker John Boehner honored the life of the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, John Dingell, at a funeral mass in Washington on Thursday. Dingell represented Michigan’s 12th, 15th and 16th districts between 1955 and 2015.
Clinton and Boehner both delivered remarks at Dingell’s funeral, along with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
“He was a practitioner of what you might call ‘tough love,’” Boehner said about Dingell’s tendency to challenge leaders in the Republican Party and in his own party. He praised Dingell’s legislative record and his capacity for bipartisan leadership.
Clinton meanwhile joked to fellow public officials in attendance that “this is the only time in our entire lives of public service that we were in the same room with John Dingell and got the last word.”
“The thing I loved most about him was that he was a world-class doer,” Clinton said, praising Dingell’s knowledge that his time in Congress was “first and foremost a job.”
Dingell will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery in a private service on Friday.