Former Congressman Vern Ehlers dead at 83

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A congressman who served Kent, Barry and Ionia counties for nearly two decades has died.

Former U.S. Rep. Vern Ehlers passed away Tuesday, according to a  Wednesday news release from a former staffer. He was 83 years old.

Ehlers represented the 3rd Congressional District from December 1993 until he retired in January 2011.

“The one thing I will remember is Vern would walk over the House  floor to cast a vote and he’d still be reading, learning everything he  could about a bill to make sure that he’s going to go and cast the right  vote,” Chris Barbee, who served as Ehlers’ press secretary for years,  told 24 Hour News 8. “Head down — there would be times where he’d walk  out in the street to head over the Capitol, not paying attention to the  signs. I’m like, ‘Vern, you can’t walk out there like that!’ But again,  he was trying to get as much information as he could so that he could  make the right decision for the people of the 3rd District. And that’s  who he was.”

Before going to Congress, Ehlers was a four-term member of the Kent  County Board of Commissioners, spent two years serving in Michigan’s  House and eight years in the state Senate.

Ehlers also worked as a nuclear physicist and college professor,  according to the Wednesday news release. That carried over into his  public service as he used his knowledge and teaching skills to explain  complex issues to those he represented.

While in Congress, he chaired the STEM Education Caucus — then an  idea that was new to many but now a plan championed in most educational  arenas to increase learning in science, technology, engineering and  math.

“The thing about Vern is … the guy had a great sense of humor,”  Barbee said. “In fact, I was in charge in DC of his joke file so that he  could have good jokes for his speeches. That was the human side of  Vern, that he could give you every chemistry equation in the book, but  he could also laugh and have a good time and be the boss that he was — a  great boss.”

Ehler’s efforts to get a more equitable share of transportation  funding back to Michigan was a mainstay of his tenure in Washington. The  Amtrak station that opened in Grand Rapids in 2014 bears his name.

Lesser known, perhaps, was Ehlers’ involvement in bringing the U.S.  House into the information age. He worked on the House Administration  Committee to bring the internet to Capitol Hill offices and helped  create a website for the Library of Congress that allows anyone to look  up legislation that Congress is working on.

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