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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