Former U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative Claude Pepper was one of the longest serving members in the history of Congress. He was a respected champion of many values, especially of matters of the elderly.

He was so respected that he was one of a very select few non-Presidents to lay in state in the rotunda of the U. S. Capitol. Later I took a photo of him laying in state at the Florida Capitol. I saw numerous dignitaries leaving his funeral at the First Baptist Church in Tallahassee. Later there was a funeral in Miami, the district he represented in the House of Representatives.

The Pepper institute on Aging and Public Policy is on the campus of FSU with a bigger than life statue of him out front.