Edward J. Derwinski, first secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, dies
Edward J. Derwinski, a folksy Illinois Republican who served 12 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the first secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which became a Cabinet-level agency under President George H.W. Bush, died Jan. 15 at a health care facility in Oak Brook, Ill. He was 85.
He had Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare form of skin cancer, said his wife, Bonnie Derwinski.
During his quarter-century in Congress, Mr. Derwinski developed a following on Capitol Hill for his blunt-spoken demeanor and wardrobe of garishly colored sport coats. Im more comfortable at the [Veterans of Foreign Wars] in Joliet than at the Cosmos Club in Washington, he once said.
He also reveled in his familys Polish heritage. When John Paul II became the first pope to visit the White House in 1979, Mr. Derwinski, Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Maine.) and Rep. Clement J. Zablocki (D-Wis.) greeted the pontiff on the South Lawn by singing the traditional Polish folk song Sto Lat, which means live a hundred years.
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