Floor SpeechNeutral2026-09-08

HONORING COUNCILOR BRUCE H. HUFF, SR. ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE COLUMBUS CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT COUNCIL

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On 2026-09-08, Representative Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (D-GA-2) delivered a floor speech titled "HONORING COUNCILOR BRUCE H. HUFF, SR. ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE COLUMBUS CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT COUNCI" in the House.

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HONORING COUNCILOR BRUCE H. HUFF, SR. ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE COLUMBUS CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT COUNCIL

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 142 (Tuesday, September 8, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 142 (Tuesday, September 8, 2026)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E878-E879] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] HONORING COUNCILOR BRUCE H. HUFF, SR. ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE COLUMBUS CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT COUNCIL ______ HON. SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR. of georgia in the house of representatives Tuesday, September 8, 2026 Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a full heart to pay tribute to a friend of more than fifty years, and a man who has spent his entire life standing beside families on the hardest days they will ever know. On December 31, 2026, Councilor Bruce H. Huff, Sr., will conclude more than fifteen years of distinguished service as City Councilor for District 3 of the Columbus Consolidated Government. Columbus will be poorer for his leaving and richer for his having served. Mr. Speaker, I did not meet Bruce Huff at a ribbon cutting. I knew the Huffs long before there was a councilman among them. I knew his father, Charles E. Huff, Sr., and his mother, Malinda H. Huff--people of quiet dignity who built something in Columbus that money cannot buy and politics cannot manufacture. I have watched this family for half a century--through funerals and weddings, through campaigns and crises. When you have known a family that long, you stop grading them on their best day; you know what they are like on their worst day. And I can tell this House that the Huffs of Columbus, Georgia, are the same people in the daylight that they are in the dark. Bruce is the middle son, and the second-generation owner of International Funeral Home. Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to understand what that means in a Black community in the American South. The funeral director is not merely a businessman. He is the first to arrive when the worst thing has happened. He is the one who comes at two o'clock in the morning, who sits in the kitchen with a widow who does not yet know how she will pay for anything, who makes certain that a mother who had very little in this life is carried out of it with dignity. Bruce Huff has done that work for decades--not for applause, and often not for payment--because his father did it before him. That work shaped everything else. Bruce graduated from Hardaway High School in 1975 as an honor student and three-sport letterman, then earned his degree from Florida State University in 1980, lettering four years in baseball. Then he came home. Sitting with grieving families, he saw a need no one else was meeting. So, he became a licensed insurance agent, founded Huff's Insurance Service in 1987, and in 1992 merged it with the family funeral home so that no family would be left choosing between a decent burial and next month's rent. In 1996 he earned his degree from Gupton-Jones College of Funeral Service. To this day he works side by side with his brother, Charles E. Huff, Jr., carrying forward what their parents began. Mr. Speaker, a man who has spent his life burying his neighbors comes to public service with a different set of eyes. When Bruce Huff took his seat on that Council, he already knew District 3 by heart--every street, every corner, every family. For more than fifteen years he did the patient, unglamorous work of making his district a place where people could live well and not merely be laid to rest. The list is extraordinary. The Fort Benning Gateway at I-185 and Victory Drive. The Brown Avenue Bridge. The Follow Me Trail. Streetscapes on Wynnton Road, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, and on Fort Benning Road. The I-185 interchanges at Custer Road and at Cusseta Road. The Buena Vista Road Spiderweb and Corridor improvements. A new Spencer High School. The Muscogee County School District Athletic Complex. Hundreds of millions of dollars--but Mr. Speaker, Bruce Huff never talked about the money. He talked about the child who could finally walk to school on a sidewalk, the grandmother whose street no longer flooded, the young man who could reach a job because the road finally went through. And he gave himself away outside the Council chamber, too--at St. James AME Church, where he served on the Trustee Board; in Columbus State University's Teen Achievers Program; as president of Sally Little League, where he taught somebody else's boys how to hold a bat and how to lose with grace; in the Delta Iota Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated; and in Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons, Electric City Lodge No 322. He was named Mortician of the Year by the Georgia Funeral Service Practitioner Association in 2009--though every honor I have handed him felt small next to what he had already given. Mr. Speaker, none of it would have been possible without his family. Bruce is married to Charonda D. Huff, who has carried the weight of public life alongside him. They are the proud parents of two sons, Anthony and Bruce, Jr., and the doting grandparents of Denim. I want that grandson to know something one day, when he is old enough to read these words in the permanent record of the United States Congress: your granddaddy spent his life carrying other people's sorrow so they would not have to carry it alone. Bruce, you have wiped away a great many tears in Columbus, Georgia. Allow an old friend to shed a few on your behalf. You have earned your rest. But knowing you, I do not expect you to take much of it. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife, Vivian, and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's Second Congressional District in honoring Councilor Bruce H. [[Page E879]] Huff, Sr., for more than fifteen years of faithful service to District 3, and for a lifetime of quiet, sacred work on behalf of families in their darkest hours. May God bless him, his wife Charonda, their sons, their grandson, and the city that is better because Bruce Huff answered when he was called. ____________________

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HONORING COUNCILOR BRUCE H. HUFF, SR. ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE COLUMBUS CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT COUNCIL Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 142 (Tuesday, September 8, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 142 (Tuesday, September 8, 2026)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E878-E879] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] HONORING COUNCILOR BRUCE H. HUFF, SR. ON THE OCCASION OF HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE COLUMBUS CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT COUNCIL ______ HON. SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR. of georgia in the house of representatives Tuesday, September 8, 2026 Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a full heart to pay tribute to a friend of more than fifty years, and a man who has spent his entire life standing beside families on the hardest days they will ever know. On December 31, 2026, Councilor Bruce H. Huff, Sr., will conclude more than fifteen years of distinguished service as City Councilor for District 3 of the Columbus Consolidated Government. Columbus will be poorer for his leaving and richer for his having served. Mr. Speaker, I did not meet Bruce Huff at a ribbon cutting. I knew the Huffs long before there was a councilman among them. I knew his father, Charles E. Huff, Sr., and his mother, Malinda H. Huff--people of quiet dignity who built something in Columbus that money cannot buy and politics cannot manufacture. I have watched this family for half a century--through funerals and weddings, through campaigns and crises. When you have known a family that long, you stop grading them on their best day; you know what they are like on their worst day. And I can tell this House that the Huffs of Columbus, Georgia, are the same people in the daylight that they are in the dark. Bruce is the middle son, and the second-generation owner of International Funeral Home. Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to understand what that means in a Black community in the American South. The funeral director is not merely a businessman. He is the first to arrive when the worst thing has happened. He is the one who comes at two o'clock in the morning, who sits in the kitchen with a widow who does not yet know how she will pay for anything, who makes certain that a mother who had very little in this life is carried out of it with dignity. Bruce Huff has done that work for decades--not for applause, and often not for payment--because his father did it before him. That work shaped everything else. Bruce graduated from Hardaway High School in 1975 as an honor student and three-sport letterman, then earned his degree from Florida State University in 1980, lettering four years in baseball. Then he came home. Sitting with grieving families, he saw a need no one else was meeting. So, he became a licensed insurance agent, founded Huff's Insurance Service in 1987, and in 1992 merged it with the family funeral home so that no family would be left choosing between a decent burial and next month's rent. In 1996 he earned his degree from Gupton-Jones College of Funeral Service. To this day he works side by side with his brother, Charles E. Huff, Jr., carrying forward what their parents began. Mr. Speaker, a man who has spent his life burying his neighbors comes to public service with a different set of eyes. When Bruce Huff took his seat on that Council, he already knew District 3 by heart--every street, every corner, every family. For more than fifteen years he did the patient, unglamorous work of making his district a place where people could live well and not merely be laid to rest. The list is extraordinary. The Fort Benning Gateway at I-185 and Victory Drive. The Brown Avenue Bridge. The Follow Me Trail. Streetscapes on Wynnton Road, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, and on Fort Benning Road. The I-185 interchanges at Custer Road and at Cusseta Road. The Buena Vista Road Spiderweb and Corridor improvements. A new Spencer High School. The Muscogee County School District Athletic Complex. Hundreds of millions of dollars--but Mr. Speaker, Bruce Huff never talked about the money. He talked about the child who could finally walk to school on a sidewalk, the grandmother whose street no longer flooded, the young man who could reach a job because the road finally went through. And he gave himself away outside the Council chamber, too--at St. James AME Church, where he served on the Trustee Board; in Columbus State University's Teen Achievers Program; as president of Sally Little League, where he taught somebody else's boys how to hold a bat and how to lose with grace; in the Delta Iota Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated; and in Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons, Electric City Lodge No 322. He was named Mortician of the Year by the Georgia Funeral Service Practitioner Association in 2009--though every honor I have handed him felt small next to what he had already given. Mr. Speaker, none of it would have been possible without his family. Bruce is married to Charonda D. Huff, who has carried the weight of public life alongside him. They are the proud parents of two sons, Anthony and Bruce, Jr., and the doting grandparents of Denim. I want that grandson to know something one day, when he is old enough to read these words in the permanent record of the United States Congress: your granddaddy spent his life carrying other people's sorrow so they would not have to carry it alone. Bruce, you have wiped away a great many tears in Columbus, Georgia. Allow an old friend to shed a few on your behalf. You have earned your rest. But knowing you, I do not expect you to take much of it. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife, Vivian, and me, along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's Second Congressional District in honoring Councilor Bruce H. [[Page E879]] Huff, Sr., for more than fifteen years of faithful service to District 3, and for a lifetime of quiet, sacred work on behalf of families in their darkest hours. May God bless him, his wife Charonda, their sons, their grandson, and the city that is better because Bruce Huff answered when he was called. ____________________