Here’s what colleagues and friends are saying about Stephen Solarz, who represented southern Brooklyn in Congress from 1975 to 1993.
Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D–Sunset Park): “New York has lost a native son and the United States has lost an articulate and thoughtful voice on foreign policy.”
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D–Midwood): “From Israel to the Philippines to Turkey, there was not a corner of the globe that wasn’t influenced by his expertise — and he never forgot his neighbors.”
Assemblyman Peter Abbate (D–Bensonhurt): “Even though he was a congressman and travelled the world, he would come home almost every weekend, and meet with constituents and go to community meetings.”
Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution: “He was one of the great ‘humanitarian hawks’ in the modern Congress. Humanitarian, in his concern for people around the world, deeply felt and sincere. Hawkish in his Churchillian willingness to do what it took not only to defend American strategic interests but to protect innocents around the world.”
