137-0!!

          That was the message I sent to Aaron Greenfield, the lead lobbyist for the survivors and the descendants of those who perished in the Nazi concentration camps after being transported there by the French national railroad.

         That was the vote this afternoon as the House passed the amended version of my bill requiring the company to make its records of those transports Internet accessible.

          A lot of work preceded that unanimous vote.

          Extraordinarily moving hearings prompted the Senate committee to give the bill a unanimous favorable report right after the testimony concluded.  That is a very rare occurrence.

          Shortly thereafter, the railroad company changed its position on when it could make these records available. What had been impossible to do became something that could be done in four-to-six months.

          Our negotiations over the amendments to accomplish that lasted two weeks. They would have not succeeded without the exceptional efforts of Delegate Pete Hammen, chairman of the committee to which my bill had been referred, and Ed Papenfuse, the state archivist.

           There were times when I had to remind myself not to be too anxious to seek a compromise but to let the discussions follow their natural course.

           After the bill passed, I called the press and Bill Pitcher, the lobbyist for the railroad company.

           I said to him, “The end product is something we can be proud of.”

March 28