On Wednesday, May 5, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan spoke in tribute to Ernie Harwell on the Senate floor.. beginning as follows:
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“For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

Mr. President, spring after spring, for four decades, a man named Ernie Harwell would recite those words. He would recite them at the beginning of the first baseball broadcast of spring training. And those are the words that would tell the people of Michigan that the long, cold winter was over.

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Go to http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=324685 for the entire speech, both text and video.