Union Leader - December 3, 2009

Lantos family accepts Life and Liberty Award from Clinton

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CONCORD – When former President Bill Clinton needed an ally in Congress to stand up for human rights, he found it in the late Tom Lantos, Clinton said last night.

Clinton recalled how Lantos pushed his colleagues to stop brutalities in Haiti and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia.

"He was the most dogged person I ever met and impossible to say no to," Clinton said yesterday. Clinton spoke as the New Hampshire Supreme Court Society presented its second-ever Life and Liberty Award to Lantos' family.

Lantos, a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust, died in 2008. His wife, Annette, accepted it. Also on hand were his daughter, Bow resident and former congressional candidate Katrina Swett, her family and about 200 people who squeezed into the Supreme Court chambers.

Lantos was a congressman for 27 years.

"Sometimes we forget how much difference one voice can make," Clinton said about Lantos. "He wanted human rights for people everywhere."