Professional and Legislative Career
Ryan served as assistant district attorney in New York County from 1950 until 1957 and then again from 1957 until 1961. In 1961, he was elected to Congress as a Democrat, representing Manhattan's Upper West Side, and was elected five more times.
Ryan was an early opponent of American involvement in the Vietnam War, being the first member of the U.S. House to speak out against the War; and was active in supporting civil rights. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, he was chosen as a delegate from New York.
Congressman Ryan championed the creation of a unit of the National Park Service from historic properties and significant natural resources in the hands of the federal government around the New York City metropolitan area, with the intention of providing millions of local residents and visitors the opportunity to visit a unit of the National Park System who might never have the opportunity otherwise. The enabling legislation to create the result, Gateway National Recreation Area, was signed shortly after his death.
Read more about this topic: William Fitts Ryan
Famous quotes containing the words professional, legislative and/or career:
“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)