With “a heavy heart,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer paid tribute to Robert Pear, a longtime Washington journalist for The New York Times, who was also an undergraduate classmate of Schumer’s at Harvard.

“While everyone else in those days had long hair and wore bell-bottoms, Robert had a flat-top, was always studious, inquisitive, polite and very decent, earning him the nickname ‘the deacon,’” Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday.