[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 24 (Tuesday, March 8, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: March 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
A TRIBUTE TO TIP O'NEILL
Mr. DODD. Madam President, on January 10, 1994, I attended the
funeral of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives and a
great American, Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. It was with a heavy heart that I
said goodbye to a dear friend. Whether it was his aggressive and
determined style of politics or his genuine sympathy for the people of
Massachusetts, Tip was a role model to an entire era of Members of
Congress.
I think those of us in attendance would have to agree that the
service was both moving and beautiful. Each speaker brought back
cheerful and heartwarming memories of Tip, and shared some new
anecdotes, typifying the Speaker we all came to know. Mr. President, I
would like to take this opportunity to cite two individuals whose
extraordinary comments captured the spirit of Tip O'Neill and added
comfort and grace to such a difficult day.
J. Donald Monan, S.J., is the president of Boston College in Chestnut
Hill, MA. It was with great eloquence that Father Monan detailed Tip
O'Neill's reverence for God and strong faith in mankind. His
captivating retrospective of a loving husband and father will
undoubtedly remain with those present at the service for years to come.
Those of us who know Tip O'Neill understood how important his spiritual
beliefs were to him. I commend Father Monan for capturing the essence
of the great Speaker we all came to love.
In addition to Father Monan's touching speech, one of Tip's five
children, Thomas P. O'Neill III, also provided a moving reflection of
the special father-son relationship he cherished so much. His
recitation of Charles Hanson Towne's poem, ``Around the Corner,''
illustrated a side of Tip that perhaps many of his colleagues were
never fortunate enough to witness.
Madam President, at this time I ask unanimous consent that both the
address from J. Donald Monan, S.J., president of Boston College, as
well as Charles Hanson Towne's poem, ``Around the Corner,'' be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Funeral Mass of Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr., January 10, 1994
(By J. Donald Monan, S.J.)
Your Eminence, Cardinal Law, President Ford, President
Carter, Vice President Gore, and members of the Cabinet,
Ambassador Flynn, Governor Weld, Members of the Congress and
the Massachusetts Great and General Court, Mayor Menino,
Mayor Reeves, Mrs. O'Neill (Millie), members of the O'Neill
family, and my dear friends.
Our human family's loves and its losses have taught us many
ways of expressing grief. In the clear, cold air of this
weekend, flags flew at half-staff in the Nation's Capitol and
here at home. The Speaker's Chair in the House of
Representatives wore a mantle of black. Silent lines of
people, plain and powerful, filed into the State House. If
there are times when symbols and individual physical presence
to each other are more expressive than words, surely this is
such a time. Mrs. O'Neill (Millie), Susan and Rosemary, Tom
and Michael and Kip, the presence of each person here this
morning is an expression of deepest respect and esteem for
Speaker O'Neill; but it is even more an effort to ease your
grief because we respect you so much in your sorrow and
because your grief is ours as well.
On Wednesday evening, the Speaker wearily told Tom of the
irresistible tiredness over him and peacefully closed his
eyes for the last time. His sleep awakened not only the
brilliance of the nation's writers; they responded with their
hearts as well. Every step along the upward route of his
public career has been carefully retraced. But it was clearly
the man himself--in his humor and his inexhaustible desire to
help, his courage and his compassion and his sheer goodness--
that came through to his chroniclers and inspired them to
masterfully faithful portraits that those who loved him will
always cherish.
Those portraits I will not attempt to recreate this
morning. There is, however, one feature of the background in
each of those portraits that perhaps could not have been
painted in, until this morning--in this sacred place. Every
captivating account of the Speaker's momentous achievements
in public life, of his easy familiarity with the world's
greatest leaders, remarked that he never lost touch with his
roots. And this was no mere metaphor. Those roots remained
the source of his lifeblood and his identify as a person to
the very end. The friendships of Barry's Corner, his love for
Boston College, the comfortable streets of North Cambridge
were as much a part of him as were his Speaker's gavel and
his intense loyalty to his staff and colleagues in the
Congress. But perhaps older than any these--this parish, to
which he returned this morning, has been a figure in the
background of every change in family and political fortunes.
It is just not a matter of ritual that in this parish he
received the name of Thomas Junior at baptism; before this
altar as a young man he knelt with Millie to pronounce their
marriage vows; and for 35 years in the Congress, he returned
humbly to reaffirm his worship that God was his origin and
his destiny and that what he did with his enormous talents
and his opportunities mattered to God as well. The truth is
that God was as real to Speaker O'Neill as were you or I.
The Role that faith plays in any of our lives is as elusive
to describe as it can be powerful and pervasive. It was not
something that Speaker O'Neill often put into language. (He
was not a man given to self explanation, but to action.) And
yet faith was a recognizable dimension of everything he did
in public and in private life. It was never a badge or an
ornament to make others uncomfortable, but always a star he
checked before setting his own course. Nor was his
understanding of faith ever woodenly fixed, incapable of
growth and development. Those of us who have lived through
the decades since the 30's of dramatic change in the moral
dilemmas that modernity brings, in the crises of wars and
threats of war, in more nuanced understanding of our own
religious convictions--those of us who have lived through
these changes realize that Speaker O'Neill's legendary sense
of loyalty, either to old friends or to God, was no dull or
wooden conformity. It has been a creative fidelity to values
pledged in his youth that he kept relevant to a world of
constant change by dint of effort and imagination and at the
cost of personal sacrifice.
What did the Speaker gain from his faith? A vantage point
that gave him lifelong perspective on himself and his
relationship to the world around him.
One of the most important ingredients to a portrait or to a
human life is perspective--a sense of priority and of
proportion among the parts. Over the past several days,
countless commentators have remarked upon the extraordinary
balance Speaker O'Neill maintained within an almost limitless
range of commitments. Indeed, his spontaneous enthusiasm
could easily have swept away any sense of proportion or
perspective. For Speaker O'Neill was large-hearted in his
every approach to the world around him. He was large-hearted
in his compassion and in his humor; large-hearted in his
understanding of people; large-hearted in his love of all
things human, from family and friends to work and politics
and sports. To Speaker O'Neill everything was important--
but nothing was so important that it was worth sacrificing
fairness to one in need or a favor to a friend or the
honor and integrity he owed God.
How many stories have been told and retold of Speaker
O'Neill's walking with royalty but never losing perspective
on himself or on every person he befriended. Each of those
stories recognized that leadership in high public office
invariably confers power and power has a potent magic twist
perspective and turn the heads of those who hold it. Speaker
O'Neill possessed the antidote to that powerful magic. He did
not frame it in abstruse theological language, but in the
simple realization in faith of who he was and where he came
from. He lived it in his unwavering sense of gratitude for
his roots--in his recognition that his most valuable traits
were gifts from family and friends and teachers and fellow
workers--and ultimately were gifts of God himself. And for
the person who knows his roots, for the person who knows
gratitude, power and high position and large-hearted love
pose no dangers. They are, rather, even more effective
instruments to be of service to the least.
The luminous sketches of the Speaker that have appeared
this week are almost complete. In the foreground stands a
grateful Commonwealth and a grateful Nation of countless
individuals who owe their job, their education, their
citizenship, indeed, their life to the friendship or the
wisdom or the simple encouragement of this great man. In the
background of the portrait stands the Christ, the measure of
his own self-understanding and for his unabashed humility and
the guarantor of the infinite importance of everything he did
for the least of those he met.
But there is one more stroke of the brush that has been
left unnoticed. If the Speaker's faith gave him perspective,
the love of a great woman gave him the confidence that he
could do whatever the Nation and whatever God asked. The
pride of the Speaker's lfe was not the Medal of Freedom nor
the Legion of Honor; it was the love of his beloved Millie
who gave courage to his struggles and measure to his success
and loving understanding through his illness.
Those of us who live among the terraces of mountains are
too close to their grandeur to take an accurate measure of
their height. And during these many years and you and I who
have known him and all of the staff and colleagues he
esteemed so highly, have been like those individuals so
familiar with their landscape that we are unable to grasp its
dramatic proportions.
But this morning, with the gavel finally silent, and the
last story told, and the last anxious heart put at ease, we
now know that his stature rose higher than all the rest. And
we know the blessing of having known him as a friend and we
ask only that his generous soul enjoy the presence of the
Risen Lord, whom he worshipped.
____
Poem Read by Thomas P. O'Neill III at Tip O'Neill's Funeral
around the corner
(By Charles Hanson Towne)
Around the corner I have a friend,
in this great city that has no end.
Yet days go by and weeks rush on
and before I know it a year is gone.
And I never see my old friend's face,
for life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well
as in the days when I rang his bell
and he rang mine. We were younger then
and now we are busy, tired men.
Tired with playing a foolish game,
tired with trying to make a name.
Tomorrow, I say, I will call on Jim
just to show that I'm thinking of him.
But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
and the distance between us grows and grows.
Around the corner yet miles away,
here's a telegram sir, Jim died today.
And that's what we get and deserve in the end,
around the corner a vanished friend.
____________________