[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 154 (Friday, September 29, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14767-S14768]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    AWARDING OF THE PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM TO GAYLORD NELSON

 Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I want to take this opportunity 
to extend congratulations to Gaylord Nelson, a former Member of this 
body and a distinguished former Governor of the State of Wisconsin, who 
is receiving America's highest civilian honor today--the Presidential 
Medal of Freedom. Gaylord Nelson receives this award in recognition of 
his lifelong commitment to leadership on issues of environmental 
protection, and his tremendous efforts to ensure that both our 
country's public policy and its citizens sustain and preserve America's 
invaluable natural resources.
  Nelson's career is truly a remarkable one, and I am proud to now hold 
the Senate seat he held with distinction from 1963 to 1981. Gaylord 
Nelson began his political career in 1948, when he became the first 
Democratic State senator elected from Dane County in this century. He 
served three terms in the Wisconsin State senate from 1948 to 1956, 
acting as the Democratic floor leader for 8 of those years. He was a 
two-term Governor of my State, elected in 1958, and like the noteworthy 
accomplishment of his election to State senate, Nelson was Wisconsin's 
second Democratic governor in this century and, upon reelection in 
1960, he became the only Democrat in Wisconsin to win two terms at 
Governor since 1892. During his gubernatorial tenure, the environment 
became a priority for the State with the creation of a $50 million 
outdoor resources acquisition program, putting Wisconsin far ahead in 
recreational opportunities for the general public.
  As those who served with him in this body remember well, Nelson is 
best described like the main character in Dr. Seuss' children's story 
The Lorax--the man ``who speaks for the trees.'' During his 18 years of 
service in the Senate, Gaylord Nelson affected significant change for 
the ``greener'' in both our Nation's law and the institution of the 
Senate itself. He is the co-author of the Environmental Education Act, 
which he sponsored with the senior Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Kennedy), and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and sponsored an 
amendment to give the St. Croix and the Namekagon Rivers scenic 
protection. In the wake of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, Gaylord 
Nelson, along with Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, ushered in national 
attention to the documented persistent bioaccumulative effects of 
organochlorine pesticides used in the Great Lakes by authoring the ban 
on DDT in 1972. He was the primary sponsor of the Apostle Islands 
National Lakeshore Act, one of Northern Wisconsin's most beautiful 
areas at which I spend a portion of my vacation time with my family 
every year, and an area which just celebrated its 25th anniversary last 
month with an event at which Nelson and I both spoke.
  Nelson, of course, is best remembered as being the founder of Earth 
Day. As one of the first Senators to oppose the U.S. military buildup 
in Vietnam, Gaylord Nelson took his inspiration for Earth Day from the 
anti-war teach-ins on college campuses. He described in a floor 
statement on the development of the event:

       It suddenly occurred to me, why not have a nationwide 
     teach-in on the environment.

  Gaylord Nelson announced the idea at a speech in Seattle in 1969, and 
the idea has been a sustained vision for 25 years.
  Earth Day is an event which in addition to changing the environmental 
consciousness of the country, as colleagues who were present will 
remember, literally stopped the Senate. Members of both bodies voted to 
adjourn their respective houses in the middle of the legislative week 
to attend Earth Day events, an adjournment that would be extremely rare 
today. Here in this body, the Congressional Record indicates, at 3:31 
p.m. on Tuesday, April 20, 1970, our colleague the senior Senator from 
West Virginia [Mr. Byrd] adjourned the Senate until Friday, April 23, 
1970. In the other body, chamber action was adjourned from the middle 
of the day on April 21, 1970, the actual date of the first Earth Day, 
through April 23 of that year.
  Gaylord Nelson's environmental activism also changed the way we in 
Congress run our personal offices. Last year, in an E Magazine 
interview which Nelson gave for the 25th Anniversary of Earth Day, he 
described that back in 1970 he believed he was the only person in the 
Senate to have a full time environmental staffer. In 1995, it is 
difficult to imagine that there is any Member of this body or the other 
that does not have a member of their staff designated to handle 
environmental issues.
  After his defeat in the race for a fourth Senate term in 1980, Nelson 
joined the national conservation group, the Wilderness Society. In 
1990, Nelson founded another group in Washington called Green Seal, 
which he created to certify the environmental claims of consumer 
products by developing innovative environmentally based product 
standards and comparing classes of marketed products to those 
standards.
  Mr. President, leadership is not only the willingness to assume the 
role of being a primary spokesperson on important issues, but what one 
actually says and does about those issues. With a combination of words 
and activism, Gaylord Nelson actively used his position to make changes 
for the better. In a 1994 Chicago Tribune article, Thomas Huffman, a 
professor of history at St. John's University in Collegeville, MN, 
observed about Gaylord Nelson:

       Almost every campaign speech he [Nelson] gave from 1960 on 
     had an environmental component. Often times that was the 
     whole speech. There were many in his party who thought he was 
     crazy, that it was not really an issue.

  Despite the fact that some were skeptical about Nelson's message at 
first, the directness and forcefulness of his statements are 
undeniable. In his 1969 book on the environment, entitled America's 
Last Chance, written after 6 years of service in the Senate, Nelson 
issues a political challenge:

       Through the past decade of work in this field, I have come 
     to the conclusion that the number one domestic problem facing 
     this country is the threatened destruction of our natural 
     resources and the disaster which would confront mankind 
     should such destruction occur. There is a real question as to 
     whether the nation, which has spent some two hundred years 
     developing an intricate system of local, State and Federal 
     Government to deal with the public's problems, will be bold, 
     imaginative and flexible enough to meet this supreme test.

  Nelson's message was one of urgency and of bipartisanship. His time 
in the Senate saw this body establish, under both Republican and 
Democratic administrations, an Environment and Public Works Committee, 
pass the majority of our Federal environmental statutes with 
significant bipartisan support, and create the Environmental Protection 
Agency. In his speech at the University of Wisconsin on the first Earth 
Day, Nelson said:


[[Page S 14768]]

       Our goal is an environment of decency, quality, and mutual 
     respect for human creatures and all other living creatures. 
     An environment without ugliness, without ghettos, without 
     discrimination, without hunger, without poverty, and without 
     war.

  In recognizing Gaylord Nelson's accomplishments, I hope that all in 
this body will be mindful of the need to be committed to the protection 
of the environment and to work in a bipartisan fashion toward that end. 
I believe that to have this body embrace and resonate his enthusiasm on 
these issues would be a fitting tribute.

                          ____________________