[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 96 (Wednesday, June 26, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7056-S7057]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          IN HONOR OF T.H. BELL, FORMER SECRETARY OF EDUCATION

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, today in Utah, memorial services will be 
held in Salt Lake City for Terrel Howard Bell, who passed away on 
Saturday. Since I cannot be there, I would like to make a few remarks 
to honor him. While he is best known inside the beltway as the 
Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration, his time in 
Washington comprised only a small period of a lifetime of dedication to 
education.
  The words, ``A Nation at Risk'' mark the legacy of T.H. Bell. 
Commissions come and commissions go in Washington. Most have long been 
forgotten. However, I believe most of us would recognize the blunt 
assessment of American education contained in the report by The 
National Commission on Excellence in Education, the creation of then 
Secretary T. H. Bell:

       Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in 
     commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is 
     being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. . .
       . . .[T]he educational foundations of our society are 
     presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that 
     threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. . .. If 
     an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on 
     America the mediocre educational performance that exists 
     today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it 
     stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.

  This warning got the attention of America and started the wheels of 
reform moving.
  The life of T.H. Bell was marked by an interest and passion for 
education. He believed that anybody who got a good education could 
accomplish whatever they wanted. This belief drove him to spend his 
life working to ensuring a good education was provided in public 
schools first in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and then the entire United 
States.
  His belief in opportunity was not a mere philosophy based on a good 
idea he had read about, but was based on his own life experiences. He 
was born in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho in 1921. His father died in a 
mining accident when he was 8, and his mother, left penniless during 
the Depression, supported the family and they never did have much. 
Attending college, while his dream, was not a foregone conclusion given 
the financial challenges he experienced growing up.
  In his own words, he shared his uncertainty about succeeding in 
college:

       When my senior year in high school came along, my mother 
     had succeeded in her long campaign to get me to make the 
     impossible happen. I was going to leave Lava Hot Springs for 
     college. Since we had no money at all, I was compelled to 
     attend Albion State Normal School, a teachers training 
     institution, but my love of my hometown school made it easy 
     for me to accept that necessity. If I could make it, I was 
     going to be a teacher. So I hoped as I labored, full of 
     doubts and fearful of the possibility of failure. . ..
       Each term I attended seemed likely to be my last. My 
     borrowed textbooks, threadbare clothing, skimpy meals, and 
     constant apprehensiveness that I was not college material 
     caused me--indeed drove me--to study with a dogged passion 
     and urgency.

  He attended Albion State Normal School, beginning in 1940. After 
serving in the Marines during World War II, he became a high school 
science teacher. At age 25, he became superintendent of schools in 
Rockland, ID. He also held that position in Afton, WY, and Ogden, UT. 
He then served as Utah's state schools chief from 1963 to 1970, and 
then moved on to Washington, DC, to work in education under President's 
Nixon and Ford as Deputy Commissioner and then Commissioner of 
Education in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
  He took office as President Ronald Reagan's Education Secretary in 
1981, where the landmark report, ``A Nation at Risk'' was issued. His 
strong belief in State and local control of schools was often 
misunderstood, given his view that the Federal Government should 
provide some leadership role in education reform.
  After leaving his post as education chief in 1985, he established a 
nonprofit consultant group focusing promoting academic excellence at 
middle schools, and co-authored ``How to Shape Up Our Nation's 
Schools.'' T.H. Bell died in his sleep on Saturday. He was 74.
  T.H. Bell worked to ensure the opportunity for a quality education 
was open to all, and with it, the hope of a better life, just as it had 
been opened to him. I would like to conclude my remarks, using his own 
words:

       My life would have been a great void had it not been for 
     that public school in Lava Hot Springs staffed by caring 
     teachers who treasured their jobs. From them I learned that I 
     could learn. I learned as well that the joy of understanding 
     surpasses all else. . .
       To look into a test tube, to marvel for the first time at a 
     chemical reaction swirling

[[Page S7057]]

     around before your eyes in an Erlenmeyer flask in a public 
     school chemistry laboratory, is to describe the experience 
     that is at the heart of the Nation's commitment to the 
     doctrine of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We 
     cannot promise happiness. But we must promise the pursuit. . 
     ..
       I was not only promised the pursuit, I was enabled to 
     fulfill it.

  In this, he spoke of pursuing an education. But I believe this is a 
fitting description of his life. He had the opportunity to pursue a 
life in educational service. He pursued it, and fulfilled it.

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