[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 60 (Friday, May 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4272-S4274]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MOTHER'S DAY
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, this coming Sunday, May 11, is Mother's Day.
It used to be that Members of the House and Senate would call attention
to special days, days of special significance such as Mother's Day,
Father's Day, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, Independence Day, and so on.
I do not hear much of that being done anymore, but I like to stay with
tradition. I believe that is the tried and true way. The Bible says,
``Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.''
Mother's Day came about through the efforts of a dedicated mother and
daughter from Grafton, WV. Since 1914, the United States has set aside
the second Sunday in May to honor mothers. Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis, a
remarkable woman who championed the cause of sanitation and family
health throughout her entire life and whose establishment of Mother's
Day Work Clubs kept bound the fragile ties of families and communities
throughout the Civil War, was a heroine to her daughter, Anna M.
Jarvis. Due to Anna M. Jarvis' efforts, she also serves as the source
of a beautiful sentiment for all of us today. In honoring her mother's
hope that a post-Civil War ``Mothers' Friendship Day'' might someday
become an annual event commemorating the service that mothers render to
humanity in every field, Anna M. Jarvis has provided each of us with an
opportunity to remember and to delight in the love and support which
our own mothers have offered to us.
My own dear angel mother died when I was little less than a year old.
She was a victim of the virulent Spanish influenza pandemic that swept
the globe and swept the Nation in 1918, killing an estimated 20 million
people around the world; 500,000 in this country alone. Her name was
Ada Kirby Sale. In the one photograph which I have of her, gazing back
at me is a blue-eyed, fair-complexioned, pretty young woman with a
serious, yet sweet, expression on her face and a large bow of ribbon in
her hair. How I wish that I had known her, even for one day! Even in
her own distress, she thought of me, her youngest child, when she asked
her sister-in-law and brother-in-law to raise me if she, my mother, did
not recover from the flu. In those days they were stricken on one day
and died the next. So, she asked my aunt and her husband to raise me if
she, my mother, did not recover, while my father looked after my four
older siblings. I had three brothers and one sister, and my father had
10 sisters and two brothers, so my father gave to various sisters my
three brothers, and to Titus Dalton Byrd and my aunt, I was given. And
my father kept my sister. I have always carried with me that
remembrance of my mother's love for me, because she gave me two foster
parents for the hard work of raising a child.
I, therefore, was reared by my Aunt Vlurma and her husband, Titus
Dalton Byrd. My name was not Byrd at that time, my name was Sale. My
ancestor came from England in the year 1657, and was an indentured
worker 7 years to pay for the trip across the waters. He ended up down
along the Rappahannock River, in Virginia. So I am his ninth generation
descendant. His name was James Sale.
My foster mother and my natural mother were as different in
appearance as two women can be. My aunt Vlurma was stocky, stockily
built, olive-complexioned, and a laconic woman with dark-brown eyes.
She was very religious. She did not make a big whoop-de-do about it.
She was not of the religious right or the religious left. She just
believed in the old-time religion.
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She was religious, straightforward in her dealings with people, and a
good shot with a pistol. She was very good to me, though she never
displayed much affection. I have no recollection of ever receiving a
kiss from her. But I have many recollections of hearing her prayers as
they wafted through the stillness of the night from the other room.
Many times I have seen her on her knees, praying. It used to be, when I
would leave Raleigh County, West Virginia, to return to Washington on a
Sunday afternoon, having been back in my congressional district, she
would say, ``You be a good boy, Robert. I always pray for you.''
So, she was a major influence in my life, and I thank her to this day
for accepting responsibility for me out of affection and kinship with
my mother, and for instilling in me strong values--strong values, a
sense of duty, a sturdy work ethic, and an unshakable--unshakable faith
in the Creator.
How proud man, vain man has become. How arrogant, who has the
audacity to say there is no God! I read, just a few days ago, about a
poll that was taken among scientists--of all people, who should believe
and who should realize that there is a Creator. And I noted that only
40 percent of those scientists, according to the poll, believed in a
Creator. That was amazing. It was the same percentage as resulted from
a similar poll among scientists in 1916. I took the occasion a few days
ago to read from Darwin's ``Origin of Species,'' and to read where
Darwin made reference to a Creator, made reference to God; and Darwin
asked the question: Is it possible that the Creator may be so superior
in intellect to the intellect of man as the human eye is superior to
the man-made camera? Here was a scientist who did not deny the
existence of a Creator.
I ask doctors--when I go to the office of a physician, I say,
``Doctor, do you believe that there is a Creator?'' And I have yet to
come across a doctor who has not answered without hesitation, ``I do. I
believe in a Creator.'' I had one doctor less than a week ago talk with
me in his office. I asked him the same question. And I sat, open-
mouthed and open-eyed, listening to him talk about the audacity of men
who would say there is no God.
Raising a child is hard work. Even though the endeavor is leavened
with joy, lightened with laugher, and sweetened with children's kisses,
raising a child is a demanding job. Every mother who takes on the
challenge and raises a responsible, caring individual, merits applause
from all of us.
Emerson said, ``Men are what their mothers made them.'' The mother
figure is certainly the strongest influence over the character and
development of a child in its early years. Motherhood is the most
important of life's assignments. There is none other that will equal
that. And the responsibility of motherhood is a particularly
challenging endeavor, especially in today's world, where parenting
responsibilities often have to be juggled with work responsibilities
and housekeeping chores.
I often stop to marvel at the many young mothers who work in my own
office and in the various Senate offices and throughout the Government
and the Nation. Poised, cool, and professional at work, one might never
suspect that, after work, they must still dash to the day-care center,
race home, feed husbands and children, spend quality time with the
family, buy groceries, do the laundry, clean the house, and be back at
the office the next morning to begin the cycle all over again. So, I
take my hat off to all working mothers as we honor mothers this
weekend. They maintain a heroic pace and the Nation owes them a debt
that can never be paid.
But, I also salute those women in our society who stick to the more
traditional role of keeper of the home and the hearth, for theirs is a
difficult job as well, and it is a job for which they receive no pay
and little recognition in exchange for their priceless contribution to
society.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh said: ``By and large, mothers and housewives
are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the
great vacationless class.''
Sometimes it seems to me that the traditional stay-at-home mom is not
as much appreciated today. I have always believed that a great deal of
credit should go to those women who make the decision to work in the
home. Theirs is the oldest profession in the history of the world: The
home maker, the housewife. Managing a home and raising children are
serious responsibilities, which, if well carried out, can make a
significant contribution to the stability and well-being of our own
country.
I recall the story of a great painter, a great artist, Benjamin West,
who went to his mother and showed her the little drawings of birds that
he had made with pencil and crayon on pieces of paper. And then she
took him and sat him gently on her knee and kissed him on the cheek and
said, ``You will grow up to be a great painter.'' And Benjamin West
attributed his greatness in that art as having originated with a
mother's kiss.
My own treasured wife, Erma, with whom I have been blessed to share
the past 60 years--as of 2 weeks and 6 days from today--has devoted her
life to caring for me and our household, our children and our
grandchildren. With her capable hand in charge on the home front, I
have had the luxury to devote myself to the duties of the Senate, free
from any domestic worries. And it's a great luxury. I could not have
put in the countless hours required by my office without her extreme
patience and forbearance, understanding and good humor and support.
Erma is the epitome of traditional family values, and my pride in the
accomplishments of my daughters and their children is a clear
reflection of the values and lessons that they learned from their
mother and grandmother.
While I was out campaigning in the early years, while I was out
knocking on doors, driving over the hills and up the hollows and down
the creeks campaigning, she was at home, my wife, with those two young
daughters. It is one of the great sacrifices that I have made in public
life, one that I can never retrieve--the time that I would like to have
spent but didn't spend with my two daughters. But she, my wife, was
there, at home and at the hearth with them.
Family values and family structure have traditionally served as the
strong backbone of the Nation, and we ought to stop and think about
that, not just on Mother's Day, but every day. This strong backbone of
our Nation has suffered from osteoporosis in recent years, but it is
currently enjoying a resurgence of strength and appreciation because of
a collective realization that most of society's ills are not a result
of the success or failure of any Government program, but rather have
their roots, as well as their solutions, in the most basic building
blocks of our culture, like the quality of the home and the cohesion of
the family.
Society is a collection of individuals, each of which is shaped,
first and foremost, in large part, by his or her own mother. The values
that we all cherish, and on which society depends--like caring for
others, respect for the law, tolerance, comity, perseverance, loyalty,
dedication, patriotism, faith in God--are learned earliest and best
from the examples set by our mothers. The woman who raised me didn't
hold any doctorates, master's degree, baccalaureate degrees. I don't
know that she ever went to school a day in her life, but she taught me
how to live. And with that kind of teaching, one may stray from time to
time throughout the years of one's life, but they will always come
back--they will always come back.
When I think of her, and I can say much about the man who was her
husband, also--I will save that for another day--when I think of her
stalwart faith in a supreme, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God, I
think of something that made this a great country, and the same thing
made the ancient Romans a great people. Theirs were pagan gods, but
they believed in their gods. They venerated their ancestors. They
honored their parents. The Bible says, ``Honor thy father and thy
mother.'' When I think of the woman who took me to raise--I never knew
any other mother--I think of one who was as unshakable in her faith as
are the mountains of West Virginia, and she ingrained that faith in me.
Churches and schools are important places of learning, but it is the
constant encouragement and attitude of our mothers that instill in
children the proper respect for church and school in
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the first place. We learn to pray at our mother's knee, and to read
while sitting on her lap.
In my view, we desperately need a serious bolstering of our national
regard for the position of the family in our national life. One day we
ought to take the people who do the TV programming that spews filth and
violence and sex into the homes of America and shake them with
legislation--and the day will come, I believe--that will teach those
people that if they will not clean up their act, somebody else will do
it for them.
We need more Anna Maria Reeves Jarvises and more daughters like Anna
M. Jarvis, who could so effectively mobilize a nation in honor of her
own heroic mother and all mothers, and we should honor the role of
mothers, not only this weekend, but every day.
So this weekend, especially, let us recognize the role of motherhood,
with all of the sentimentality and sweet remembrance that a day set
aside for honoring unselfish love should invoke. Let us also realize
that proper mothering is a tough job, with the future of our Nation
riding, to a great extent, on the success of that endeavor, and let
that realization guide us as we contemplate policies for an ailing
society sorely in need of a strong dose of moral direction and support.
Rock Me To Sleep
Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;--
Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!
Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures--
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber's soft calms o'er my heavy lids creep;--
Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!
Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O Mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between:
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I tonight for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;--
Rock me to sleep, Mother--rock me to sleep!
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. DeWINE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, it is always a real treat to be on the
Senate floor when my friend and colleague and neighbor from West
Virginia speaks. That was a very moving and eloquent statement about
Mother's Day, but, of course, also about his own natural mother and
also about the mother who raised him.
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