[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.

[[Page S4273]]

 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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