[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 74 (Tuesday, June 3, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5249-S5250]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTE TO SENATOR STROM THURMOND

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, of necessity, I was at the Finance 
Committee hearing on trade negotiating authority this morning, and so 
was unable to be on the floor to pay tribute--as so many others have 
done--to our esteemed colleague, Senator Thurmond, who now holds the 
record for Senate longevity. But I would like to pay such tribute now.
  Just about 1 year ago--June 13, 1996, to be precise--my daughter 
Maura and I traveled to the White House for a state dinner in honor of 
Ireland's president, Mary Robinson, and her husband Nicholas. We 
stopped at the northwest gate, to be scrutinized by White House 
security officials. An earnest young man in a uniform peered into our 
Jeep, studied my face, consulted a clipboard, and then said smartly, 
``Good evening, Senator Thurmond!''
  A fine compliment, to be mistaken for a man more robust, more 
vigorous, more irrepressible than individuals half his age or mine!
  I will leave to others the task of highlighting our beloved 
colleague's absolutely extraordinary private and public lives, which 
span the 20th century. A few things come to mind which bear mentioning, 
however. He learned his populist brand of politics from ``Pitchfork 
Ben'' Tillman--a man born 150 years ago--whose Senate seat he now 
occupies. And yet he was just re-elected for the eighth time, again 
with little difficulty. Senator Thurmond embodies the political and 
social transformation of the South.
  As a 40-year-old, he volunteered for active duty during World War II 
and landed at Normandy with the 82d Airborne Division. Immediately 
after the war, he was elected governor of South Carolina. While 
governor, in 1948, he ran for president as a States' Rights Democrat 
and garnered 39 electoral votes.
  He was elected to the Senate in 1954 as a write-in candidate, the 
first person ever elected to major office by this method. But true to a 
campaign pledge he made, he resigned in 1956 and stood for re-election. 
In 1964, he left the Democratic Party and became a Goldwater 
Republican, presaging--or, perhaps, ushering in--GOP gains in the South 
that continue to this day. He has served as a delegate to six 
Democratic and eight Republican National Conventions--a distinction I 
doubt anyone else shares. Suffice it to say that if Strom Thurmond did 
not exist, it might be necessary for us to invent him.

[[Page S5250]]

  Senator Thurmond has endured the loss of his first wife, the loss of 
his daughter. But through it all, he has been indomitable. Always 
optimistic. Unfailingly courteous, the epitome of a Southern 
gentleman--despite living in our current age, when good manners seem to 
elude us so readily. I hope he has a sense of the respect and affection 
we have for him.
  When I think of our colleague, I think of the wonderful poem, 
``Ulysses'', by Alfred Lord Tennyson--one of the great English poets, 
who, I might add, died a mere decade before Senator Thurmond was born, 
and I would like to close my tribute with an excerpt from the poem:

       I am become a name;
       For always roaming with a hungry heart
       Much have I seen and known; cities of men
       And manners, climates, councils, governments,
       Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
       And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
       Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
       I am a part of all that I have met;
       Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
       Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
       For ever and forever when I move.
       How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
       To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
       As tho' to breathe were life!

       No one ever could accuse Senator Thurmond of ``rusting 
     unburnish'd''!

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