[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 64 (Tuesday, May 19, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H3368-H3369]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               TRIBUTE TO THE HONORABLE JENNINGS RANDOLPH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Petri). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 21, 1997, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. 
Rahall) is recognized during morning hour debates for 4 minutes.
  Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, on May 8 this year, the Nation lost a great 
man, a former U.S. Senator, a beloved West Virginian, a great orator, a 
man of civility and courtesy, a master of the legislative compromise, a 
builder of concrete, asphalt and stone, and a builder of character 
named Jennings Randolph, who died at the grand old age of 96.
  When Senator Randolph passed on, it was truly the end of an era. He 
was the last living Member of Congress from the New Deal era, making 
him the last of the New Deal legislators who voted to enact the Social 
Security System and a minimum wage.
  On May 11 of this year, had he lived, Senator Randolph would have 
marked the 65th anniversary of his freshman speech on the floor of the 
House. He spoke on the subject of Mother's Day, an event founded by 
fellow West Virginian Anna Jarvis, and his speech, an eloquent one, was 
entitled, ``The Unapplauded Molders of Men''. This speech was given on 
the 69th day of Roosevelt's famous first 100 days, and on that day 
Jennings Randolph the great orator was born.
  As many of my colleagues will know, it was Senator Randolph who 
began, during his House tenure, to amend the Constitution to allow 18-
year-olds to vote. He succeeded in this endeavor in 1972, as a U.S. 
Senator, with the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, the first and 
only constitutional amendment that took a mere 90 days to achieve 
ratification by the requisite number of States and to become the law of 
the land.
  At one time, I am told, he forced then-President Nixon to spend the 
funds appropriated for the interstate system by filing an injunction 
against Nixon's practice of impounding the funds, keeping them from 
being spent. It was in the 1974 budget act that impounding funds by a 
President was first restricted.
  Jennings Randolph would be proud of our every effort, Mr. Speaker, 
and success this very day in freeing some of the collected motorists' 
gas taxes and spending them on transportation needs. Yes, J.R., we will 
one day restore trust to our Highway Trust Funds.
  I would like to tell my colleagues a little something about the 
Senator's lifelong public service, that we have seen little written 
about of recent date. Having traveled so often with the Senator, many 
times late at night in a very small plane, two or four-passenger plane, 
sometimes through very stormy weather, the first comment the Senator 
would make upon landing was ``Where is the telephone?''. I would be 
thinking of other places to visit but the Senator was always wanting to 
keep in touch with the people.
  Senator Randolph was known for his devotion to people and his 
compassion for all people in need. He coauthored the Randolph-Shepherd 
Act for the Blind, giving blind persons the opportunity and the right 
to be employed and have the dignity of a paycheck. The blind are still 
benefiting from that effort today.
  He fought for and maintained the Black Lung Benefits Act throughout 
his public life in the Senate. Once, when he was being chastised by 
some of his Coal Mining constituents because the Black Lung benefits 
bill was then languishing in the Senate with no action being taken, 
Senator Randolph quietly but firmly said: There are only 18 coal mining 
states in the Union. Those 36 Senators are going to vote for this 
legislation. Persuading 64 other Senators representing non-coal mining 
states that their constituents should or must allow their tax dollars 
to be used to pay for the benefits for workers in other States is not 
an easy matter to accomplish. It takes time. And I pay those 64 
Senators the courtesy of approaching them one on one, personally, to 
discuss the plight of coal miners with black lung disease, and their 
need for disability compensation for themselves and, for those who have 
died, their widows and orphans. He told them ``it will get done * * *'' 
And it did.
  Senator Randolph, concerned for the plight of mentally and physically 
disabled children and concerned over their lack of an appropriate 
education, established the first Subcommittee on the Handicapped in the 
Senate, and he chaired that Subcommittee with passion and the courage 
of his beliefs as he authored and guided to enactment the Education for 
all Handicapped Children Act. Today, the Special Education law is 
working to mainstream disabled children into regular classrooms with 
their peers across this Nation in every school building getting a free 
and equal education to which all children are entitled.
  It was Senator Randolph, with his great love for airplanes and 
aviation, who first proposed the establishment of the National Air and 
Space Museum. When he first proposed it, of course, the space age 
hadn't been ushered in yet--and so when asked to give the Dedication 
speech for the new Museum, Randolph remarked that it took so long to 
get Congress to act on his proposed aviation museum, they had to add 
the word ``space'' to its name.
  And it was Senator Jennings Randolph who, with another licensed pilot 
aboard, flew the

[[Page H3369]]

first coal-fueled aircraft from Morgantown, West Virginia to National 
airport. Senator Randolph was always looking for ways in which coal 
mined by his coal-mining constituents could be used to help strengthen 
and stabilize the economic base of his beloved State of West Virginia.
  And finally, but never lastly, the Senator realized his long held 
dream of establishing a peace-arm of the U.S. Government. Serving under 
Roosevelt when the Nation was drawn into World War II, Randolph 
believed that the U.S. Government ought to have a Peace Department 
since it had a War Department (the War Department was changed to the 
Defense Department in 1948, the year after Randolph left the House). It 
took him from 1943 to 1984--41 years--but the last legislative 
initiative he authored and guided to enactment was the creation of the 
U.S. Institute for Peace, a still vital, thriving institution devoted 
to the waging of peace, not war.
  Speaking of the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Senate's consideration 
of the legislation in 1984 was not an easy road. Some of the more 
conservative Members accused him of creating an institution that would 
attract communists and become a possible security risk. And one Member 
went so far as to call Senator Randolph the ``Jane Fonda'' of the 
Senate. Randolph did not respond to the charges, of course, for that 
was not his way. But he did try to get President Reagan to support his 
Peace Institute bill.
  One day, when the Labor and Public Welfare Committee in the Senate 
was about to vote on whether to waive the budget act so that the 
Randolph Peace Institute bill could come to the floor for a vote, 
President Reagan called Senator Randolph. The Senator gently but firmly 
said to the Committee Clerk: Please tell the President I am busy here. 
I will have to call him back.'' In about 15 minutes the Committee had 
voted favorably on the budget waiver Senator Randolph needed, and he 
then turned to the Clerk and said: Please get the President for me, I 
can talk with him now. To which the Clerk replied: The White House is 
still on the line, Senator, waiting for you to finish.
  Randolph still did not get the President to endorse his bill, but he 
spoke with him about why he should do so.
  As I conclude, Mr. Speaker, I quote from Senator Randolph's maiden 
speech on the House floor in 1933, when he said,

       Volumes have been written about kings and emperors; 
     historians have told of the exploits of a thousand heroes of 
     battle; biographers have packed into colorful words the life 
     and death of our statesmen; while painters have filled 
     galleries with the likenesses of our living great.

  Some day, some enterprising young scholar will write volumes about 
Jennings Randolph, and historians will tell of his exploits, and 
biographers will pack many colorful words about the life of this mighty 
statesman from West Virginia, Jennings Randolph.

                          ____________________