[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 88 (Tuesday, July 7, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7608-S7609]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IN HONOR OF PAUL O'DWYER

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, on Saturday, June 28, as Congress began 
its most recent recess, New York City bid a fond farewell to one of 
County Mayo's finest gifts to our city and nation.
  Paul O'Dwyer, former New York City Council President and champion of 
countless progressive causes, was a towering figure in our politics for 
well over half a century, playing a significant role in such disparate 
movements as the efforts to create a United Ireland and an independent 
State of Israel, the American civil rights and peace movements and the 
New York City reform movement that remade the face of our city's 
politics in the late 1950's.
  From running guns to the Irgun in 1947 to organizing black voters in 
Mississippi in 1964, Paul O'Dwyer was on the cutting edge of every 
major social and political issue that shaped our nation's politics. He 
may have only won two of the dozen elections he contested in his long 
and colorful career, but his legacy lives on in the lives he touched 
and the issues he championed. Paul O'Dwyer and I were not always on the 
same side of every issue. You could question his strategy or even his 
judgement, but you could never question his abiding integrity or his 
remarkable capacity to sustain passion about human dignity and equal 
justice.
  Paul O'Dwyer was born on June 29, 1907 in the Irish village of 
Behola, the eleventh and last surviving child of Patrick and Bridget 
McNicholas O'Dwyer. He arrived on our shores in 1925, working on the 
docks as he went to night classes, first at Fordham University and then 
at St. John's Law School.
  It is a measure of how quickly he moved through life that he had to 
receive special permission from Chief Justice Benjamin Nathan Cordoza 
of the New York Court of Appeals to take his bar exam in 1929, four 
years after arriving from Ireland and two years before he could receive 
citizenship or be formally admitted to the bar. As the younger brother 
of Tammany Hall fixture (and future mayor) William O'Dwyer, he might 
have easily become a successfully well-connected lawyer. But that was 
simply not the way Paul O'Dwyer chose to live his life.
  ``If I thought at the end of the year that all I did was make a 
living, I'd regard it as a pretty incomplete year'', he once said of 
his rich life as an agitator within the system. He must, on retrospect, 
have had paying clients during his 67 years as an attorney, but they 
were hardly the reason every segment of New York City's diverse 
political and ethnic spectrum joined in mourning this remarkable 
individual.
  New York City and our nation are inspired by the quality of Paul 
O'Dwyer's example and enriched by the legacy of his accomplishments. I 
ask to have printed in the Congressional Record The New York Times' 
report on Paul O'Dwyer's funeral.
  The report follows:

                [From the New York Times, June 28, 1998]

         Political Elite Out in Force To Mourn Democrat O'Dwyer

                            [By Mike Allen]

       New York's political royalty packed an Upper West Side 
     sanctuary yesterday for the funeral Mass of Paul O'Dwyer, the 
     gritty liberal who once led the City Council.
       Mr. O'Dwyer, who died Tuesday, was remembered for the 
     crunch of his eyebrows and the splay of his glasses as he 
     fought for causes as perpetual as Irish nationalism and as 
     fleeting as a strike by flight attendants. Tomorrow, which 
     would have been his 91st birthday, his ashes are to be 
     scattered at his birthplace, his family's three-and-a-half-
     acre farmstead in County Mayo, in western Ireland.
       The bagpipes and drums of the Police Department's Emerald 
     Society led the cortege to Holy Trinity Roman Catholic 
     Church, stepping off to the anthem of Irish rebellion, ``A 
     Nation Once Again.''
       Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani sate with his arms folded in a 
     front pew. He was separated from the recent nemesis, Peter F. 
     Vallone, the Council Speaker, by Barrie Robinson, the Irish 
     consul general.
       Frank Durkan, a nephew and law partner of Mr. O'Dwyer, used 
     his eulogy to reel off a list of public officials Mr. O'Dwyer 
     had known and tormented.
       ``Mayor Giuliani,'' Mr. Durkan said, ``you're lucky, in a 
     way, that you're not in his line of fire at the moment.'' The 
     congregation of 700, mostly Mr. O'Dwyer's fellow Democrats, 
     laughed and applauded.
       In the homily, the Rev. Thomas P. Leonard, Holy Trinity's 
     pastor, said Mr. O'Dwyer's style was ``confrontation, with 
     wit and sagacity.'' Father Leonard told of a conversation he 
     had overheard Thursday afternoon in the rectory between two 
     friends who were reading Mr. O'Dwyer's obituary.
       ``One said, `Wasn't he an anarchist?'' Father Leonard said. 
     ``The other answered, `No, no, no! He was Irish.' ''

[[Page S7609]]

       Percy E. Sutton, the former Manhattan Borough President, 
     remembered Mr. O'Dwyer's flights to help Soviet Jews, and bus 
     rides to help elect a black man in Alabama.
       ``You see,'' Mr. Sutton said, ``Paul O'Dwyer was not just 
     Irish. Paul O'Dwyer was Italian. Paul O'Dwyer was Jewish. 
     Paul O'Dwyer was Greek. He was Polish. Paul O'Dwyer was also 
     African-American. In his involvement in the causes that were 
     not necessarily his, Paul O'Dwyer was us.''
       Mr. Sutton concluded, ``At that place, where he should 
     finally rest, you can bet one thing: There'll be an 
     organizing of protests there. Because that is the nature of 
     Paul O'Dwyer.''
       A niece, Joan O'Dwyer Savarese, invoked the notion that at 
     death, life plays back like a movie. ``Uncle Paul,'' she 
     said, ``what a show you're in for.''
       That show would have included boarding house life and night 
     law school after immigrating to Manhattan, defense of Irish 
     Republican Army members facing extradition, registration of 
     black voters in Mississippi, marches against the Vietnam War, 
     four losing races for United States Senate, and election as 
     Councilman at Large in Manhattan and City Council President.
       His wife, Patricia, recalled a Board of Estimate meeting 
     when a fight broke out between landlords and tenants (``Odd, 
     that,'' she said to appreciative laughter), and Mr. O'Dwyer 
     descended into the skirmish as peacemaker. She went on to say 
     that her husband ``is truly not dead.''
       ``We have evidence of his physical passing,'' Mrs. O'Dwyer 
     said. ``But that spirit and that passion--it will stay alive 
     if we all leave here today committed to making the lives of 
     our fellow human beings better.''
       At the service's close, the white pall that shrouded the 
     coffin was replaced by the Irish flag. Friends, certain Mr. 
     O'Dwyer would be delighted to be wrapped in the tricolor, 
     gave a standing ovation as the casket passed by.

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