[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 125 (Thursday, September 23, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11376-S11377]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO LANE KIRKLAND

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, over the August recess South 
Carolina lost one of her most distinguished native sons, Lane Kirkland. 
Unless you knew Lane personally, you weren't likely to know he was a 
proud South Carolinian. If you did know him personally, there was no 
way not to know he was a proud South Carolinian. He went to South 
Carolina regularly; sometimes to see his brothers Ranny and Tommy, 
sometimes just to go to the wonderful small town of Camden where he 
spent his childhood summers. Whenever we would meet, officially or not, 
we always spent some time talking about South Carolina.
  Lane remembered and cherished his roots, but they did not bind him. 
He had grown up with people who could not see through their rich 
heritage to the future. Lane was acutely aware of this trap and he 
illustrated this brilliantly in a commencement address to the 
University of South Carolina in 1985.

       I owe to Sidney Hook a thought that I offer as my final 
     conclusion from all this. From him I learned the difference 
     between a truth and a deep truth. A deep truth is a truth the 
     converse of which is equally true. For example, it is true, 
     as Santayana said, that those who cannot remember the past 
     are doomed to repeat it. Yet it is equally true that those 
     who do remember the past may not know when it is over. That 
     is a deep truth.

  Lane Kirkland was a complex person as evidenced by his many 
contradictions. He was a Southerner who found his education and 
opportunity in New York; he descended from planters but had his first 
success as a sea captain; he was a child of privilege who became a 
self-described New Dealer; he was an intellectual who fought for miners 
and mill workers; and perhaps most importantly, he was a liberal anti-
Communist.
  Lane had many triumphs in his life, but none was so important as the 
leading role he played in the liberation of Eastern Europe and the fall 
of the wall. He committed the resources of the American labor movement 
to preserve Lech Walesa and Solidarity. The New York Post wrote that 
``Kirkland must be included among a select group of leaders--including 
Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa--who played a critical 
role in bringing about the demise of Communism.'' William Safire, no 
fan of organized labor, wrote this about Lane Kirkland and Lech Walesa: 
``Together these two anti-Communist patriots fought the Soviet empire 
when the weak-kneed were bleating `convergence'. Their refusal to 
compromise with evil exemplified the leadership that helped win--the 
word is `win'--the cold war.''
  As a South Carolinian and an American, I am proud of the central role 
that Lane played in the central struggle of this century. People in the 
United States and around the world know the exhilaration and 
opportunity that freedom brings in part because of

[[Page S11377]]

Lane Kirkland. In his last speech in South Carolina, Lane addressed the 
South Carolina Historical Society. He opened by saying, ``I am honored 
to be here even though it suggests that I am history.'' In reality Lane 
Kirkland made history.

                          ____________________