[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 86 (Wednesday, June 20, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H3354-H3355]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO SENATOR ROBERT C. BYRD, WEST VIRGINIAN OF THE CENTURY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge West Virginia
Day, at least for the 1 hour left in today, and the West Virginian of
the Century, U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, whose accomplishments will
last forever. 138 years ago, on June 20, 1863, West Virginia became the
35th State in the Union. Over those 138 years, our State has been
blessed with many great statesmen and women, but last month at the
State capitol in Charleston, Senator Robert C. Byrd was appropriately
honored as West Virginian of the Century by a proclamation from our
West Virginia Governor, Bob Wise, and resolutions from the West
Virginia House of Delegates and the West Virginia Senate.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the remarks of Senator Byrd on
that occasion.
Remarks by Senator Robert C. Byrd, ``West Virginian of the 20th
Century,'' May 31, 2001
West Virginia, how I love you!
Every streamlet, shrub and stone,
Even the clouds that flit above you
Always seem to be my own.
Your steep hillsides clad in grandeur,
Always rugged, bold and free,
Sing with ever swelling chorus:
Montani, Semper, Liberi!
Always free! The little streamlets,
As they glide and race along,
Join their music to the anthem
And the zephyrs swell the song.
Always free! The mountain torrent
In its haste to reach the sea,
Shouts its challenge to the hillsides
And the echo answers ``FREE!''
Always free! Repeats the river
In a deeper, fuller tone
And the West wind in the treetops
Adds a chorus all its own.
Always Free! The crashing thunder,
Madly flung from hill to hill,
In a wild reverberation
Makes our hearts with rapture fill.
Always free! The Bob White whistles
And the whippoorwill replies,
Always free! The robin twitters
As the sunset gilds the skies.
Perched upon the tallest timber,
Far above the sheltered lea,
There the eagle screams defiance
To a hostile world: ``I'm free!''
And two million happy people,
Hearts attuned in holy glee,
Add the hallelujah chorus:
``Mountaineers are always free!''
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Governor Wise, my fellow West
Virginians, ladies and gentlemen:
Now in my 84th year, I look back over the ups and downs of
a long and full and active life. I see a vastly changed world
from what it was when I walked the dirt roads of Wolf Creek
Hollow in Mercer County and studied in a two-room
schoolhouse. The nation has grown from 102 million when I was
born in
[[Page H3355]]
1917 to the burgeoning population of 275 million people
today. At the beginning of my life, the nation was still in
its horse-and-buggy days. Now we are in the age of instant
communications, the Internet, jet-propelled planes, inter-
planetary exploration, medical miracles, and the highest
standard of living that the world has ever known.
We live in a country whose greatness seems to have been
foreordained by her fortunate geography and rich natural
resources, her agreeable and temperate climate, and by the
hardy and industrious race of men and women who hewed her
forests, cultivated her fields, bridged her rivers, built her
cities, and created the American Dream that has excited the
envy and won the admiration of mankind around the globe. How
blessed we are to have inherited this pearl of great price!
And how thankful we should be to the provident hand of that
Omnipotent Being, who has favored our undertakings from the
pre-dawn infancy of the colonial experience to the present-
day meridian of the American Republic!
I am grateful for the Divine hand that delivered me, in my
infancy to my home in West Virginia. I am grateful for wear-
worn shoes; for the callouses of honest labor; and for the
challenges of an unforgiving terrain. I am thankful for wrong
turns that led to the right paths; for good people who
inspired me to strive for great things; and for the rich
experiences that taught me the difference between knowledge
and wisdom.
I am grateful to the people of West Virginia for placing
their trust in this adopted son of a poor coal miner, a mere
``scrap boy'' who used to go door to door gathering bits of
food to fatten up the hogs raised by my foster father in a
pen by the railroad tracks.
I am grateful to the people for giving me the opportunity
to serve our state and our nation; to stand in the midst of
history, among men and women who have changed the course of
destiny, at the pinnacle of power in the greatest legislative
body ever to grace the Earth.
And I am grateful to the people for their many kindnesses
to Erma, my wife of 64 years, to whom I owe so much. She has
been God's greatest gift to me.
West Virginians have given so much to me. Without your
faith in me, I do not know where I would be today, but one
thing I do know: I would not be here.
Never having forgotten my roots, I continue to be aware
that my highest duty is to West Virginia and to the people of
our state, who have honored me with public office for more
than a half century.
My own less-than-modest beginning and the poverty of my
state during my boyhood years have never faded from my view,
and it has been my constant desire to improve the lives of
the people who sent me to Washington. In many ways, I think
that I have succeeded, but there is still work to do.
I am blessed to have had at my side a wife who, for 64
years, has been the central pillar of my home and my career.
Erma and I grew from childhood to adulthood during the years
of the Great Depression and in the coal mining towns of
Southern West Virginia. The bottom rungs in our Ladder of
Life were missing, but with God's help and by His grace, we
have weathered storms of adversity and come through times of
sorrow as well as joy to the present moment.
Not least of all, I owe much of my phenomenal success in
serving the people of my state and my country to the many
extraordinary men and women who have worked on my staff
throughout my long career in the U.S. House of
Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
As we have now crossed the threshold into a new century, I
take this opportunity to urge my fellow West Virginians to
build their future on the development of the human mind and
the rock of the human spirit. I hope that more and more West
Virginians will understand the imperative of education and
the value of our schools, and that we will restore education
to its rightful position as the primary key that opens doors
onto the classic American dream of fulfillment in life as
individuals and as a society. I hope that increased numbers
of parents will become involved in monitoring their
children's learning progress, in encouraging better
performance at all levels of their children's schoolwork, and
in applauding the achievements of good teachers.
I also hope that increased numbers of children will
discover and rediscover the joys of reading, that more and
more students will find unfathomed challenges in mathematics
and the sciences and in history, and that a new generation of
well-educated, keenly interested, and highly dedicated and
industrious students will emerge from our schools to assure
our State's preeminence in every field of learning, business,
industry, and endeavor known to man, and many fields yet
unknown but waiting for some blade-sharp West Virginia
intellects to invent and open doors to them.
I hope that West Virginians will continue to preserve and
honor the old values that guided and sustained our fathers
and mothers and more distant ancestors in their daily lives
and in the life of our state from its earliest beginnings.
The Biblical proverb admonishes us, ``Remove not the
ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.''
My foster parents on their knees influenced my life from my
early beginnings. I am sure that many of you can say the same
thing.
Man is a spiritual creature. But if that spirituality is
ignored--if man's soul is allowed to starve--the result is
spiritual death. And no task of national renewal will be
possible unless that effort is also a task of spiritual
renewal.
George Washington in his farewell address, made the point
succinctly:
. . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that
morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be
conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of
peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to
expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of
religious principle.
Scientists have long sought the so-called ``missing link.''
The real missing link in our national cultural life is God.
From the depths of my heart, I thank Governor Bob Wise,
House Speaker Bob Kiss, Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin,
the members of both the House and the Senate, but most of
all, I thank the people of West Virginia for the many years
in which they have reposed their confidence and their faith
in me. I have done my best.
May God always bless the State of West Virginia.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Mr. Speaker, I urge you and my colleagues in the House to join me in
congratulating Senator Byrd as ``West Virginian of the Century,'' and
in thanking him for his tireless work on behalf of the great State of
West Virginia and its millions of residents.
Mr. Speaker, I urge you and my colleagues in the House to join me in
congratulating Senator Byrd as West Virginian of the Century and in
thanking him for his tireless work on behalf of the great State of West
Virginia and its millions of residents.
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