[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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