[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 127 (Wednesday, October 2, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9785-S9787]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTES TO JESSE HELMS

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, it is with a great deal of pleasure but also 
sadness that I come today to pay tribute to the great Senator from 
North Carolina--sadness because I have enjoyed so much knowing him and 
working with him over the last 30 years, watching him in the Senate and 
in North Carolina and across America, loving him in so many ways and 
being inspired by him.
  I remember when I first came to the Senate, he said: Thank goodness 
the cavalry is arriving.
  I said: Senator Helms, we will be glad to be the light cavalry for 
your heavy artillery any day.
  So it is a moment of sadness but also of celebration of a great life, 
a great Senator, a lovely wife and a great family. Dot Helms is just 
the sweetest woman in the world. We come today to wish them much 
happiness and many years of enjoying their grandchildren and their 
beloved home in North Carolina in the years ahead. So it is with mixed 
emotions.
  When the Duke of Wellington peered through his spyglass and saw 
Napoleon astride his white charger crossing the field of Waterloo, he 
turned to an aide and said, ``The wave of his hat is worth 40,000 men 
on the field.''
  For me, and many others, that is the way it is when Jesse Helms walks 
on to the floor of the Senate. Like his mentor Richard Russell, a 
Democrat, Jesse Helms transcends his times. He is the Senator's 
Senator.
  To many of us, Jesse Helms is a hero of almost mythic proportions. To 
those of us from the South, he exemplifies what we were taught in 
Sunday school and aspired to be--the true gentleman, soft spoken, 
innately fair, unfailingly courteous, and a man to whom his word is his 
bond. That is the Jesse Helms that so many of the staffers and so many 
of us know on a personal basis. It is not necessarily the one that one 
has seen portrayed sometime in the media, but that is the one we really 
know, an incomparable gentleman.
  For 30 years, he has combined the rare qualities of humility and 
vision; love of country and statesmanship; and a faith in God and 
freedom that made him a legend across many parts of America and around 
the world.
  Senator Helms believes that the most sublime word in the English 
language is ``duty''--duty to God, to country, to the Constitution, and 
to family.
  As I noted, if one reads some of the national media, they get a 
completely different impression. He long ago was labeled ``Senator 
No,'' and they condemned him to the liberal version of purgatory. I 
think what really made him mad was that Senator Helms was the one 
politician who never really cared too much about what the chattering 
classes had to say. After all, he had been one of them. He pays 
attention to the English language. He was a journalist. He had higher 
commitments on which he was focused.
  What counts to Jesse Helms in the end is what people say in Monroe, 
Rocky Mount, Dunn, the larger cities and hundreds of small towns and 
churches across the ``Old North State,'' as they call it in North 
Carolina.
  Jesse likes to tell a story recounted to him by another great North 
Carolinian, the late Senator Sam Ervin, also a Democrat. When ``Senator 
Sam'' picked up a copy of the Charlotte Observer one day and read what 
it had to say about him, he shook his head in disgust. The fellow 
selling the paper was an old man named Lum Garrison. Senator Helms 
liked to talk about Lum Garrison.
  When Lum saw how upset the Senator was, he said: Don't worry, Sam. 
The Charlotte Observer don't know nothing and they got it mixed up.
  Incidentally, it was Jesse's friend Sam Ervin who walked out of his 
home in Morganton, NC, when Senator Helms was in the political fight of 
his life in 1984, faced down the news media and endorsed Jesse Helms 
for reelection. Senator Ervin bucked his own party and his Governor 
when he said there are many intelligent people in public life but few 
of them are courageous. Jesse Helms is courageous. That was from Sam 
Ervin.
  If we listen to what some people say, we would not know that Jesse is 
the son of a small town sheriff, and that he and his beloved wife of 60 
years, Dorothy--or ``Dot''--have three children, one of them adopted, 
and seven grandchildren. We would not know that Jesse Helms was the 
father of the United Cerebral Palsy Telethon and that he never lost an 
election, whether it was for the Raleigh city council or the Senate. We 
would not know it was Jesse Helms who defied a sitting Republican 
President to rescue the moribund candidacy of a former actor and 
Governor of California in the 1976 North Carolina Republican primary, 
thus laying the groundwork for the Reagan revolution 4 years later. We 
would not know that the positions he championed singlehandedly for so 
many years, the sanctity of life, smaller government, lower taxes, 
welfare reform, prayer in schools, and an American-centered foreign 
policy are now in the mainstream of American political thought.
  Senator Helms is an uncompromising foe of the enemies of freedom. 
When some politicians were trying to make peace with communism, 
accepting the ``inevitability of history,'' Jesse jeered the Soviet 
Union and its acolytes, echoing Winston Churchill's words,

[[Page S9786]]

``We will have no parley with Communists or the grisly gang who worked 
their wicked will.'' He gave inspiration to Margaret Thatcher and 
Alexander Solzhenitsen and freedom fighters throughout the world. He 
was a friend of Sadat and Begin and championed the cause of the 
American military when that cause was in some ways out of favor.
  In the 1970s, when some people would say freedom was in retreat, no 
one was as fearless or courageous in crusading for liberty as Jesse 
Helms. When he spoke, the Kremlin and Castro trembled.
  The great English Prime Minister William Gladstone noted that the 
Senate was one of the most remarkable political institutions invented 
by the mind of men.
  This place has been witness to some great giants, men and women, who 
have made a difference. Obviously, we all think about Webster and Clay 
and Calhoun and Russell. When Jesse Helms retires to North Carolina 
with Dot, he will join this rollcall of American heroes and take with 
him the thanks of a grateful Nation.
  We won't see his like again anytime soon. You have earned, Senator 
Helms, as you leave this institution, the recognition of having done 
the job, having completed the race.
  Mr. HELMS. Thank you.
  Mr. LOTT. ``Well done, my good and faithful servant.'' Thank you so 
much for what you have done for all of us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I wish to join my colleagues today in 
thanking Senator Helms for his extraordinary service to our Nation.
  When I was younger, in my college days, going through my early 
experience in government in New Hampshire--which tends to be in the 
more liberal bastions of the regions of our Nation, dominated by those 
on the left--in the press, with whom Jesse Helms has dueled for so many 
years, Senator Helms was characterized sometimes in not all that 
flattering a manner by the news outlets to which I had recourse, such 
as the Boston Globe or New York Times or even the national media.
  But you could sense, cutting through all that clutter, this was an 
individual of courage and purpose, a man who stood for what he believed 
in and was willing to carry those beliefs forward, even when they were 
not popular.
  His direction, his willingness to stand up and say what he believed 
was right, is the essence of what it takes to be an effective member of 
a legislative body, in my opinion. But, more important even than that--
maybe not more important but equally important as his commitment to his 
purpose and his cause, was the fact that he did it in such a 
gentlemanly way. I do not believe there has been an individual who has 
passed through this body since I have been here--and I haven't been 
here that long--who has been as courteous and as generous and as kind 
as he dealt with people around him. He is the true gentleman.
  Two of my children had the opportunity to serve here as pages. In 
comments to me after their days working here, there were some instances 
where people had not necessarily been all that kind to them. But the 
one comment that always came through was that Senator Helms was the 
most interested in them, the kindest person, the person who always took 
the extra time to come down and talk with the pages. That reflected his 
attitude towards all of us. When I first arrived in the Senate, he made 
an extra effort to make me feel comfortable as a new Member. It is that 
courtesy which really defines his nature so well. So we are going to 
miss him immensely. He is, has been, and I am sure will continue to be 
a spokesperson for many of the causes in which I believe and which he 
has done so effectively.

  We will miss him because he brought grace, decency, and courtesy to 
this body. So it is a pleasure for me to rise and thank him, with my 
colleagues, for his exceptional service to our Nation.
  Mr. HELMS. Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, today we bid farewell in an official 
sort of way to our friend and colleague from North Carolina, whose 
career has, indeed, been extraordinary. As Senator Lott and Senator 
Gregg have said, if you took a poll around here of people who actually 
work in the Capitol--the pages, the staff, and the Senators--Senator 
Helms would win hands down as the nicest man in the Senate.
  There is an extraordinary disconnect between the Jesse Helms that we 
know and love and the one portrayed in the media, an incredible 
disconnect, because nothing could be further from the real Jesse Helms 
than the one frequently portrayed by the fourth estate.
  How did that come about? I think it came about for this reason, as 
was said of our friend Jesse by Fred Barns, one of the most respected 
conservative columnists and commentators around town:

       Helms has gained respect, not as many conservatives have, 
     by moving left. Helms has earned it the hard way, by not 
     moving at all.

  By not moving at all. There are convenience politicians and 
politicians with conviction. Jesse Helms is the most conspicuous 
example in the Senate today of a politician who acts on conviction. So 
as a result of that, he enjoys wide respect throughout the Senate, both 
left and right, because we know when Jesse speaks he is speaking from 
the heart. He is doing exactly what he thinks is in the best interest 
of his State and in the best interest of America.
  There is an enormous temptation once you come here, even if you think 
you are somewhat conservative, to try to please your critics; to pick 
up the editorial page of the New York Times or Washington Post every 
morning and just move in that direction because there is a tendency on 
the part of everyone, and I think particularly those in public life, to 
want to be liked. They want to be appreciated. Senator Helms has 
resisted that temptation.
  After I first came to the Senate--of course, I had admired him for 
many years--I went by his office to see him, and I looked up on his 
wall and there was a vast collection of cartoons. I am sure Senator 
Helms will agree with me, not many of them were complimentary. It 
struck me instantly that this was a man who really delighted in 
confounding his critics; in not yielding to those kinds of attacks. 
That, it seems to me, is a man of principle and of conviction.
  Jesse and I had one other thing in common. That was the burden of 
dealing with a particular agricultural commodity that is quite common 
in our two States. I might say to my friend, Senator Helms, I had a 
chief of staff one time who said you ought to get combat pay for 
working for a Kentucky Senator because on the agenda every week, of 
course, we had the tobacco issue, America's most politically incorrect 
activity. So as soon as I got to the Senate in 1985, I was immediately 
thrown into one of the many crises. It seems as if we have nothing but 
crises in the tobacco area. But indeed the crisis of the day in 1985 
was the Tobacco Reform Act. I had a chance to get to know Jesse up 
close and personal very quickly after getting to the Senate because we 
had a common interest in trying to protect the income and the 
livelihood of thousands of tobacco growers in our State who make a 
living raising a legal crop.
  These are Godfearing, honest people engaged in a legal activity who 
have been under assault certainly for as long as I have been here, and 
I know it started before I got here. So Jesse and I had a bonding 
experience trying to deal with the politics of tobacco, a situation in 
which tobacco growing is popular in two States and which is widely 
looked down on in 48 others. Those are some of the challenges we have 
shared over the years.
  I also have particularly appreciated Senator Helms' strength and 
conviction in the foreign policy area, an area to which you have 
devoted an enormous amount of your time during your service here. There 
is no question you have made an enormous difference through your 
leadership as both chairman and ranking Member of the Foreign Relations 
Committee. We all look up to you. We admire your work.
  As others have said, and as others will say after I sit down, you 
will be missed around here. We love you and we love Dot. It won't quite 
seem the same with you not around. But I know that you will go back 
home and enjoy North Carolina and enjoy your family.

[[Page S9787]]

I am confident you will keep up with what we are up to, and, if you 
disapprove of anything we are doing, I expect you will call us. We will 
look forward to receiving your advice.
  Let me say good-bye in an official sort of way to your tenure here in 
the Senate. I quoted Washingtonian Magazine which recognized Jesse 
Helms as ``The Nicest Senator.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.

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