[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 46 (Friday, March 21, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4269-S4272]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTES TO DR. LLOYD JOHN OGILVIE

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to 
express my gratitude to Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie, who served as our Chaplain 
in the Senate since 1995.
  Dr. Ogilvie has been an outstanding Chaplain to the Senate. He is a 
person I think all of us have grown to know and love and appreciate. He 
has been our mentor, our companion, our friend, our brother, and our 
Chaplain.
  He has provided great leadership, great prayers. He has prayed for us 
many times, and not just in his official capacity as Chaplain of the 
Senate. He has prayed for us individually as Members. He has prayed for 
our families. He has been with us through a lot of difficult times, 
challenging times, exciting times.
  We want him and his family to know they are very much in our thoughts 
and prayers. His wife Mary Jane is a lovely lady. And she has 
experienced some very challenging physical tribulations of late. We 
want both Dr. Ogilvie and his wife Mary Jane to know they are in our 
thoughts and our prayers.
  We certainly miss him as our Chaplain. He has been kind enough to not 
only meet with us in the morning and lead us in prayer, but he has met 
with many of us on a weekly basis--Members of the Senate and also our 
staffs, and also other people who work in the Senate.
  He has been a great mentor and friend. We are certainly going to miss 
him as our Chaplain of the Senate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I, too, would like to share a few 
comments about our Chaplain, Lloyd Ogilvie. I had the honor to get to 
know him after I came here. We live near one another. We see each other 
on a regular basis. My wife and Mary Jane are friends, as we are with 
Lloyd Ogilvie.
  He is an extraordinary individual, one of the most educated people I 
have had the honor to know. He has written over 40 books. His book 
``One Quiet Moment'', a devotional, I believe, is the finest devotional 
book I have ever seen. Reading those devotions, and thinking about 
them, is so current in time today while also so consistent with the 
great traditions of faith that it is really remarkable.
  It is a special work he created there.
  During his entire ministry, he was successful, whether in Hollywood, 
CA or in Illinois or here as chaplain. Our prayers are with Mary Jane, 
his wife. She is suffering substantially now. We worry about her. We 
care about her. Our prayers are with her. She has such a fighting 
spirit. She is a champion of life and of the good things of life. She 
speaks her mind and she has great values. They are a tremendous team.
  I, too, join with others in expressing my appreciation for what he 
means to me, my appreciation for what he does for others in the Senate, 
including our staff members for whom he has ministered and for whom he 
has represented an outstanding example of the richest kind of Christian 
faith.
  We have been blessed by having him here. We certainly will miss him. 
I will miss him.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I wish to comment a moment on our 
Chaplain who is leaving us.

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  I vividly recall when our previous Chaplain indicated he was not 
going to serve us any longer. Many of us thought it would be impossible 
to replace him. I was in a small group--I don't remember if it was 
three or five Senators--who were given the job of going out and looking 
in America for another Chaplain. Senator Stevens was a member, I 
recall. So was Senator Mark Hatfield. I don't recall the others.
  There were a lot of people. I was not so sure that Lloyd Ogilvie, 
based on the things he had done in his life--he was a great preacher; 
he had large assemblies of Christians he spoke to in the California 
area. I did not believe, as one, that he would necessarily fit in, but 
I said: Let's try him.
  He preaches with a beautiful voice; he sounds almost like you would 
expect God to sound. He came, and he has been absolutely marvelous. 
Everybody here has learned to grow in faith and confidence having him 
around.
  It is too bad he has to leave, but he is a very loyal man in terms of 
his marriage and his wife. I think her illness takes him to join her. I 
hope she gets well, although she has been very critical and he sees fit 
to be present there with her.
  So we all say good-bye and good luck. Whomever he serves and whomever 
he shares his views with as to where we came from, where we are going 
to go when we finish here on Earth, and our value system, I am sure 
they will all benefit, just as we have.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, let me add my voice in commendation of 
Lloyd Ogilvie. He has been superb as the religious leader of this body.
  Several years ago, my chief of staff died suddenly and unexpectedly. 
I called Dr. Ogilvie on very short notice and asked him to come and 
lead my staff in prayer and remembrance. I will never forget the 
extraordinary job, the extraordinary sensitivity that Dr. Ogilvie 
brought to that task. I will never forget the way he made my staff feel 
better in a very acute time of loss.
  Dr. Ogilvie has been a remarkable friend to us all; he has done a 
superb job of leading us in prayer, and been a counselor to so many in 
the Senate family. We are going to miss him very much, and certainly 
miss the presence of Mary Jane as well.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for 
talking about our chaplain. Lloyd Ogilvie was very influential in the 
very short time I knew him these last 2 years. A lot of people around 
the country don't know him, but he provided a very valuable service to 
the country by being the spiritual foundation not for just Senators but 
for the entire Senate family.
  Because Lloyd Ogilvie had a television ministry, I was very skeptical 
about who this Senate chaplain was when I first came here a little over 
2 years ago. He leads Bible studies. He leads prayer groups. He leads 
times to get together for people. Regardless of faith, whether somebody 
was Muslim, Jewish or a follower of Jesus, Lloyd John Ogilvie was there 
for us in the truest sense of the word.
  He knew what was going on in individual people's lives. If somebody 
was suffering, he knew about it because people trusted him enough to 
bring him into their confidence. As we have seen over the last couple 
years, he was there when the Senate was suffering as a family. He would 
come and comfort us, and he would lead us from a spiritual sense. I 
have come to greatly admire this man.
  One of his sayings was quoted in an article I read that helped 
inspire me to run for Congress back in 1994. The saying was: You may 
only be able to make a small difference, but that does not relieve you 
of the responsibility to make that small difference.
  People say you can't change the world, so why try. That quote by 
Lloyd John Ogilvie tells us of the responsibility we have. Whatever 
small difference you can make, that is what you are called to make.
  This man, who I believe at the end of his days will come before the 
Father in heaven, the Father in heaven will put his hand on his head 
and he will say to Lloyd John Ogilvie: Well done, good and faithful 
servant.
  Each of us in the Senate family look to Lloyd John Ogilvie and say to 
him: Thank you. He has truly been a good and faithful servant. My 
prayers go out to him and Mary Jane. She is suffering tremendously. All 
of us together have been joining in prayer to relieve her suffering. It 
has been a terrible thing to watch them go through. Even through this 
terrible suffering, we have seen the strength of Lloyd and Mary Jane. 
They have been a comfort to us even through this time of trial.
  I thank both of them for their service to this country and to the 
Senate family.
  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, let me add my appreciation to Dr. Lloyd 
Ogilvie for his terrific service to this great institution. I have been 
a Member here for not even 3 months now. Lloyd Ogilvie has added such 
great inspiration to my life. It has been a joy to get to know him and 
to have the opportunity to listen to him, to learn from him in our 
Bible study, to share our Wednesday morning prayer breakfast with him, 
and to have some private time with him. It has been a real joy, a 
privilege, and something that truly got my career in the Senate started 
in the right way.
  We are all here truly by the grace of God. There is nobody who 
understands the grace of God and is able to express it better than 
Lloyd Ogilvie.
  My wife is a very strong Christian, and the highlight of her week, 
when she is able to be up here, is the Tuesday Bible study that the 
spouses attend. Dr. Ogilvie exhibits that same inspiration to the 
spouses as he does to us.
  We will miss this guy. He is such a great man, a great spiritual 
leader, and a great American. What he and Mary Jane have been through 
over the last couple of years is an inspiration to all of us. It lets 
us know that good men suffer just like everybody else in the world, and 
Lloyd Ogilvie and Mary Jane have been through very difficult times.
  God has a place for all of us, and God truly has placed Lloyd and 
Mary Jane in the right place at the right time by sending him to the 
Senate.
  I told Lloyd this in the last Bible study he led last week. The first 
time I met him I was not a Member of the Senate. I was a Member of the 
House, and I attended the funeral of my close friend and Georgia 
colleague, Senator Paul Coverdell. It was in a Methodist church in 
Atlanta. When they said that Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie, who I knew was a 
Presbyterian minister, was going to have the service, I said: Who is 
this guy? Why is he coming down to do my friend Paul's service?
  I told him the other day, I said: It didn't take but one sentence out 
of your mouth, Lloyd, to understand why you are where you are, that God 
had truly placed you in the right position. And what a terrific job he 
did for the Coverdell family and all of us at a very difficult time in 
the life of my State, the life of me personally, and certainly the life 
of the Coverdell family at that point in time.
  We obviously will keep Lloyd and Mary Jane in our thoughts and 
prayers every single day as they continue to go through difficult 
times. Mary Jane had a better day the other day. And when it was 
reported at the prayer breakfast on Wednesday morning, you could just 
see the light in the room brighten because we knew that Mary Jane was 
feeling better, which meant Lloyd was feeling better, which meant all 
of us were feeling better.
  We do cherish the moments we have with Lloyd. We thank him for his 
great service to our country and to this great institution. We wish him 
and Mary Jane Godspeed. They will continue to be in our prayers every 
single day.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today to honor and thank Chaplain 
Ogilvie for his service and devotion to the entire Senate family over 
the past 8 years. Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie has been the Chamber's 
spiritual leader since the 104th Congress, having been nominated to the 
Chaplaincy by Majority Leader Robert Dole in 1995, the same year I 
joined the United States Senate. Throughout his tenure here, he has 
fulfilled his role as ``an intercessor, trusted prayer partner, and 
faithful counselor'' with the commitment, compassion, and comforting 
grace of a learned and sincere man of God. There are many among us in 
the Senate who have sought his wisdom and found solace in his council 
and friendship.

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  In addition to listening to his beautiful prayers at the commencement 
of each legislative session, I have been a regular participant in his 
weekly Bible study groups. Like many of my colleagues, I have watched 
Dr. Ogilvie execute his office with a great joy for the work he does 
and a deep respect for the moral difficulties we often face as the 
Nation's lawmakers. In times both of celebration and distress, Chaplain 
Ogilvie always did more than make himself available to the thousands of 
Senate members, staff, and employees; he reached out to our community 
and brought us together, inviting all faiths and all kinds to be a part 
of the family. Throughout the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and 
in the confusing, frightening time that followed, we witnessed Dr. 
Ogilvie's amazing capacity for calming and focusing our thoughts, 
encouraging their expression, and reminding us of the strength we 
possess when we put our faith in God.
  Chaplain Ogilvie has been a particularly important figure in my 
private and professional lives. We pray together daily and frequently 
discuss questions of ethics, religion, and law. But he has also shared 
in the personal experiences and sorrows that my own family has 
undergone. Prayerfully guiding me and my wife through the loss of our 
son, Gabriel, Dr. Ogilvie's reassuring words and his friendship were an 
invaluable source of peace for us then, as they continue to be now.
  I have much admiration for Lloyd John Ogilvie, and am grateful to 
him, for leading us all by the example of his life. As he relinquishes 
the Senate Chaplaincy and returns to California and to his wife, he 
reminds us that our most important responsibilities are always to our 
families and loved ones, and through them, to God.
  Thank you, Lloyd, for showing us where the right path leads, for 
serving the Senate and our Lord faithfully, and for helping the Senate 
family to weather our personal and collective difficulties. Your 
guidance and your companionship will be greatly missed.
  Mr. HAGEL. Mr. President, we will all miss our dear friend Dr. Lloyd 
J. Ogilvie. His distinguished service to the Senate has been an 
important part of this institution during this historic time. Since he 
was appointed Senate Chaplain in 1995, Dr. Ogilvie has offered 
guidance, support, and prayers to Senators, their staffs, and our 
families. He has greatly enhanced the Office of Senate Chaplain that 
was instituted at the Senate's first meeting in 1789.
  Dr. Ogilvie's ministry has been a ballast and a bridge for Senators 
on both sides of the aisle. His spiritual leadership has been strong. 
His service has been selfless. As he takes up his work outside of the 
Senate, Lilibet and I wish to express our profound gratitude for the 
inspiration and wisdom he has shared with so many of us. We cherish our 
friendship with Lloyd and Mary Jane. May God bless both of them.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie came to the Senate when I 
did in 1995. He and I became good friends. Lloyd has meant more to me 
than I can express. He has been a friend and spiritual advisor to my 
colleagues and many, many staff members and employees of the Senate. 
Democrats and Republicans, men and women of many different religious 
faiths, could always call on him.
  He has been a focal point of the Senate family. On September 11, and 
every day since, his ability to share the power of his faith in God has 
been all the more invaluable to me and to others. He is eloquent and 
learned. He's done a wonderful job, opening every session with prayer, 
leading Bible study, helping us to understand Scripture and ourselves.
  For the good of this institution he has worked with us to realize, in 
the words of John Witherspoon, ``the dominion of Providence over the 
passions of men.'' Obviously that is pretty important here in the 
Senate, where we are frequently at loggerheads. Reverend Ogilvie, by 
lifting our sights to the world of the spirit, has been a soothing 
presence.
  We did not want to lose him; but we know it was necessary to be with 
his wife Mary Jane in California. We understand; and, since he is going 
to continue his prolific speaking, teaching, and writing, we also know 
we won't lose touch with him.
  The entire Senate family is better for the service of this 
influential servant of God. Lloyd and Mary Jane, Godspeed.
  Mrs. DOLE. Mr. President, I rise tonight to express by great 
admiration and appreciation for Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie, a man who has served 
the Senate, and our country, with great dignity and honor.
  Bob and I have treasured our friendship with Lloyd and Mary Jane 
through many years. I feel blessed to know such a warm, compassionate 
and caring couple. They share a beautiful partnership and just last 
year celebrated 50 years of marriage and three wonderful children, 
Scott, Heather and Andrew.
  Mary Jane has long been admired for setting such a strong example of 
what it means to give of yourself. After battling breast cancer 20 
years ago, she has done so much to help other women going through the 
pain--physical, emotional and spiritual--of cancer and cancer 
treatment. My thoughts and prayers are continually with Mary Jane and 
her family now, at this very difficult time in her life and theirs.
  Lloyd Ogilvie is an extraordinary man of God. He has served amongst 
us with such a gentle and humble spirit, that sometimes it has been 
easy to forget what a world-renown spiritual guide and Biblical scholar 
we have had in our midst. As a profound preacher, as well as an author 
and editor of over 40 books, Lloyd Ogilvie is admired the world over 
for his depth of insight into eternal truths and for his ability to 
communicate those truths in a God-horning and loving spirit. It has 
been our special blessing to have had this wise, dear man of God as our 
personal friend and advisor, standing with us here in the Senate 
Chamber or meeting with us just down the hall.
  The first in his family to attend college, Lloyd Ogilvie's plan was 
to study drama, hoping to go to Hollywood. He answered a call to preach 
instead, but still ended up in Hollywood--pastoring the First 
Presbyterian Church.
  After 23 years at First Presbyterian, Dr. Ogilvie answered another 
call--and became the 61st Chaplain of the Senate. Recommended by a 
bipartisan committee, he was nominated by then-Majority Leader Bob Dole 
and he began his duties March 13, 1995. He bridged Dole to Dole--and 
during his time in the Senate he has also bridged many differences, 
counseling and caring for both sides of the aisle.
  With that deep, booming voice of his, which we have come to so easily 
recognize and love, Lloyd has opened our days in prayer. Day after day, 
he has steadied our hearths and pointed our thoughts Heavenward. And I 
believe, as a result, he has helped us to render service to our Nation 
and to our God with a deeper sense of perspective and stewardship.
  From this first days as Chaplain, Dr. Ogilvie reached out in so many 
ways--one of which impacted my life--a weekly Bible study for Senate 
spouses. And one of the things I will miss most is the Senators' Bible 
Study he has led every Thursday at noon during my first 10 weeks in the 
U.S. Senate.

  Lloyd has seen all of us here in the Senate family as his parish. He 
will be deeply missed by the hundreds of Senate staffers, cafeteria 
workers, police officers, and service department personnel whom he has 
inspired to deeper faith and commitment.
  Lloyd's love of Christ, and his love of others in Christ's name, have 
been evident through his life, and his ministry amongst us, each and 
every day. There is a remarkable, caring spirit about Lloyd Ogilvie, a 
special attentiveness in his demeanor. Lloyd has a wonderful capacity 
for kindness and compassion. He has been a valued teacher and counselor 
to so many. He has been there at our side, when we or our family 
members have faced turmoil. And he has ministered among us when our 
Nation has faced special challenges.
  Each one of us is constantly in need of God's grace and guidance not 
only to make the big decisions, but also to perform life's routine 
duties with the love for others, the peace, the joy inherent in God's 
call. Lloyd Ogilvie has helped bring that grace and guidance to the 
Senate. His gift, and his passion, is helping others not only to 
understand God's will, but to resolve to live within God's will each 
and every day.
  Although Lloyd Ogilvie is leaving the Senate, I am comforted in 
knowing that he will still be praying for the people of the Senate. 
Through his continued friendship, and his writings, he

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will be a treasured resource for spiritual guidance.
  As former chaplains of distinction Peter Marshall and Richard 
Halverson continue to impact this historic Chamber, so, too, will Lloyd 
John Ogilvie.

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