[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 63 (Wednesday, April 30, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E811-E812]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING THE LIFE OF ISADORE LOURIE

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE WILSON

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 29, 2003

  Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, on April 24, 2003, a 
bright light went out in South Carolina. One of our state's favorite 
sons, Isadore Lourie, passed away. Isadore was a widely respected South 
Carolina legislator, admired for his passion and integrity. We will all 
miss his vibrant personality and our thoughts and prayers are with his 
family and friends.
  I particularly will miss the wise counsel of Senator Isadore Lourie 
(D-Richland), because as a gentleman he very warmly welcomed me to the 
South Carolina State Senate in 1985. On the first day of my service I 
introduced several procedural reforms with my colleague Senator John 
Courson (R-Richland) and Senator Warren Giese (R-Richland). As each was 
debated no one was more civil in rejecting our arguments than Isadore 
Lourie.
  On the last day of his service, I remember walking with Senator David 
Thomas (R-Greenville) and Senator Lourie to his car where he gave us 
the highest compliment of being proclaimed a ``mensch'' which is 
Yiddish for a respected friend. Isadore Lourie is indeed a Southern 
statesman as revealed in the following news article. It is taken from 
the Friday, April 25, 2003 edition of The State newspaper into the 
Record, and describes the extraordinary life of Isadore Lourie.

   ``Isadore Lourie Dies at 70: Retired Senator Hailed As `So Great 
                       Because He Was So Good' ''

                    (By Carolyn Click and Lee Bandy)

       His great, good heart is what people remember.
       Isadore Lourie's heart was soft enough to embrace people of 
     all races and creeds, steely enough to buck the established 
     order, gracious enough to forgive, and ask forgiveness, of 
     his antagonists.
       On Thursday, as word spread of his death from a rare brain 
     disorder related to Parkinson's disease, people statewide 
     hailed the attorney and former state senator from Richland 
     County for his political courage and his personal integrity. 
     He was 70.
       ``During the turbulent time of the '60s, Isadore was, for a 
     time, the most meaningful voice that connected black people 
     and white people,'' said Alex Sanders, the former College of 
     Charleston president, who served with

[[Page E812]]

     Lourie in the Legislature. ``He was so great because he was 
     so good.''
       The son of Jewish immigrants, Lourie showed up Sunday after 
     Sunday in black churches, Sanders recalled, serving as a 
     bridge from the state's segregationist past to an as yet 
     unknown future.
       ``Izzy was truly one of the great progressive leaders of 
     South Carolina during a very difficult time, a time of 
     integration, a time of trying to replace centuries of bad 
     times for African-American citizens and poor white 
     citizens,'' said former Gov. Dick Riley.
       Lourie had great empathy for those who could not speak for 
     themselves, in part because of his family's immigrant story.
       ``He saw the grand sweep of the American dream,'' said 
     Charleston Mayor Joe Riley. ``He saw his part in it . . . and 
     he wanted to extend that to everybody he possibly could.''
       Lourie, along with a group of ``Young Turk'' Democrats that 
     included Sanders, Joe Riley and Dick Riley, stormed the 
     white, rural establishment that controlled life in South 
     Carolina from the courthouse to the capitol.
       In the House and later in the Senate, the Young Turks 
     backed school integration and ``fought like hell,'' Lourie 
     once recalled, to institute such reforms as compulsory school 
     attendance and reapportionment.
       Lourie was a freshman lawmaker in 1965 when he confronted 
     the House speaker over what he deemed an egregious practice: 
     the refusal to introduce black visitors sitting in the House 
     gallery.
       He held an ``an eyeball-to-eyeball'' session with the late 
     Speaker Sol Blatt, Lourie later recalled, during a time when 
     white lawmakers were reluctant to cede long-denied rights to 
     African-Americans. But Lourie prevailed.


                       ``WE KNEW WE WERE JEWISH''

       Lourie grew up in St. George above the family department 
     store founded by his father, Louis Lourie, a Russian 
     immigrant who arrived in America knowing no English and with 
     little money in his pockets.
       But Louis Lourie had cousins in St. Matthews and Orangeburg 
     and came to South Carolina to work for room and board. In 
     1920, he met Anne Friedman, a young Polish Jew who had come 
     with her family to Charleston to escape European persecution. 
     They were married in 1921 and moved to St. George.
       Lourie's father established the L. Lourie Department Store 
     in St. George and ran a wholesale shoe business out of 
     Augusta, Ga. The family grew to include six children--Isadore 
     was the youngest--but his mother continued to manage the 
     household and the business after her husband suffered a heart 
     attack in 1939.
       Long after he was grown, Isadore Lourie remembered the 
     quiet of Sunday mornings in the small town, his Christian 
     friends packed off to Sunday school and church. By Sunday 
     afternoon, he said, his solitude had ended and he was back 
     running with his schoolboy chums.
       ``We knew we were Jewish--my mother strongly felt her 
     Jewish identity--but we got along well with our non-Jewish 
     neighbors,'' Lourie recalled in 2000.
       His mother kept a kosher house, and the family would travel 
     to Charleston for High Holy Days.
       After Isadore completed high school in 1948, his mother 
     closed the St. George store and, with her two eldest sons, 
     Solomon and Mick, opened the new Lourie's Department Store in 
     Columbia, now a fixture in the capital city.
       Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington, still buys his suits from 
     Lourie's, recalling the kindness of the late senator in 
     helping Knotts arrange credit to buy his first suit after 
     becoming a Columbia detective.
       ``He looked out for the little man,'' said Knotts. ``I 
     looked up to him for that.''


                      GREAT TIME TO BE A DEMOCRAT

       Lourie, who earned his undergraduate and law degrees from 
     USC, was first elected to the House in 1964. In 1971, he was 
     elected to the Senate, where he battled the old crony system 
     and served, many of his colleagues say, as the body's 
     conscience.
       He once described the administration of Gov. Dick Riley as 
     ``eight glorious years.'' He said, ``It was a wonderful time 
     to be a progressive Democrat in South Carolina.''
       Lourie clashed later with former Republican Gov. Carroll 
     Campbell. Their feud dated to Campbell's bitter 1978 
     congressional campaign against former Greenville Mayor Max 
     Heller, who is Jewish.
       Those deep-seated feelings surfaced in a keynote address to 
     the Richland County Democratic convention in 1990, when 
     Lourie urged the party faithful to fight against Campbell and 
     his ``crew of thugs'' on every street corner.
       Lourie apologized, saying he got carried away. The two 
     later patched things up. Thursday, Campbell hailed Lourie as 
     the consummate public servant.
       He worked for and witnessed the election of the first black 
     candidates to the Legislature. Today, 32 blacks serve in the 
     Legislature.
       Eventually, Lourie represented a redrawn, black-majority 
     Senate district. He almost lost the seat in 1984. Then, after 
     meeting with black leaders in 1992 at the height of his 
     power, he decided to give up his seat voluntarily.
       ``He paid the ultimate political sacrifice. He gave up his 
     political career,'' said state Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-
     Richland, who won Lourie's old seat.
       After his retirement, Lourie continued his civic 
     activities. In 1994, he was the founding president of the 
     Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina and cleared the 
     way for the development of the Jewish Heritage Collection at 
     the College of Charleston, which already had a vibrant Jewish 
     Studies program.
       ``The thing about him, he was a politician, a good 
     politician,'' said Dale Rosengarten, curator of the 
     collection. ``But he was what we call in Yiddish a `mensch.' 
     He had character, unimpeachable integrity and a heart as big 
     as a house.''
       He also had a running joke of 40 years that he shared with 
     his old Turk buddy Sanders.
       That joke won't be told again, Sanders said, but he did 
     reveal this: Lourie ``was the straight man, and I'll miss him 
     for the rest of my life.''
       A service will be held at 3 p.m. today in Beth Shalom 
     Synagogue, with burial in Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery.

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