[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 87 (Friday, June 13, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7871-S7873]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FATHER'S DAY

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, this Sunday, June 15, is Father's Day. It is 
a day of lovely chosen, if sometimes unstylish, ties; a day of lumpy 
clay bowls and golf tee puzzles; of handmade cards and big brunches. It 
is a day for family members to struggle over what to get dad, in a 
reflection of both the many hours that fathers spend away from home 
working and of his proclivity for just buying himself what he wants.
  What does dad need? Nothing, really. What he wants is more time with 
his family and more time for fun, but that cannot be purchased. That is 
something that cannot be purchased at the mall.
  This Father's Day will be even more special for the men returning 
from service in Iraq in time to meet newborn sons and daughters for the 
first time. They will be coming home to a precious new life that they 
see for the first time in many instances. It is difficult to imagine 
the poignant first

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meeting as the same large hands that wrestled weapons on aircraft or 
into tanks now cradle small bundles squirming with life and happy, 
toothless smiles. What moments of simple, unalloyed joy.
  If we are fortunate this Father's Day, it will be a day of beautiful 
June skies, warm weather and lush lawns trimmed close and smelling of 
fresh cut grass. If we are lucky in this very rainy spring, it will be 
a day to enjoy family activities outside, to preside over savory 
picnics or barbecues, to play ball games, to take long walks with the 
dog.
  I look forward to that. I take a walk with my dog every day before I 
come to work. When she sees me getting ready she knows I am going to 
leave and go to work. When she sees me put on a tie, she stays at my 
feet and does not leave me until I take her for that walk.
  I used to have a little dog named Billy. I spoke of Billy many times 
on this floor during his 15 years with us, but Billy is gone. Now we 
have a little shitzu, and she was named ``Trouble'' by my wife. These 
dogs were to be the palace dogs in Tibet, exceedingly friendly. She 
just loves everybody so I have to be very careful that she does not get 
out the door and go. She will leave with anybody. I call her ``baby.''
  But that walk with the dog, or to have fun at the pool or lake, it is 
in these venues that we see the best sides of fathers, relaxed and 
happy, even a bit goofy as they play with their kids and banter with 
their wives.
  In a suit or a uniform at work, we do not commonly see fathers but 
rather bosses, or officials, men with titles, men with 
responsibilities, mindful of production goals or other targets and 
deadlines. In this work-a-day mode, men set fine role models for their 
children of strong work ethics and integrity and responsibility for 
their families. But it is the kid tossing dad in the pool or the dad as 
softball coach who children are thinking of as they scrawl their ``I 
love yous'' on Father's Day cards.
  One may well appreciate the hours and effort that fathers put into 
their jobs in order to provide the best for their children, but that 
sacrifice does not fill the heart with memories in the same way that 
quiet moments do. Late nights at work or at home paying bills and 
preparing taxes are important but not remembered or as appreciated by 
children as when dad reads bedtime stories and passes out good night 
kisses.
  It has been a long time since I had young children, but I remember 
how it was then. My children, who have grown into adulthood, have 
children of their own, who have grandchildren of their own, meaning 
that Erma and I have great-grandchildren. Erma and I remember the time 
when we put our children to bed and when they said their prayers and we 
gave them our good-night kisses.
  Fathers play an important role in families far beyond their title as 
breadwinner. Their comforting presence adds to family life and their 
loss is felt profoundly.
  It was in recognition of both roles that one of the first Father's 
Day services was held, in my own State of West Virginia. It makes me 
proud that my State figures in the history of both Mother's Day and 
Father's Day.
  That first Father's Day service was conducted by Dr. Robert Webb at 
the Central United Methodist Church in Fairmont, WV, in 1908. The 
service was to honor the 210 fathers killed in the terrible mine 
explosion at Monongah, WV, on December 6, 1907, that took the lives of 
more than 360 men in all. Think about it. There was no joy at Christmas 
in Monongah in 1907. The idea for the service was the inspiration of 
Mrs. Charles Clayton, who sympathized with the grieving families of 
these men, as she still mourned the loss of her own father. Reverend 
Webb, was Mrs. Clayton's pastor, and he agreed with her thoughts and 
prepared a special mass held in honor and remembrance of fathers on 
July 5, the very next year, 1908. This service was but a one-time 
event.
  It was the selfless efforts of one father that inspired his daughter 
to advocate a national Father's Day. After listening to a Mother's Day 
sermon in 1909, Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd proposed the idea of a 
``father's day'' to honor her father, Willam Smart. Mr. Smart was a 
Civil War veteran who was widowed when his wife died in childbirth 
delivering their sixth child. Mr. Smart raised the newborn and his 
other five children on a rural farm in eastern Washington State. That 
would be quite a feat even today, but imagine doing so in the late 19th 
century! There were no disposable diapers then, no prepared formula or 
baby food, no day care, no automatic washing machines and dryers, no 
frozen orange juice. Frozen orange juice came along in 1947. No sliced 
bread here. That did not come along until 1930. You hear people say: 
This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. That doesn't go very far 
back. Mechanically sliced bread sold commercially by 1930.

  So there were none of the conveniences that we take for granted 
today. Mrs. Dodd gives her father great credit, and credit he deserves, 
but without the help of his five older children, it is difficult to 
imagine how Mr. Smart could have met the challenge.
  In my own life, as my mother approached death during the influenza 
pandemic of 1918, when I was just under a year old, she chose to ask 
relatives to raise me. She asked my father to give me, the baby, she 
said, to the Byrds, Titus Dalton Byrd and his wife Vlurma. His wife 
Vlurma was my natural father's sister. My father, my natural father, 
had several sisters.
  So when my mother died of influenza in that great epidemic that swept 
the world, 20 million people died--nobody really knows how many--
throughout the world, 12 million in India, perhaps 750,000, give or 
take, in the United States. They would become ill one morning and die 
that afternoon or the next day--the great influenza epidemic.
  So my mother felt that if she did not recover, she wanted this 
family, Tyson Dalton Byrd and his wife, to raise me. That was her wish. 
Of my three older brothers and a sister, the three older brothers were 
given to the other sister. My father had several sisters. My father 
kept the daughter, my sister. So that is the way it was.
  The people who reared me were kind. They were not well educated. I 
was the first person ever, I suppose, in my family to go to the second 
or third grade, if that far. Nobody else in my family ever went beyond 
that. They could barely read and write, but they were good people. They 
were honest, they were hard working, and they loved me.
  So that is what I remember. My dad was my uncle, you see. I never 
knew any other father because my uncle and his wife, my aunt, brought 
me to West Virginia from North Carolina when I was 2 or 3 years old. So 
I remember this man, Titus Dalton Byrd as my father. He loved me.
  I can remember his coming from work. He was a coal miner. I can 
remember seeing him come down the railroad track from a half mile, 
three-quarters of a mile away. I could see him coming, this tall man 
with black hair and red mustache and watch chain. I could see the watch 
chain; I could see him coming down the railroad tracks. I would run to 
meet him.
  When I came near to him, he would put down his dinner bucket. He 
would lift up the lid. He would reach down into that dinner bucket and 
pull out a cake. My mom--my aunt; I called her my mom--always put a 
cake, a 5-cent cake, in the dinner bucket. He took the cake--he never 
ate it--but always brought it back. He saved the cake for me. So he put 
that dinner bucket down on the wooden cross tie, the railroad cross 
tie, reached in to get that cake, and I ran up to meet him, and he 
would give me the cake.
  This fine old couple had had a son, but that child had died of 
scarlet fever before I was born. So they took me into their home and 
they raised me. That must have been a difficult choice for my father 
and my mother. She was concerned that she might not recover, and they 
decided to give me, the baby, to the Byrds.
  So without the conveniences that we take for granted today, you might 
imagine how it was to raise an infant or a toddler in 1918, bringing a 
child in 1918 to manhood. Under the circumstances, with three older 
brothers and a sister, I know it must have been a very difficult thing 
for my father to try to raise this family with the mother gone. So I 
was raised by my uncle, Titus Dalton Byrd, and my aunt, Vlurma Byrd. As 
I already said, I called my uncle my dad, and he was my dad. He was the 
only dad I ever knew until I was ready to graduate from high

[[Page S7873]]

school, when he told me the story about how my mother died and how my 
mother's wish was what it came to be, that I be made a part of the Byrd 
family.

  So my uncle--he was a patient, quiet man--toiled in the dark pits of 
the West Virginia coal mines without any complaint. I never saw him sit 
at the table and complain about the food--never. He always thought to 
save me that cake. And, like good fathers everywhere, he encouraged me 
always to do my best. He encouraged me in my school work. He and she 
always wanted to see my report card and there was a line on that report 
card designated ``deportment.'' He always looked at that as well. He 
wanted to see how I behaved in school. And he always told me that if I 
got a whipping in school, I could be sure of getting another one at 
home.
  So he encouraged me in my school work. He did not want me to follow 
him into the mines which were, in those days, just as dangerous as they 
had been in 1907, in Monongah.
  In all my years, I say to these wonderful young people and to those 
who are watching out there watching this Senate Chamber today, in all 
those years I never heard him use God's name in vain. I never heard him 
complain about his lot in life. He simply toiled on, doing the best he 
could, a man of few words and few affectionate gestures, but loving 
nonetheless.
  In any event, the first Father's Day was observed on June 19, 1910, 
in Spokane, WA. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge supported the idea 
of a national observance of Father's Day, but it was not until 1966 
that President Lyndon Johnson signed a Presidential proclamation 
declaring the third Sunday in June as the national Father's Day. In 
1972, President Nixon established the permanent national observance of 
Father's Day.
  The Bible admonishes us: ``Honor thy father and thy mother.'' And on 
this day in June we honor our fathers with gifts, cards, and time spent 
together as a family. The rest of the year we can only hope to honor 
our fathers by our own hard work, as we try to live up to the dreams--
yes, the dreams--that they have for us.
  I think of Kipling's lines at this moment. I think they are quite 
appropriate:

       Our Fathers in a wondrous age,
       Ere yet the Earth was small,
       Ensured to us an heritage,
       And doubted not at all
       That we, the children of their heart,
       Which then did beat so high,
       In later time should play like part
       For our posterity.

       Then, fretful, murmur not they gave
       So great a charge to keep,
       Nor dream that awestruck Time shall save
       Their labour while we sleep.
       Dear-bought and clear, a thousand year,
       Our fathers' title runs.
       Make we likewise their sacrifice,
       Defrauding not our sons.

  Mr. President, I close with a short poem by Grace V. Watkins entitled 
``I Heard My Father Pray.'' I offer it in honor of Titus Dalton Byrd, 
my Dad, who is looking down from Heaven.

       Once in the night I heard my father pray.
       The house was sleeping, and the dark above
       The hill was wide. I listened to him say
       Such phrases of devotion and of love,
       So far beyond his customary fashion,
       I held my breath in wonder. Then he spoke
       My name with such tenderness and such compassion,
       Forgotten fountains in my heart awoke.
       That night I learned that love is not a thing
       Measured by eloquence of hand or tongue,
       That sometimes those who voice no whispering
       Of their affection harbor love as strong,
       As powerful and deathless as the sod,
       But mentioned only when they talk with God.

  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cornyn). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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