[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 133 (Thursday, November 18, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11458-S11459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTES TO RETIRING SENATORS


                             Fritz Hollings

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the end of the 108th Congress marks the end 
of an era. It marks the end of a remarkable career of a remarkable man.
  I will not say goodbye to Senator Hollings. His personality, his 
sense of humor, his achievements, his legacy will forever be a part of 
this Chamber. But I do take a few minutes of the Senate's time to thank 
Senator Ernest Hollings.
  I thank him for being an outstanding Senator. I thank him for his 
service to our country. I thank him for being a friend. I have been 
honored to call him my colleague for almost 40 years.
  The man who is destined to become a legend in the political history 
of South Carolina politics was a New Year's Day baby. He was born on 
January 1, 1922. After graduating from the Citadel, he served in the 
U.S. Army during World War II. This combat veteran, who served in North 
Africa and in Europe, was awarded seven campaign stars and was 
discharged with the rank of captain.
  After the war, he earned his law degree from the University of South 
Carolina in 1947 and then began his extraordinary career in public 
service in 1947. That was the year in which he earned his law degree.
  In 1947, at the age of 26, he was elected to the South Carolina State 
Legislature where he served until 1954, while 1947 was the year in 
which I was sworn in at the West Virginia House of Delegates in 
Charleston, WV.
  During his last 3 years in the South Carolina State Legislature, he 
served as its speaker pro tempore.
  In 1954, at the age of 32, he was elected Lieutenant Governor of 
South Carolina.
  Four years later, in 1958, at the age of 36, he became one of the 
youngest men ever elected Governor of his beloved State. From what I 
understand, he was an outstanding Governor. Senator Hollings would be 
outstanding in any office in which he would ever serve. He earned a 
reputation as the education Governor because he raised teachers' 
salaries, launched new and innovative educational programs, including a 
superb technical training program, and set up a commission that 
improved the State's higher education system.
  In 1966 he was elected to the Senate. Here he has stayed for 38 
years. I am glad he stayed. He has been a very colorful Senator, an 
outstanding and outspoken Senator with a booming voice.
  The stentorian voice could be heard, I am sure, throughout this 
Chamber, without a public address system. When he first came here we 
had no public address system in the Senate. When I first came here, we 
had no public address system in the Senate, but we had Senators who 
could be heard. It was a practice in those days for other Senators to 
gather closer to the Senator who was speaking. It was also a practice 
for other Senators to be informed when a new Senator was going to 
speak. New Senators did not speak the first week or the first month, 
but only after several months did they speak. Before they spoke, the 
word went around that so and so was going to deliver his maiden speech 
or her maiden speech. In those days there was one lady in the Senate, 
Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. But we didn't have any public address 
system.

  I recall when we started to discuss having a public address system in 
the Senate, I was opposed to it. I wanted the Senate to remain the 
Senate of the decades that had preceded our own times.
  But he was colorful and he was a Senator who had that booming voice 
that could be projected and heard in the galleries, and today Senator 
Hollings does not need a microphone.
  He was from the old school of Senators who placed public interest 
over partisan politics. Oh, that we had more Senators like that, more 
Senators like Senator Hollings who put first the public's interest, the 
interest of those people who are watching through that electronic eye 
just behind the Presiding Officer's desk; the eyes of the people come 
through that electronic eye, which extends the galleries beyond the 
capacity that we see here. It extends those galleries out to the 
outermost parts of the country, north and south, out to the Pacific, 
out to the great Rocky Mountains, out to the broad prairies, out to the 
farms, out to the hills of West Virginia, that great medium.
  This Senator from South Carolina, unlike so many Senators of today, 
placed the public interest over partisan politics. And he still does. 
He never hesitated to criticize a President of his own political party 
as well as the opposition party when he knew in his heart and in his 
conscience that President

[[Page S11459]]

was wrong. If it were a President of his own party, let it be.
  While in the Senate, Senator Hollings has served on the Senate's 
Budget and Appropriations Committees, served as chairman of the Senate 
Commerce Committee, served as chairman of a number of Senate 
subcommittees. Just as he had been a loyal and proud servant of his own 
State of South Carolina, he has been a loyal and proud servant of our 
country. In the Senate, he has been a forceful advocate of a 
responsible energy policy. In fact, as early as 1967, Senator Hollings 
was warning that our country faced a future of energy crises, and he 
was calling for a national energy policy.

  He authored legislation to create the Department of Energy and the 
Automobile Fuel Economy Act that requires the miles-per-gallon sticker 
on new cars.
  He has been a determined advocate of a cleaner and healthier 
environment. In this effort, he formulated legislation to protect our 
marine environment, sponsored legislation to prevent the dumping of 
polluting materials in the ocean, and authored the Coastal Zone 
Management Act to protect our coastal waters and tidelands. He is the 
recognized legislative ``father'' of the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.
  In the Senate, Senator Hollings continued promoting technical 
training as he fought to establish trade schools that specialize in 
retraining workers and offer alternatives for people who choose not to 
pursue a university degree.
  In the Senate, Senator Hollings has tenaciously opposed trade deals 
that threaten American jobs. Oh, if there were more like him. His 
fights in this area have involved opposing Presidents, opposing 
Presidents whom he charged were ``giving away the store'' in our trade 
treaties. He has fought to protect and increase Social Security 
benefits for our elderly Americans.
  Concerned about the widespread poverty across the South, in 1968, he 
undertook a series of ``hunger tours'' that highlighted the issue. He 
later authored a powerful study, ``The Case Against Hunger: A Demand 
for a National Policy'' that advocated programs to address the 
persistence of abject poverty in the United States. Putting his words 
into action, he helped lead the congressional effort to establish the 
Women, Infants, and Children--WIC--nutritional assistance program, and 
he helped to advance the Nation's community health centers, which 
provide primary and preventive health services in underserved 
communities.
  Long before the Bush administration's record-breaking budget 
deficits, long before today's incredible $7 trillion national debt, 
Senator Hollings was an eloquent and powerful advocate of budget 
discipline. I did not always agree with his efforts, such as the Gramm-
Rudman-Hollings law, but I never questioned Senator Hollings's 
dedication to trying to restore fiscal sanity to America's deficit 
addictions.
  Although he has long been a Senator of power and influence, during 
the great majority of his time in this Chamber, he remained the junior 
Senator from his State. Even after serving 36 years in the Senate, he 
was still outranked by his colleague from South Carolina, Senator Strom 
Thurmond, making Senator Hollings the longest serving junior Senator in 
history, whatever that means. I have often wondered, having been a 
junior Senator and being a senior Senator now, what we mean by ``junior 
Senator''? Well, we know what it means, but that is all.
  It was at the age of 80 that Senator Hollings finally became the 
senior Senator from South Carolina. He had earned it. He had earned it 
just as he has earned the respect and the gratitude of the people of 
South Carolina and the men and the women in this Chamber.
  Now, unfortunately, my friend and colleague is leaving us. Again, I 
will not say farewell to him. I will only thank him for his service and 
wish him well in his private life.
  I will always remember and cherish our years of working together on 
the Appropriations Committee and for the best interests of our great 
country.

     It isn't enough that we say in our hearts
     That we like a man for his ways;
     And it isn't enough that we fill our minds
     With psalms of silent praise;
     Nor is it enough that we honor a man
     As our confidence upward mounts;
     It's going right up to the man himself
     And telling him so that counts.

     Then when a man does a deed that you really admire,
     Don't leave a kind word unsaid,
     For fear to do so might make him vain
     Or cause him to lose his head;
     But reach out your hand and tell him, ``Well done'',
     And see how his gratitude swells;
     It isn't the flowers we strew on the grave,
     It's the word to the living that tells.

  Now, unfortunately, my friend and colleague--a strong colleague on 
the Appropriations Committee, where we two have served all these many 
years--is leaving us. Again, I will not say farewell to Senator 
Hollings. I will only thank him for his service and wish him well in 
his private life. I will always remember and cherish our years of 
working together.
  I shall always remember, too, that loyal, dedicated, devoted 
helpmate, Peatsy, who stood always at his side, always there to be his 
best confidant. Yes, Erma and I will miss Peatsy.
  In closing, then, let me speak just a few words from the ``Character 
of the Happy Warrior'' by William Wordsworth, because I think they 
represent my feelings toward Ernest Fritz Hollings:

     Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
     That every man in arms should wish to be?

                           *   *   *   *   *

     'Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high,
     Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye,
     Or left unthought-of in obscurity,--
     Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
     Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not--
     Plays, in the many games of life, that one
     Where what he most doth value must be won:
     Whom neither shape or danger can dismay,
     Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
     Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
     Looks forward, persevering to the last,
     From well to better, daily self-surpast:
     Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
     For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
     Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
     And leave a dead unprofitable name--
     Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
     And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
     His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
     This is the happy Warrior; this is he
     That every man in arms should wish to be.

  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania is recognized.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I am happy to yield to the Senator from 
Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the 
conclusion of the remarks of the junior Senator from Pennsylvania, I be 
recognized to speak as in morning business for up to 25 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Pennsylvania is recognized.

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