[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 140 (Monday, December 20, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S12093]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              TRIBUTE TO SENATOR ERNEST ``FRITZ'' HOLLINGS

  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, with the retirement of Senator Fritz 
Hollings, the Senate is losing its fourth most senior member, an 
extraordinary and important repository of institutional history. The 
people of South Carolina are losing an outspoken and respected 
spokesperson for their needs and concerns. All of us who have served 
with him are losing an effective colleague, a wise counselor, and a 
good friend.
  Friz Hollings has spent well over half a century in public service, 
beginning with nearly 3 years of military service during World War II 
in the North African and European theaters. He returned to civilian 
life, received his law degree at the University of South Carolina, and 
in 1948 was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives, 
where he served three terms, two of them as the House speaker pro 
tempore. In 1954 he was elected lieutenant governor, and 4 years later 
he was elected Governor. He was then 36 years old--the youngest 
governor of South Carolina in the 20th century.
  Over many years and on many issues, Fritz Hollings has shown himself 
to be a public servant with solid common sense. He is also a visionary. 
Very early he foresaw the need for technical education, and as Governor 
nearly 50 years ago, he established South Carolina's system of 
technical colleges. In the late 1950s, when other Governors in the 
South were setting out plans to preserve legal segregation 
notwithstanding the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of 
Education, the young Governor of South Carolina rallied the people of 
South Carolina to comply with the law. ``He managed the peaceful 
integration of Clemson University back when other Southern Governors 
were fighting to keep their universities all-white,'' Mike Wallace has 
observed.
  The people of South Carolina, the Members of this body, and people in 
every corner and region of the United States have seen Fritz Hollings' 
forceful combination of common sense and vision at work on issues like 
hunger, the environment, jobs, and fiscal policy. Soon after coming to 
the Senate, he helped focus the Nation's attention on hunger; WIC, the 
Women, Infants and Children's Special Supplemental Food Program, was 
modeled on a pilot program in South Carolina. For more than three 
decades he has played a major part in the vital movement first to 
establish, then to maintain and strengthen the legislative framework 
for protection of the natural environment. It was Fritz Hollings who 
wrote this Nation's first land-use law to protect coastal wetlands. 
Admiral James Watkins, USN (Ret.), who chairs the U.S. Commission on 
Ocean Policy, recently recognized his efforts saying: ``Senator 
Hollings' tireless work on behalf of this Nation's ocean and coasts 
will help preserve and protect our precious marine and coastal 
resources for generations to come. . . . (including) his work to 
establish the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 
over 30 years ago. . . .''
  It was his concern for jobs in South Carolina that led him to 
establish the State's technical colleges while Governor, and in recent 
years has made him a forceful critic of policies that facilitate 
outsourcing. ``In South Carolina,'' according to the Chief Justice of 
the State Supreme Court, Jean Toal, ``we have heard him talk about the 
debt and outsourcing jobs for 30 years, and all of that is now what the 
American public is so focused on. He was always ahead of his time.''
  Fritz Hollings believes in the good that government can accomplish. 
In a recent interview on ``Sixty Minutes,'' he said: ``We believe in 
feeding the hungry, and housing the homeless, and educating the 
uninformed and everything else like that . . . in `We the people' in 
order to form a more perfect Union.'' In his many years of service to 
the people of South Carolina and of this Nation, Fritz Hollings has 
faithfully honored that principle. His common sense, his vision, and 
his great humor will be missed, but surely not forgotten.

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