[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 61 (Wednesday, May 11, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4932-S4933]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    CONTRIBUTIONS OF MISS ELIZABETH BRYDEN TO THE SENATE REPUBLICAN 
                               CONFERENCE

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, in 1939, before many Members of this 
body had been born, Miss Elizabeth Bryden of Waltham, MA, came to 
Washington, D.C. to work for Congressman Robert Luce. She continued to 
work on the Hill, with little interruption, until the start of the 96th 
Congress in 1979. Today, when most Hill staffers remain here for only a 
few years, Betty Bryden, as she was always known, remains an example of 
rare dedication and extraordinary public service.
  Her early employers are now mostly names for the history books. For 
example, Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts and Bourke 
Hickenlooper of Iowa, not to mention

[[Page S4933]]

Gordon Allot of Colorado and Congressman McIntyre of Maine. Several of 
those gentlemen chaired the Senate Republican Conference, a position I 
now hold.
  As the research librarian for the Republican Conference, in the days 
before computers, Betty would come into the Russell Senate Office 
Building hours before most staffers would arrive. By the time the 
Senate began business for the day, she would have copied, filed, and 
cross-filed, in what must have been one of the world's most elaborate 
reference systems, scores of that day's news items from a wide variety 
of sources. The cumulative result was a towering warren of filing 
cabinets, jammed with thousands of sheets of paper, the location of 
each of which she somehow remembered. It was not unusual for Senators 
to request urgent information from both the Congressional Research 
Service and Betty, knowing there was a good chance she would have it on 
their desks long before the official system could respond.
  With today's internet, of course, it is not necessary for our staff 
to literally walk across town through a winter blizzard in order to 
provide the day's news clips, but that is what Betty was known to do on 
occasion. Little wonder, then, that she had a special place in the 
hearts of many Senators. Another remarkable Republican woman, Senator 
Margaret Chase Smith, was especially close to Betty and requested that 
she join the board of the Smith Library in Maine, on which Betty still 
serves.
  It must be admitted that, during most of the period when Betty worked 
on the Hill, opportunities for advancement for women were limited. It's 
hard to imagine how they ran this place without the full participation 
of women; we could not manage to do that today. And yet Betty always 
found ways to make a difference. At the request of Senator Saltonstall, 
for example, she took under her wing a young man who needed to be 
trained as a legislative assistant. Even though, as a woman, she was 
not eligible for the job, she produced a first-rate legislative aide. 
The young man was named Eliott Richardson, and throughout his later 
career he never forgot his teacher and always made a point of paying 
his respects to her personally when his official duties brought him to 
the Senate.
  On behalf of the Senate Republican Conference and its leadership past 
and present, I salute Betty for her lifetime of labor in our behalf 
and, indeed, for the entire Senate. Betty's contributions to this 
institution are still appreciated, and she remains an inspiration to us 
all.

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