[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 99 (Wednesday, July 20, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1551-E1552]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  IN MEMORY OF CONGRESSMAN JAKE PICKLE

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. GENE GREEN

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 12, 2005

  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I submit this statement for the 
Record.

                         Eulogy for J.J. Pickle

                     (By Dr. William H. Cunningham)

       Jake Pickle always referred to The University of Texas at 
     Austin as ``my University,'' and no one ever had a greater 
     right to that claim. When Jake said that, it was an 
     expression not of what The University owed to him, but of his 
     abiding love for it and all that he wanted to do to benefit 
     it.
       And benefit The University he did. Across all the 
     generations, since The University was only a dream in the 
     heart of Dr. Ashbel Smith, no one has ever loved The 
     University of Texas more than Jake Pickle.
       No one ever stood by The University with greater loyalty in 
     its time of need.
       No one has ever worked harder to help it realize its vision 
     of greatness.
       No one has ever given it wiser counsel or embraced it with 
     greater love.
       And The University never had a greater friend.
       So today we remember and celebrate a man in whose heart The 
     University held a central place. And we remember and 
     celebrate also the fact that Jake Pickle was central to the 
     rise of The University as an internationally prominent 
     institution.
       The story of The University's development and flourishing 
     since the mid-20th century is a complex one, with many 
     chapters and versus and many personalities. But no one should 
     ever underestimate the crucial importance of the fact that 
     during much of that time The University was represented in 
     Congress by Jake Pickle.
       I had the good fortune to talk with Jake on many occasions 
     about his experiences at The University, and he often said 
     that his decision to enroll at U. T. was one of the most 
     important decisions he ever made.
       To a large extent, we can thank the Great Depression for 
     that decision. Jake's older brother and sisters had gone to 
     Baylor, and everybody was assuming that Jake would follow 
     them, but the Depression intervened and changed his plans 
     dramatically.
       By the time Jake graduated from high school in his home 
     town of Big Spring in 1932, the family could no longer afford 
     to send him to Baylor, so Jake decided to enroll at The 
     University.

[[Page E1552]]

       Jake's father had saved a grand total of $65 to get Jake 
     started as a freshman in September of 1932. Tuition was $25 a 
     semester, and Jake's room at the Little Campus Dormitory was 
     another $25, so that left him with $15 for books and 
     everything else.
       He soon got a job delivering milk to the other residents of 
     the dormitory and made as much as twenty five cents a day--
     enough to buy a full meal.
       But even more important than the money, Jake told me that 
     his milk route enabled him to get to know the other 140 
     students in the dormitory, and those friendships later became 
     the foundation of his success in campus politics--which, in 
     turn, laid the groundwork for his success in politics in the 
     wider world.
       Like Jake, those boys were from relatively poor families, 
     drawn to the university from all over Texas by the 
     opportunity it offered for an affordable education, which in 
     turn provided a lifetime of additional social, economic, and 
     political opportunities.
       With those 140 friends from Little Campus spread out across 
     the university, Jake found that he had a strong base of 
     support when he ran for the Student Assembly and the Texas 
     Union Board.
       He later combined that base with the growing circle of 
     campus friends and supporters that he and fellow student John 
     Connally attracted when each of them ran for president of the 
     Student Government. By the way, each of them served as the 
     other's campaign manager in those elections.
       Jake served as president of the student body after he 
     entered law school in 1937, and Connally was elected the next 
     year. They both ran as ``independents,'' rather than as 
     representatives of the powerful fraternity and sorority 
     cliques, but they also had a lot of support through the Delta 
     Theta Phi fraternity--a group that Jake said went by the 
     nickname of the ``Dollar Thirty-Fives.''
       Campus politics was a serious contact sport in those days, 
     and more than one political rival learned that Jake Pickle 
     and John Connally were formidable politicians.
       As Jake told me: ``At first Connally and I went in with the 
     fraternities and sororities and other groups in what we 
     called the People's Political Party, but the fraternities 
     decided that the Little Campus men were becoming too powerful 
     so they kicked us out. So then John and I joined together and 
     organized all the independents, all the dorms and boarding 
     houses, and everything else on the campus. We divided the 
     campus into precincts and had a chairman for every one. We 
     found that there were more have-nots than haves.''
       Jake called the experience ``the best political training 
     anybody could have.''
       He told me another great story about his campaign for 
     student body president. There were three candidates--Bob 
     Eckhardt, who was another independent like Jake, and Ramsey 
     Moore, who was the candidate put forward by the fraternities 
     and sororities. Jake and John Connally were worried that the 
     independent vote would be split, thus giving the election to 
     the Greek candidate.
       First they tried to persuade Bob Eckhardt to drop out, but 
     when that didn't work Connally came up with the idea of 
     having a runoff election if no one won a majority. They 
     researched the matter and found that it was permitted by the 
     student constitution although, apparently, student body 
     presidents had always been elected with just a plurality of 
     the votes. Whether to have a runoff became a major issue 
     across the campus, and Jake and John stirred up student 
     opinion and circulated a runoff petition, so the Greeks 
     finally had to accept the idea or appear to be undemocratic.
       Well, the runoff plan backfired, because, to everyone's 
     surprise, Jake came out on top in the first round of voting! 
     If they hadn't sold everybody on the runoff, Jake would have 
     been elected that night.
       Jake told me he went to see Dean Shorty Nowotny to ask him 
     what he should do--have a runoff or not--and Shorty told Jake 
     it was up to him. Jake wrestled with the idea of ignoring his 
     own runoff petition, but he finally decided that going ahead 
     with the runoff was the right thing to do.
       Jake went on to win the runoff election and take office as 
     president!
       That campaign was also notable for Jake's use of his now 
     famous ``Pickle Pins.'' He got the idea from the H.J. Heinz 
     Co., which had given away the green pickle-shaped pins at a 
     World's Fair. Jake said he wrote to Heinz and asked to have 
     any of their old pins, and they sent him five thousand of 
     them. He and his volunteers covered up the Heinz name and 
     wrote ``Jake'' across every one of them!
       Jake never forgot the way The University brought together 
     people from all walks of life, from every station in society 
     and from all economic backgrounds, and gave them all a chance 
     to achieve and excel.
       He never forgot the friends that he made during his student 
     days and the hardships and triumphs that they shared. And, of 
     course, he never forgot The University itself.
       When Jake first ran for Congress he campaigned on the idea 
     of strengthening the Balcones Research Center and developing 
     it into a truly world-class research and development 
     facility. Building on the work of Lyndon Johnson and others 
     through the years, Jake helped The University finally gain 
     title to the Balcones site in 1971, and he contributed in 
     many ways to advancing the status of research facilities at 
     the site. Much of this work was accomplished through Jake's 
     chairmanship of the House Science, Space, and Technology 
     Committee.
       In 1994, The University of Texas System Board of Regents 
     renamed the Balcones Research Center as the J. J. Pickle 
     Research Campus in honor of Jake's noble work in support of 
     this outstanding educational enterprise.
       Jake's tireless labors on behalf of The University 
     frequently encompassed the arcane nuts and bolts of federal 
     tax policy, and he got things done that nobody else could 
     have. For example, he helped get University oil revenues 
     excluded from the windfall profits tax of the 1970s. And 
     another time, he was instrumental in passing a tax credit 
     that helped direct private-sector resources into university 
     research and development--not just at U.T. but at 
     universities across the nation.
       And he was a genius at finding ways to get the federal 
     budget to come to The University's rescue in a time of 
     crisis.
       I know that Provost Gerry Fonken, Vice Provost Steve Monti, 
     and Dean of Engineering Herb Woodson will never forget the 
     day back in 1991 when we met with Jake at the Willard Hotel 
     in Washington to try to save our microelectronics building 
     from disaster. Somehow, The University had ``value 
     engineered'' enough money out of the project so that upon its 
     completion it was nothing more than a shell of a building. 
     This $10 million problem was presented to the Board of 
     Regents by U.T. System Chancellor Hans Mark and Executive 
     Vice Chancellor Jim Duncan. I was called in to explain how I 
     was going to solve the problem. I turned to the Regents and 
     said I have a plan. Fortunately for me, they accepted my 
     brash confidence and proceeded to the next item of business. 
     Unfortunately for me, I had no plan.
       However, I did know how to call my Congressman, our 
     Congressman, the Congressman Jake Pickle.
       Within two weeks of the Regent's meeting, Gerry, Steve, 
     Herb and I were nervously waiting in the dining room of the 
     Willard Hotel to meet with Jake. He and Beryl came charging 
     into the dining room.
       Jake was running his hands through his hair, and he 
     announced before he even sat down, ``I don't know what the 
     problem is, but I will solve it!'' Within one hour he laid 
     out a strategy that involved Jim Wright, Lloyd Bentsen, and 
     Phil Gramm. With a little luck and lots of hard work, in less 
     than two years Congress implemented the Pickle plan and The 
     University was able to successfully ``compete'' for a special 
     $10 million package to support microelectronics and material 
     science.
       Now that's the kind of Congressman everybody ought to have!
       When I think back across the years and recall all those 
     times that I had the good fortune to meet with Jake, two 
     over-riding impressions stand out.
       First, it was clear that he was a man who combined the 
     qualities of uncommon vision, boundless energy, and enviable 
     political skill--and that he was always instantly ready and 
     will to bring those talents to bear for the benefit of his 
     University and its succeeding generations of students.
       And second, it was always clear that underlying everything 
     Jake did was his great love of people, the immense joy that 
     he felt just by being in the company of other people--
     listening to them, caring about them, sharing stories and 
     memories, and, yes, sharing with them the dream for a better 
     future.
       In all these ways, Jake embodied the spirit of American 
     democracy at its best--a spirit of optimism and hope and good 
     cheer; a spirit of inclusiveness and opportunity; and a 
     spirit of public service that embraced honesty, hard work, 
     practical problem solving, and faithfulness to the 
     fundamental values and principles of representative 
     grovernment.
       We all loved Jake, and we will always treasure his memory--
     a memory that will last for as long as the lights on the U.T. 
     tower orange and for as long as young Texans continue to come 
     to Austin seeking education and opportunity at Their 
     University.
       Jake, we love you, and HookEm' Horns!

                          ____________________