[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 121 (Wednesday, July 23, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1536-E1537]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     IN TRIBUTE TO STEWART R. MOTT

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. BARBARA LEE

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 23, 2008

  Ms. LEE. Madam Speaker, I have the pleasure of being Co-Chair of the 
74-Member Congressional Progressive Caucus in this, the 110th Congress. 
It is with a deep sense of sadness that I pay tribute to the passing of 
Stewart R. Mott, founder of the Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust and 
the Fund for Constitutional Government and a great progressive leader. 
Stewart died on June 12th after a year-long battle with cancer, and a 
memorial service in his honor was held last week in New York City.
  In a few weeks, I am publishing a memoir that I titled A Renegade for 
Peace and Justice. I am also reminded that Stewart Mott was truly a 
giant renegade for peace and justice. Born to a life of wealth and 
privilege, he took a different path and led a remarkable life of 
passionate commitment to exploration, discovery, and social change. He 
also put his good fortune literally and figuratively to remarkably good 
use, providing essential funding to countless progressive organizations 
and electoral and issue campaigns dedicated to improving the lot of the 
downtrodden, promoting peace, and zealously defending the civil rights 
and civil liberties endowed to each of us in our precious U.S. 
Constitution.
  Stewart Mott lived the philosophy of the Mott family crest, Spectemur 
Agendo, which translates ``Let us be known by our deeds.'' As many of 
his friends and associates have noted, he will also be remembered for 
his great sense of humor, his great generosity, his deeds as a 
pioneering philanthropist, and his undaunted commitment to building a 
better democracy.
  America is hungry for change and I am saddened that Stewart Mott did 
not live long enough to witness a resurgent progressive movement 
deliver many of the 21st century changes that will be required to move 
our country and our world toward more peace and justice. But without 
his resolve and extraordinary generosity, prospects for lasting 
progress toward a more perfect Union in America would be far dimmer, as 
is underscored by the following obituary for Stewart Mott that appeared 
in the New York Times on June 14, 2008:

                [From the New York Times, Jun. 14, 2008]

           Stewart R. Mott, 70, Offbeat Philanthropist, Dies

                          (By Douglas Martin)

       Stewart R. Mott, a philanthropist whose gifts to 
     progressive and sometimes offbeat causes were often upstaged 
     by his eccentricities, like cultivating a farm with 460 plant 
     species (including 17 types of radishes), a chicken coop and 
     a compost pile, atop his Manhattan penthouse, died Thursday 
     night. He was 70 and had homes in North Salem, N.Y. and 
     Bermuda.
       His death was confirmed Friday morning by Conrad Martin, 
     executive director of the Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust. 
     He said Mr. Mott had been ill with cancer for some time and 
     died in the emergency room of

[[Page E1537]]

     Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y.
       Mr. Mott's philanthropy included birth control, abortion 
     reform, sex research, arms control, feminism, civil 
     liberties, governmental reform, gay rights and research on 
     extrasensory perception.
       His political giving, often directed against incumbent 
     presidents, was most visible. In 1968, he heavily bankrolled 
     Senator Eugene McCarthy's challenge to President Lyndon B. 
     Johnson. Four years later, he was the biggest contributor to 
     Senator George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee.
       When Charles W. Colson, the White House chief counsel to 
     President Richard M. Nixon, included Mr. Mott in the famed 
     ``enemies list,'' Mr. Colson said of him, ``nothing but big 
     money for radic-lib candidates.''
       After the 1974 campaign finance law outlawed exactly the 
     sort of large political gifts in which Mr. Mott specialized, 
     he joined conservatives to fight it as an abridgement of free 
     expression. They argued that limits on contributions given 
     independently of a candidate's organization were 
     unconstitutional. In 1976, the Supreme Court agreed, while 
     keeping other parts of the law. Mr. Mott then became expert 
     on devising ways to give to candidates under the new rules. 
     Following conservatives' precedents, he formed political 
     action committees and became an expert on direct mail, using 
     both as methods of collecting many small donations.
       Still, his ability to help the independent presidential 
     candidacy of Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois in 
     1980 was curbed somewhat; gone were the days when he could 
     simply write a big check and directly hand it to Mr. McCarthy 
     or Mr. McGovern. Some argued that the financing restrictions 
     diminished the chances that surprise candidates could emerge 
     from the grass roots and be propelled to national prominence 
     by well-placed benefactors.
       Bradley A. Smith, former chairman of the Federal Election 
     Commission, wrote in the Yale Law Journal in 1996 that Mr. 
     Anderson's losing independent bid might have fared better had 
     Mr. Mott not been so effectively leashed.
       Irreverent, good-looking and effusive, Mr. Mott seemed 
     tailor-made for the 1960s and '70s, when he attracted his 
     widest attention, not least for his all-too-candid comments 
     about everything from his sex partners (full names spelled 
     out in newsletters) to his father's parental deficiencies 
     (``a zookeeper'') to his blood type (AB+).
       He once lived on a Chinese junk as a self-described beatnik 
     and kept notes to himself on Turkish cigarette boxes, 
     accumulating thousands. He held folk music festivals to 
     promote peace and love. His garden atop his Manhattan 
     penthouse (which he sold some years ago) was famous; at one 
     point Mr. Mott taught a course in city gardening at the New 
     School for Social Research in New York. He once told an 
     interviewer that he lay awake wondering how to grow a better 
     radish.
       Mr. Mott seemed to relish poking his finger in the eye of 
     General Motors, a company that his father, Charles Stewart 
     Mott, helped shape as an early high executive. In the '60s, 
     the younger Mr. Mott drove a battered red Volkswagen with 
     yellow flower decals when he drove at all. He lambasted G.M. 
     at its annual meeting for not speaking out against the 
     Vietnam War. He gave money to a neighborhood group opposing a 
     new G.M. plant because it would involve razing 1,500 homes.
       Mr. Mott broke into politics in 1968, when he used 
     newspaper advertisements to pledge $50,000 to the as-yet-
     nonexistent presidential candidacy of Gov. Nelson A. 
     Rockefeller of New York if others would contribute double 
     that amount. When Mr. Rockefeller rejected his efforts, Mr. 
     Mott turned to Mr. McCarthy.
       In 1972, Mr. Mott ran what some regarded as a scurrilous ad 
     campaign against Senator Edmund S. Muskie, a rival of Mr. 
     McGovern's in his own Democratic Party. This led to Mr. 
     Mott's being called before the Senate Watergate Committee, 
     which was investigating political ``dirty tricks.'' It found 
     no wrongdoing by him.
       Mr. Mott devoted himself to military reform by financing 
     the Project on Military Procurement and the Center for 
     Defense Information, among other left-leaning projects. In 
     1979, a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative 
     research group, said these activities added up to an ``anti-
     defense lobby.''
       In 1974, Mr. Mott started the Fund for Constitutional 
     Government to expose and correct corruption in the federal 
     government. His mansion in Washington has long been used to 
     raise funds for candidates, as well as causes from handgun 
     control to gay rights. At a 1982 soiree, he brought in an 
     elephant and two donkeys, presumably to demonstrate political 
     balance.
       Mr. Mott paid most of the early legal fees for a 1976 suit 
     that ultimately caused former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew 
     to repay kickbacks ($147,599 plus interest) that he had been 
     accused of receiving when he was governor of Maryland. Mr. 
     Agnew, who had resigned the vice presidency after pleading no 
     contest to a tax evasion charge, did not admit guilt.
       Mr. Mott officially told the election agency that his job 
     was ``maverick.'' He listed himself as ``philanthropist'' in 
     the Manhattan phone book. (Space limitations precluded his 
     preferred ``avant-garde philanthropist.'')
       Stewart Rawlings Mott was born on Dec. 4, 1937, in Flint, 
     Mich. He was the son of Charles Stewart Mott and the former 
     Ruth Rawlings, Mr. Mott's fourth wife. They also had two 
     daughters.
       Mr. Mott and his first wife, the former Ethel Culbert 
     Harding, had a son and two daughters. She died in 1924. Mr. 
     Mott's middle two marriages yielded no children.
       Charles Mott took over one of the family's businesses, 
     manufacturing wheels and axles, and in 1906 moved this 
     company from Utica, N.Y., to Flint, Mich., to take advantage 
     of the auto industry's rapid growth. By 1913, he had sold the 
     company to General Motors for G.M. stock, becoming G.M.'s 
     largest individual shareholder.
       He became a director of the company, serving for 6o years 
     until his death in 1973 at 97. He accumulated interests in 
     many other companies, and in 1926 established the Charles 
     Stewart Mott Foundation, a major philanthropy.
       Stewart, the second child of the second wave of children, 
     was born when his father was 62. This gap, when combined with 
     the father's standoffish manner, created an immense chasm. 
     The father signed notes to his son, ``Very truly yours, C. S. 
     Mott,'' and hired a coach to teach him to ride a bike.
       Stewart was overweight as a child and nearly drowned at 9 
     when he ventured out on thin ice. After running away at 11, 
     he struck a bargain with his father to come home half the 
     summer if he could work the other half at family enterprises. 
     His experiences included a Flint department store, a pecan-
     and-goose farm in New Mexico and a refrigerator plant near 
     Paris.
       He attended Michigan public and private schools until he 
     was 13, and then entered Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, 
     from which he graduated. He studied engineering for three 
     years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then 
     hitchhiked around the world for a year, spending just $1,500.
       He finished his education at the Columbia University School 
     of General Studies, earning two bachelor's degrees, one in 
     business administration and one in comparative literature, as 
     well as a Phi Beta Kappa key. After his Chinese junk kept 
     sinking in the Hudson, he abandoned it for terrestrial 
     accommodations. He wrote a thesis on Sophocles for a never-
     completed Columbia master's degree in Greek drama.
       While pursuing his education, Mr. Mott worked as an 
     apprentice in various family enterprises. In the academic 
     year of 1963-64, he taught English at Eastern Michigan 
     University in Ypsilanti, Mich. His philanthropy began when he 
     returned to Flint and started the city's first branch of 
     Planned Parenthood. He then traveled the nation on behalf of 
     Planned Parenthood.
       Newly enamored by philanthropy, he asked to join his 
     father's foundation, which mainly served Flint. Father said 
     no, so Stewart used trust funds to start his own charity. He 
     moved to New York in 1966, and did not speak to his father 
     for a year.
       He said in an interview in 1971 with The New Yorker: 
     ``Right now, my philanthropy is hearty, robust, full-bodied, 
     but it still needs a few years of aging before it will 
     develop fully its eventual clarity, delicacy, elegancy, 
     fruitiness, and fragrance.''
       What happened over the years was that it became more low-
     key, even as Mr. Mott pursued the same range of causes. On 
     its Web site, the Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust said it 
     looks for projects ``seeking tangible change.''
       For years, Mr. Mott was a highly publicized eligible 
     bachelor. When the Washington Post reported that he had slept 
     with 40 women over an eight-month period, he issued a 
     correction, saying the number was actually 20.
       In 1979, he married Kappy Wells, a sculptor. They divorced 
     in 1999. He is survived by a son, Sam, of Santa Fe, N.M., and 
     a sister, Maryanne Mott, of Santa Barbara, Calif., and 
     Montana.
       In 1969, Mr. Mott gave a huge party at Tavern on the Green 
     in Manhattan to celebrate his father's 94th birthday. The 
     older man earlier that day accepted a ride in his son's 
     Volkswagen. He said it was bumpy.

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