[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 98 (Monday, June 28, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5465-S5466]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   REMEMBERING SENATOR ROBERT C. BYRD

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, our Senate family grieves today with the 
Byrd family over the loss of one of the most dedicated Americans ever 
to serve this country; one of the most devoted men ever to serve his 
State; one of the most distinguished Senators ever to serve in the 
Senate.
  Robert Byrd's mind was among the greatest the world has ever seen. As 
a boy, he was called upon, when he was in elementary school, to stand 
before the class and recite not paragraphs from the assignment of the 
night before but pages of the night before. He did this from memory.
  From his graduation as valedictorian of his high school class at the 
age of 16 to his death this morning as the Senate's President pro 
tempore at age 92, he mastered everything he touched with great 
thoughtfulness and skill. This good man could drive from his home here 
in Washington to West Virginia and back--it took 8 hours--reciting 
classic poetry the entire time, and not recite the same poem twice.
  I was asked by Senator Byrd to travel to West Virginia to do an 
exchange with the British Parliament. There were a number of us there, 
eight or nine Senators, and a like number of British Parliamentarians. 
I can remember that night so well. We had the music up there he liked 
the best--bluegrass music--and they played. It was a festive evening.
  Then it came time for the program. In the program, Senator Byrd said: 
I am going to say a few things. And he passed out little notebooks. He 
had notebooks passed out to everyone there with a little pencil. He 
wanted to make sure everything was just right; that people, if they had 
something to write, had something to write on and write with. And he 
proceeded, standing there without a note, to pronounce the reign of the 
British monarchs, from the beginning to the end. He would give the

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dates they served. On some of the more difficult spellings, he would 
spell the name. And he would, as I indicated, if it was something he 
really wanted to talk about that they had accomplished that he thought 
was noteworthy, he would tell us about that. That took about an hour 
and a half to do that. The British Parliamentarians were stunned. They 
had never heard anyone who could do anything like that, an American 
talking about the reign of the British monarchs. Those of us who were 
Senators, nothing surprised us that he could do from memory.
  I can remember when he decided he was no longer going to be the 
Democratic leader, Senator Dole did an event for him in the Russell 
Building, and all Senators were there, Democratic and Republican 
Senators. He told us a number of things he did not do, and he told us a 
number of things he did do. For example, he read the Encyclopedia 
Britannica from cover to cover twice. He studied the dictionary. He 
read that from cover to cover during one of our breaks.
  I have told this story on an occasion or two, but to give the depth 
of this man's memory--I had been to Nevada, and when I came back, he 
asked me: What did you do?
  I said: Senator Byrd, I pulled a book out of my library on the way 
back. I didn't have anything to read. It was a paperback. I read ``The 
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.''
  And as those of us who can remember him, he looked at me and he held 
his head back a little bit and his eyes rolled back and he said: 
Robinson Crusoe. He proceeded to tell me--I had just read the book--how 
long he had been on that island: 28 years, 3 months, a week, and 2 
days, or whatever it was. I was stunned. I did not know. I went back 
and pulled the book out to see if he was right, and he was right. He 
probably had not read that book in 35 or 40 years, but he knew that. 
What a mind. It was really stunning, the man's memory.
  The head of the political science department at the University of 
Nevada at Las Vegas, Andy Tuttle, taught a graduate course, based on 
Senator Byrd's lectures on the Roman Empire.
  He gave 10 lectures here on the Senate floor on the fall of the Roman 
Empire. He gave a lecture because he was concerned because of the line-
item veto, and he felt the line-item veto would be the beginning of the 
end of the Senate. He proceeded to give 10 lectures on that on the 
Senate floor, every one of them from memory--every one of them from 
memory. Timed just perfectly. They ended in 1 hour. That is how much 
time he had been given. The original Roman Emperors served for 1 year. 
He could do it from memory. He knew who they were, how long they 
served, knew how to spell their names--truly an unbelievably brilliant 
man.
  He is the only person who earned his law degree while he was a Member 
of Congress. What he accomplished is really very long. His thirst for 
knowledge was simply without equal.
  Senator Byrd once observed that the longer he lived, the better he 
understood how precious the gift of our time on Earth was.
  I quote Senator Byrd:

       As you get older, you see time running out. It is 
     irretrievable and irreversible. But one should never retire 
     from learning and growth.

  Robert Byrd never retired from anything. He served in the Senate for 
more than half a century and the House of Representatives for 6 more 
years, and he dedicated every one of those days to strengthening the 
State and the Nation he loved so dearly. He never once stopped fighting 
for the good people of West Virginia and for the principles in our 
founding documents. He was forever faithful to his constituents, his 
Constitution, and his country. He fought for what he thought was right, 
and when he was wrong, he was wise enough to admit it, and he did admit 
it a few times.
  Senator Byrd's ambition was legendary. He took his oath in this 
Chamber on January 3, 1959, the same day Alaska became our 49th State. 
He told the Charleston Gazette newspaper in that freshman year:

       If I live long enough, I'd like to be Chairman of the 
     Senate Appropriations Committee.

  Thirty years later, he was, and then he lived and served for 21 more 
years. His legislative accomplishments are many, and those achievements 
fortify his incomparable legacy. But he is perhaps best known in this 
Chamber as the foremost guardian of the Senate's complex rules, 
procedures, and customs. He did not concern himself with such precision 
as a pastime or mere hobby; he did so because of the unyielding respect 
he had for the Senate--a reverence the Senate always returned to him 
and now to his memory.
  With Robert Byrd's passing, America has lost its strongest defender 
of its most precious traditions. It now falls to each of us to keep 
that flame burning.
  Throughout one of the longest political careers in history, no one in 
West Virginia ever defeated Robert Byrd in a single election. In 
Washington, his fellow Democrats twice elected him to lead us when we 
were in the majority and once more when we were in the minority. Having 
seen both sides, he knew better than most that legislating is the art 
of compromise. Many years ago, in this Chamber where he served longer 
than any other Senator, Senator Byrd taught a heartfelt history lesson 
to guide our future. It was a lesson about both the Constitution and 
this institution. He said:

       This very charter of government under which we live was 
     created in a spirit of compromise and mutual concession. And 
     it is only in that spirit that continuance of this charter of 
     government can be prolonged and sustained.

  In his tenure he saw partisanship and bipartisanship, war and peace, 
recession and recovery. His perspective and legacy are invaluable to 
the way we carry ourselves as United States Senators. It is instructive 
that the man who served the longest and saw the most concluded we must 
work together as partners, not partisans, for the good of our States 
and our country.
  In 1996, Robert Byrd spoke to a meeting of incoming Senators and 
reminded them that the Senate is still the anchor of the Republic. 
Senator Byrd was the anchor of the Senate. There will never be another 
like him.
  He was a Member of this Nation's Congress for more than a quarter of 
the time it has existed, and longer than a quarter of today's sitting 
Senators and the President of the United States have been alive. His 
political career spanned countless American advances and achievements. 
A dozen men called the Oval Office his own while Senator Byrd called 
the Capitol Building his office--and he would be the first to remind us 
that those two branches are equal in the eyes of the Constitution. I 
have heard him say so many times that we work with the President, not 
under the President.
  The nine times the people of his State sent him to the Senate and the 
more than 18,500 votes he cast here will never be matched.
  As the President pro tempore and I, and each of us fortunate enough 
to be here, have the privilege of knowing firsthand, it was an 
incomparable privilege to serve with him and learn from this giant. By 
virtue of his endurance, Robert Byrd knew and worked with many of the 
greats of the Senate. Because of his enduring virtue, he will be 
forever remembered as one of them.

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