[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 168 (Wednesday, October 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6752-S6754]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Remembering Joseph D. Tydings
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I regret to inform our colleagues of the
death of Joe Tydings, who died on Monday, succumbing to cancer at the
age of 90. Senator Tydings was one of the most outspoken progressive
Democrats in this body.
He was born to privilege. His father was a Democratic Senator from
the State of Maryland--a conservative Democratic Senator. His
grandfather was one of our first Ambassadors to the Soviet Union. His
paternal grandfather married Marjorie Merriweather Post, who built Mar-
a-Lago, which most of us know is in Palm Beach. He came from a family
of great privilege. Yet he was known in Maryland as a person of the
people, representing the people of our State.
His first elected office was president of the Young Democrats of
Maryland. From there, he became a member of the Maryland House of
Delegates, where he fought the establishment, took on the network in
Annapolis, and investigated the savings and loan situation in our
State. He really shined a lot of light on what was happening in abuses
in that industry.
He was chosen by then-Senator Kennedy to head up his campaign for
President. Joe Tydings handled his campaign in Maryland for President
and helped in other primaries around the Nation, leading to President
Kennedy's election as President of the United States.
President Kennedy asked him to serve as the U.S. attorney for
Maryland, and Senator Tydings served as the U.S. attorney. He was known
for his independence at the U.S. Attorney's Office. He pursued white
collar crime and political corruption. He indicted and convicted a
former Member of the House of Representatives, as well as the speaker
of the Maryland House of Delegates. He recruited young talent to his
office in the U.S. Attorney's Office, including Ben Civiletti, who went
on to become the Attorney General of the United States, and Stephen
Sachs, who continued to become the attorney general for the State of
Maryland.
In 1964 he ran and was elected to the U.S. Senate. He worked on
progressive causes, including the Voting Rights Act, which he helped to
get enacted under President Johnson, and also gun safety legislation.
After leaving the Senate after one term, he continued to be extremely
active in our community. He was best known, I believe, for his work at
the University of Maryland. He served three terms on the board of
regents of the University of Maryland system, giving back to the school
where he graduated from both undergraduate and law school, and he was
known as one of the most aggressive people in the reform of our
University of Maryland System and also in the independence of the
university hospital.
On a personal note, let me tell you that he helped with my election
to the U.S. Senate 12 years ago and gave me a great deal of support and
friendship and was an adviser and role model for me. I remember his
being here when I took the oath of office as a Senator, walking me down
the aisle. I had a great deal of pride that he was with me.
He is going to be missed by all of us--just an incredible person, a
person who put his principles over practical politics. It may have cost
him an election, but he did what he thought was right. I can tell you
that we are all proud of his service to the people of Maryland and our
Nation.
Mr. President, we will miss this man, who was determined to help bend
the arc of the moral universe toward justice as fast as possible.
Joe Tydings was born as Joseph Davies Cheesborough in Asheville, NC,
on May 4, 1928, to Eleanor Davies of Watertown, WI, and Tom
Cheesborough of Asheville. Tydings' sister, Eleanor Cheesborough, was
born in 1932. In 1935, his parents divorced, and his mother married
Millard Tydings, who was then serving his second of four terms as one
of Maryland's U.S. Senators. Several years later, Millard Tydings
formally adopted Joe and his sister, Eleanor.
Joe Tydings' illustrious family included his namesake grandfather,
Joseph Davies, an early adviser to Woodrow Wilson, who later was
appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as America's second
Ambassador to the Soviet Union. While Joe was still a boy, his maternal
grandfather married one of the richest women in America, Marjorie
Merriweather Post, who owned homes in New York City and Long Island,
the Hillwood Estate here in Washington, DC, the Topridge Great Camp in
the Adirondacks, and built Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Joe sailed home
from Europe aboard the Sea Cloud, Post's luxurious 322-foot, four-
masted barque, the largest privately owned sea-going yacht in the world
at the time.
Joe Tydings attended public schools in Aberdeen, MD, before entering
the McDonough School in Baltimore County as a military cadet in 1938.
After he graduated, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1946 and served in
one of the Army's last horse platoons as part of the postwar occupation
of Germany. When he returned to the United States in 1948, he entered
the University of Maryland, where he played lacrosse and football and
was student body president and then earned his law degree at the
University of Maryland Law School in 1953.
Joe Tydings was surrounded by tremendous wealth and prestige and
political power while he was growing up. The obituary that appeared in
the Baltimore Sun notes that, despite the fact that Joe was born into a
life of privilege, he was a frugal person and quotes his daughter, Mary
Tydings, as saying, ``He was a man of the people despite how he grew
up.'' His adoptive father was also a Democrat but opposed some of the
New Deal legislation because he was a fiscal conservative. Joe, on the
other hand, was a progressive from the get-go and attributed his
Wisconsin-born mother as the influence, but it is clear that his
father, who was known for taking principled, if often controversial,
stands on many issues, also shaped Joe's approach to politics and to
life.
[[Page S6753]]
As I said earlier, Joe Tydings started his political career by
serving as president of the Maryland Young Democrats. While he was
president, he confronted a hotel owner in Ocean City who refused to let
Black members of the organization stay at the hotel for an event being
held there. In 1954, Joe was elected to represent Harford County in the
Maryland House of Delegates. Once there, it was clear that he was
willing to fight established powers. He started with the State's
savings and loan, S&L, associations following a banking scandal. In
``My Life in Progressive Politics: Against the Grain,'' an
autobiography cowritten by former Baltimore Sun reporter John W. Frece
published earlier this year, Joe reflected, ``I was appalled no one was
doing anything about it.'' The reason, he argued, was that many too
many Maryland politicians were profiting from the schemes that led to
the scandal.
While Joe Tydings had a famous last name in Maryland political
circles, it was his early and enthusiastic association with Senator
John F. Kennedy that pushed Joe onto the national stage. In 1960, Joe
directed Kennedy's Presidential campaign in Maryland and then helped
out in other primaries, at the party convention in Los Angeles, and
throughout the fall election. After Kennedy won, Tydings was offered a
post in the new administration, and he asked to be appointed U.S.
attorney for Maryland. The Maryland Democratic Party establishment was
wary of the young reformer; nearly every Democratic Congressman in the
State opposed his appointment. President Kennedy questioned his
brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy about the opposition,
saying ``how can I appoint him with all these people opposed to him.''
Robert Kennedy replied, ``That's exactly why you are going to appoint
him.''
As U.S. attorney, Joe Tydings assembled a staff of neophyte trial
attorneys that included a future Attorney General of the United States,
Benjamin R. Civiletti, and a future Attorney General of Maryland,
Stephen H. Sachs, and many other lawyers who would become judges and
successful attorneys with prominent law firms. He worked hard to
establish the nonpartisan reputation of the U.S. attorney's office in
Maryland and build a modern Federal prosecution force that has
effectively targeted political corruption in Maryland up to the present
day. Joe successfully prosecuted Representative Thomas Johnson, a
fellow Democrat, for receiving illegal gratuities. He successfully
prosecuted Maryland House Speaker A. Gordon Boone, another Democrat,
for mail fraud connected with the S&L scandal.
In 1963, President Kennedy visited Oakington, the Tydings' 550-acre
estate along the Chesapeake Bay in Harford County, to urge Joe to run
for the Senate, which he agreed to do. On the November day that Tydings
held his farewell luncheon with colleagues to prepare for his Senate
run, he learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.
Joe ran as a reformer and had to win a primary against the State's
beloved comptroller, Louis L. Goldstein. Joe, whose campaign slogan was
``Working for Maryland, Not the Machine,'' energized reformers within
the State party, attracted an army of volunteers, and won. It was Louis
Goldstein's only loss during six decades in public office. Joe then
went on to defeat the incumbent Republican Senator, James Glenn Beall,
Sr., in the general election.
As a Senator, Joe Tydings backed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and
the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He supported controversial decisions of
the Warren Court, including the one-man, one-vote requirement for
apportionment of State legislatures; the prohibition of prayer in
public schools; and the guarantee of the rights of defendants to remain
silent and to be represented by counsel. He was an early advocate for
family planning and worried all his life about the detrimental health
and environmental effects of worldwide overpopulation. He reached
across the aisle to get things done, working with Republican colleagues
such as then-Representative George H.W. Bush. He regularly decried the
lack of bipartisanship in the Congress today.
Like many of his congressional peers, Joe Tydings came to office
supporting American involvement in Vietnam, but as the war escalated,
deaths mounted, and protests spread throughout the country, Tydings
finally broke with President Lyndon B. Johnson and came out against the
war.
Although Joe was ranked 100th in seniority when he arrived in the
Senate, he authored legislation to make long overdue improvements to
the Federal court system, many of which are still in place today. He
helped to create the system of Federal magistrates to lighten the
workload of Federal judges; improved jury selection so that Federal
juries more fairly represent the make-up of their communities; and
worked to keep unfit, unqualified, or mentally or physically
incapacitated judges off the bench. Joe became an ``enemy'' of
President Richard M. Nixon by helping to defeat two of the President's
Supreme Court nominees, Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., and G. Harrold
Carswell.
Joe Tydings was an avid outdoorsman and hunter, but supported
sensible gun safety laws, including the Firearms Registration and
Licensing Act, which earned him the enmity of the gun lobby and the
National Rifle Association.
By the time he stood for reelection in 1970, Joe later admitted, he
had probably supported one liberal position too many. The country had
changed, and Joe's progressive outlook had been supplanted by the
backlash to new civil rights laws, fear over race riots in American
cities, and a deep division over Vietnam. Vice President Spiro Agnew,
who had been Governor of Maryland, called Joe a ``radical.'' Joe
narrowly lost his reelection bid to John Glenn Beall, Jr., the son of
the man he had defeated in 1964, 51 percent to 48 percent.
I mentioned that Joe was an avid outdoorsman. He was also a great
horseman. One of the many causes to which he dedicated his energies
after he returned to private life was the protection of Tennessee
Walking Horses from the inhumane practice of ``soring.'' He sought
vigorous implementation of the Horse Protection Act of 1970, which he
had authored while still in the Senate, and was honored by the U.S.
Humane Society for his efforts.
After Joe left the Senate, he kept his hand in Maryland politics,
supporting various reform candidates and pushing for legislation to
protect his beloved Chesapeake Bay. He went on to serve as a member and
later as chairman of the board of regents of his alma mater, the
University of Maryland. He was appointed to three separate terms on the
regents by three different Governors in three different decades. In
1977, Joe called for the board of regents of the University of Maryland
to divest its endowment from companies doing business with the
apartheid regime in South Africa. In September 2008, then-Maryland
Governor Martin O'Malley appointed Joe to the board of the University
of Maryland Medical System.
Joe Tydings was indefatigable. He built a national and international
career in law, offering his legal services pro bono in cases
challenging the death penalty. As the Baltimore Sun obituary noted,
``At an age when his peers were considering retirement, Sen. Tydings
worked as an attorney with the Washington law firm Blank Rome LLP. `He
didn't need to be here for the last 20 years of his life,' said Jim
Kelly, chairman of Blank Rome's Washington office. But Sen. Tydings
chose to continue to work toward causes he deemed important. `It sounds
a little trite, but he really was committed to basic notions of justice
and fairness,' Kelly said. `He was not afraid to wear that on his
sleeve, and he was not afraid to stand up and be counted.' ''
When I was sworn in as U.S. Senator for the first time in the 110th
Congress, I was honored to have Joe Tydings join Senators Paul Sarbanes
and Barbara Mikulski and escort me to the well to take the oath of
office. One of his political slogans was ``Joe Tydings doesn't duck the
tough ones.'' So true. Joe's life of service serves as an example to so
many people, including me, particularly in these difficult times.
Former Vice President Joe Biden wrote in the forward to ``My Life in
Progressive Politics: Against the Grain,'' ``In reading this memoir,
you can't miss the salient parallels to challenges facing our nation
today. The issues on which Joe staked his Senate career a half-century
ago are the same ones that still require
[[Page S6754]]
our advocacy and attention. Protecting voting rights. Safeguarding our
environment. Pushing back against the forces of inequality that are
hollowing out the middle class. Standing up for common-sense gun safety
laws.''
In the Gospel of Luke, there is the saying, ``Every one to whom much
is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit
much they will demand the more,'' Luke 12:48. Joe Tydings was given
much; he gave back more.
I know my Senate colleagues will want to join me in sending our
condolences to Joe Tydings' family: his sister, Eleanor Tydings Russell
of Monkton, MD; his four children from his first marriage, Mary Tydings
Smith of Easton, MD, Millard Tydings of Skillman, NJ, Emlen Tydings
Gaudino of Palm Beach, Australia, and Eleanor Tydings Gollob of McLean,
VA; and Alexandra Tydings Luzzatto of Washington, DC, the daughter of
his second marriage. He is also survived by nine grandchildren:
Benjamin Tydings Smith, Jill Campbell Gollob, Sam Tydings Gollob,
Margaret Campbell Tydings, Jay Davies Gollob, William Davies Tydings,
Ruby Anne Luzzatto, Emerson Almeida Luzzatto, and Maeve Chaim Luzzatto.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.