[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 154 (Tuesday, September 24, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5670-S5672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING MARY GAUTREAUX

  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, scores and scores of my friends and 
neighbors at home in Oregon have been grieving since they learned the 
sad news about the passing of a remarkable woman, Mary Gautreaux, who 
died at her home over the weekend.
  Mary Gautreaux was an astounding bundle of energy and passion. She 
had an incandescent smile, a huge heart for people who didn't have any 
power and clout, and the ability to make just about everybody she met 
more optimistic about the policies, opportunities, for the days ahead.
  Mary came to our office back in the 1990s, after working at the U.S. 
Forest Service, planting trees and fighting fires. I can tell you that 
no resume or job title could have ever captured what Mary Gautreaux was 
all about or how hard she worked to protect the qualities that make 
Oregon different--the very special place she was proud to call home.
  Mary Gautreaux, simply stated, was an all-star Oregonian. She loved 
her family and her coworkers with fierce loyalty. All of Mary's friends 
and neighbors knew, up close and personal, what an indomitable force 
she was. It didn't matter where you lived--from Portland to Burns and 
everywhere in between, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, the left, 
the right, mayors, county officials, everybody liked being with Mary. 
They liked working with Mary. They admired her professionalism, and 
they were so impressed that she always tried to involve everybody. She 
always wanted everybody to believe that they were special, that they 
counted. That is something we will always remember.
  My office saw her as an anchor, as I did personally. For the better 
part of two decades, she and I traveled to hundreds of townhalls and 
community meetings in every nook and cranny of our State.
  Mary and I always shared a kind of special joke. At one of these town 
meetings, somebody invariably would ask me something that I didn't know 
a lot about, and I would always say the same thing. I would say: Folks, 
I want you to know I am really digging into that issue, but Mary 
Gautreaux is one of the leading authorities on the subject.
  She would be rolling her eyes. Then I would say: Well, feel free to 
call Mary on nights and weekends. She is always available for people.
  My sense is that she got a kick out of it the first hundred times I 
did that. It was a special kind of bond we had, and that was vintage 
Mary Gautreaux.
  But the fact is, she really did make herself available--always, any 
time, any day. She was always ready to pick up the phone and travel the 
State to solve a problem.
  If I were to talk about all of the accomplishments and all of the 
results she produced for the people of Oregon, we would be here until 
New Year's Eve 2020. But I do want to talk about a handful that stand 
out for their exceptional breadth and impact.
  Mary Gautreaux was an early advocate of reopening the Willamette 
River for the benefit of everybody in Portland. She knew it had the 
potential to be a treasure for the community. She was out there 
swimming every chance she could get, and she loved every time she could 
get out into the Willamette. But she recognized that not everybody had 
her physical abilities. So as was always her way, when Mary recognized 
a problem that needed fixing, she got to work. She pushed locally with 
the city and community activists to get a ladder installed at a popular 
swim spot.
  As a result of this kind of effort and, frankly, her imagination--I 
don't know

[[Page S5671]]

that finding ladders is always in the job description, she just figured 
out how more people could have the opportunity to get in and out of the 
Willamette safely and take a swim in one of the country's most 
impressive urban rivers.
  The whole metropolitan area of my hometown has her to thank for other 
important achievements. We have exceptional drinking water. Mary was 
instrumental in the creation of Portland's Bull Run water reserve being 
still, I believe, the only urban water source closed to people, 
entirely, for its protection. Everybody in Oregon, as they learn about 
this--because Mary never sought any publicity for herself--really has 
to thank Mary Gautreaux for that effort.
  She really went to bat for rural Oregonians. She recognized, because 
I lived in southeast Portland and she lived in northeast, we loved 
Portland, but we didn't have the job of representing the ``state of 
Portland.'' Our job is to get into every nook and cranny of our State, 
and, particularly, when so many rural communities are so hard-hit, Mary 
would be there, helping small airports, tiny airports get bigger, 
helping veterans who couldn't get over icy roads to get to healthcare 
in the urban areas. She would help, from food pantries to rural 
hospitals. She did everything to make sure that, in those small 
communities, they would understand that they counted.
  Sometimes people would point out to her: A lot of those communities 
had more cows than people. I always thought to myself: I probably 
didn't have the cows with me half the time, either.
  That wasn't Mary's measure of public service. Mary's measure was to 
make sure that nobody was left behind.
  One of her recent accomplishments for rural Oregon is also going to 
be treasured for a long time: the designation of the Frank and Jeanne 
Moore Wild Steelhead Special Management Area.
  Frank Moore and Mary had a wonderful bond. Frank is a World War II 
hero. After the war, he came home to the Umpqua River. He has guided 
generations of fishing families on the river for years and years. Now 
he is 96. Mary made a judgment a few years ago. She was concerned that 
Frank might not get the designation and recognition he deserved while 
he was alive.
  Mary basically pushed and pushed and pushed in order to make sure 
that the legislation I just mentioned would pass and actually get done. 
What a wonderful party we had for Frank Moore. If there was something 
Mary Gautreaux loved, it was a good party. You will hear a little more 
about that in just a moment.
  On the national level, in southern Oregon, Mary's work on the 
designation of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument created unique 
wilderness protections, unique protections for ranchers and 
environmental folks. It is something that is going to be a model for 
generations to come. She was the key to the creation of the Badlands 
Wilderness. I remember when Mary Gautreaux pulled it off, people said: 
Because of Mary, it was a good day for the Badlands.
  It is a wonderful accomplishment for folks in Central Oregon. In 
eastern Oregon, Mary's work on the East Moraines in the Wallowas was 
significant. She helped Oregonians everywhere, and she always tried to 
look ahead. Mary was one of the first who recognized in our State that 
recreation would be a powerful economic engine for years to come, 
billions of dollars coming into the State. There would be jobs for 
everybody from kayakers, to guides, to craft brewers. It was a huge 
economic multiplier.
  What did we get out of it? We also got a chance to have a new focus 
on recreation. We have seen the creation of Oregon's Office of 
Recreation. It is a State office borne out of Mary's tireless work, 
organizing people all over the State to highlight the 7 Wonders of 
Oregon. I am here to say tonight that Mary Gautreaux, for lots of us, 
was the 8th Wonder of Oregon.
  All of these achievements are part of her enduring legacy in our 
State, places people will visit, lands that are protected, ranchers, 
environmentalists. They are people who, before Mary showed up, might 
hardly ever talk to each other, let alone work together. She figured 
out a way to find common ground and achieve what I have just described.
  I want to talk a little bit about travels with Mary, the laughs that 
we had on the long car rides, bouncing around ideas, occasionally a 
passionate debate on something that was important to Mary. She always 
recognized--like Patton, Mary knew that an Army marches on its stomach. 
She generously stocked our car with apples and oranges and fruits and 
every manner of snacks--some healthy, some perhaps not so healthy--as 
we drove around Oregon.
  Let me tell you something, when Mary Gautreaux saw hungry folks as we 
made our way through the State of Oregon, what she did along the way is 
made sure the car--because she didn't want anybody to go hungry--got a 
whole lot lighter because she gave away so much healthy food to hungry 
folks who were hurting.
  No task seemed trivial or thankless. I will tell you, when you rode 
around in a car with her--and, you know, most of the time in 
government, people are talking about bills and amendments or polls and 
the like. What Mary was always talking about was how it might be 
possible to help more people at the next stop. The key was, at the end 
of a trip, she would always say to a person or two: Give me your phone 
number. I want to be able to stay in touch. I want to check in.
  That is the way she was, and sometimes, she would ask them to give 
her a name or two of somebody else they were worried about who had 
fallen on hard times--and Mary would reach out to them.
  Another memory I wanted to share is a little bit raw, and the Senate 
may know how it is going to play out in the months ahead. A few months 
ago, while she lay in her hospital bed coming to terms with a fresh 
diagnosis of terminal cancer, she learned that a group of young doctors 
at the Oregon Health and Sciences University had been in training to do 
a rotation in Ontario, OR, in Malheur County--a city of 11,000 people, 
the gateway to the Owyhee Canyonlands, spectacular high desert 
landscapes that were near and dear to Mary's heart. But it seemed these 
young doctors never got to go outside.
  Mary said: We better do something for all these young doctors. So she 
began asking for their supervisor so she could help these young doctors 
get out into the landscape.
  I do want people to know that there is going to be an opportunity to 
enjoy that landscape, work in that landscape, particularly in 
traditional industries like agriculture, to a great extent because of 
what Mary inspired in Malheur County. She dedicated her last days 
talking to anyone and everyone who she thought could come together and 
help stabilize the small community in eastern Oregon.
  I want people to be able to picture it because Nancy and I went to 
Mary's home in northeast Portland over these last difficult weeks. Mary 
always managed to cheer us up, rather than vice versa. One of the 
things that finally made us smile--and the hospice folks nearby--her 
whole room was built around the maps of the Owyhee, where she was 
looking at places for various uses that would be appropriate, how to 
protect the beauty of this extraordinary part of Oregon.
  You would talk to her about the beauty. She would always say that the 
first time she saw it, it brought tears to her eyes when she viewed it, 
and she so wanted to help the ranchers and folks in that area. She was 
dedicated to preserving this part of the world.
  It was Mary Gautreaux's dying wish that we could make this possible. 
Many of my colleagues may have seen me waiting on the floor of the 
Senate over the last few hours. Our chair, Senator Murkowski, has had a 
busy schedule today. When I chaired the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee, we worked very close together. Lisa Murkowski has a big 
heart too. She is always interested in trying to bring people together.
  I told Chair Murkowski that, very shortly, I was going to be 
introducing legislation to recognize Mary's extraordinary work in 
Malheur County. We were going to have a community board, a community 
board to empower the ranchers and the small businesses and the families 
that had been there for years and wanted to know that there was a 
future. We wanted to call it the Mary Gautreaux Malheur County 
Community Empowerment for Owyhee Act,

[[Page S5672]]

or the Mary Gautreaux Malheur County CEO Act.
  Stay tuned because you are going to hear me talk more about Mary's 
extraordinary efforts in this regard.
  In the meantime, this weekend, we are going to do what Mary Gautreaux 
wanted us to do. We talked to her about it. We said: Mary, we want to 
make sure that we tell Oregon--and in this case, the country--about 
your life and your accomplishments and how much we loved you.
  The way we are going to show her how much we loved her, this weekend, 
we are going to do what she wanted. We are going to have one heck of a 
giant party in her neighborhood, at her home, in northeast Portland. We 
are bringing together friends and family. She has so many of them.
  I am looking down this row. I guess we broke most of the rules of the 
Senate because you are only supposed to have a couple of people here. 
As far as I can tell, the people I am honored to represent in the U.S. 
Senate--there are more than 4 million of them--half of them would have 
showed up and sat with the folks on that row if they could have.
  This weekend, we are going to have a chance to tell each other 
stories. We are going to have a chance to talk about all of the people 
Mary helped. I am working now--because Mary loved bright colors--to 
make sure that her home and everybody there really sees what she 
wanted, was a lot of color and a lot of passion and a lot of friends 
and a lot of people talking about what a special place Oregon is and 
all these young people, who have done so much, are building on her 
approach for bringing people together, her values of caring, standing 
up for people who didn't have very much and were outside the power 
circle of Washington.
  This is a hard talk to give, but it is sure easy to always remember 
what a wonderful person Mary Gautreaux was, how she represented the 
very best our State has been able to offer.
  I told her privately right before she died: Mary, we love you. We 
will always be thinking of you.
  I yield the floor.

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