[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 204 (Thursday, December 3, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7208-S7209]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    REMEBERING CHARLES CARROLL SMITH

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments to say 
farewell to a friend and a public servant who served my State of 
Illinois and our Nation well. His name was Charles Carroll Smith, but 
his friends called him Charlie. He died on the day after Thanksgiving. 
Our paths crossed often over the years.
  Charlie served as Illinois' deputy secretary of state under then-
Secretary of State Alan Dixon. When Alan Dixon was elected to the U.S. 
Senate in 1980, Charlie came to Washington with him. He was a key 
member of the Dixon staff, serving as both legislative director and 
senior national security adviser. When Alan Dixon left the Senate, 
Charlie joined the staff of Kentucky Senator Wendell Ford, then the 
Senate's Democratic whip. Charlie was Senator Ford's legislative staff 
director and a trusted adviser to Senator Ford on matters involving 
national security and foreign relations.
  He helped craft and pass many important pieces of legislation, 
including the 1990 law establishing the Defense Base Closure and 
Realignment Commission in 1990. He went on to serve as executive 
director of the 1995 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission-a 
massive task to try to realign America's military bases with the 
realities of the post-Cold War world.
  The work of the Base Closure Commission was necessary, complex, and 
historic, and Charlie's intricate understanding of both the Defense 
Department and the security needs of America and our allies was 
critical to the commission's success. Despite the gargantuan task, 
Charlie was never too busy to listen. I and all of the Members of the 
Illinois congressional delegation appreciated his willingness to always 
consider fairly our explanations about the national security importance 
of the military bases in our State. He never put his thumb on the scale 
for Illinois, but he made sure that we received a fair hearing. The day 
the commission announced its recommendations in 2005, Charlie called me 
to explain in layman's language just what the recommendations meant for 
Illinois and for America. I have never met anyone with a greater 
understanding of the workings of the Defense Department and the ability 
to translate that knowledge into plain English. He was a rare one.
  Charlie came by his political and legislative skills the old-
fashioned way. He inherited them. He grew up in an Irish Catholic 
Democratic family on the North Side of Chicago. His father was in 
politics; his mother was a professor. Charlie was the first-born and 
only son in the family of three children.
  The Smith family took politics and democracy seriously. Charlie and 
his father were both named Charles Carroll Smith, senior and junior. 
Family legend has it that they were descended from Charles Carroll, one 
of the signers of America's Declaration of Independence and a member of 
the Continental Congress. Whether it was true or not--

[[Page S7209]]

this was before at-home DNA testing--the Smith family strove to live up 
to Charles Carroll's patriotic example.
  When Charlie was about 11, his father decided that the Smith family 
home should be a laboratory of democracy. They would discuss important 
events at the dinner table, and once a week, they would have a meeting 
to vote on matters involving the family. After just one or two of these 
family meetings, Charlie had an epiphany. He told his sister Sheila: 
``You know, if we three kids stick together, we can outvote Mom and 
Dad.'' He said: ``I want a bike. What do you want?'' Charlie figured 
out what both of his sisters wanted and how to deliver it. At the next 
family meeting, the girls supported Charlie's proposal to buy him a 
bike. The kids won, and Charlie got his bike. The Smith family never 
held another family vote, but Charlie would go on to use his coalition-
building skills in the interest of public service for the rest of his 
life.
  In 1968, Charlie joined the U.S. Army and served as an intelligence 
officer in Vietnam during the Tet offensive.
  He left public service in 1999 and began his second career as a 
lobbyist. He was respected by members of Congress on both sides of the 
aisle as a straight shooter and a good man.
  Besides his family, politics, and public service, Charlie loved the 
Chicago Bears and the Cubs and playing golf. Every Christmas season, 
Charlie hosted a party for his friends at the Army Navy Country Club in 
Arlington, VA. It was always a great, bipartisan celebration. This 
Friday, Charlie's friends will gather by Zoom to remember him on what 
would have been his 26th annual Christmas party. He will be missed 
there, and he will be missed in the halls of Congress, in his old 
neighborhood in Chicago, and many other places.
  Loretta and I send our condolences to Charlie's wife Patti Turner; 
his sisters, Sheila Smith and Catherine Wilson; and his many, many 
friends.

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