[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 3, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S19-S21]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              REMEMBERING VIRGINIA ``JINKS'' ROGERS HOLTON

  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I could only nod as you earlier referenced 
how proud we both were to escort Senator Warnock up for his oath of 
office today, but now I will say that is definitely the case. It is 
truly an honor to be asked to do that, and I am proud that we did that 
together.
  Your speech on behalf of your friend, the great public servant Marcy 
Kaptur, just inspired me to stand up and give a speech about a great 
Virginia woman who passed right before we went into recess, my mother-
in-law, Virginia Rogers Holton, who passed away in December. We are 
gathering the entire family in Kilmarnock, VA, this Saturday for her 
funeral at Grace Episcopal Church, and I want to just talk about my 
mother-in-law because she was an amazing woman and an amazing public 
servant.
  Jinks Holton--she was called Jinks because her name Virginia was too 
complicated for her sister Anne to pronounce, and so from her earliest 
days she was Jinks Holton. She was born in Roanoke in 1925.
  In World War I, she graduated from high school at 16 years of age. 
And it was a little bit rare at the time, from Roanoke, to go to 
Wellesley, but she did, starting in the class of 1941.
  My mother-in-law Virginia ``Jinks'' had such an Appalachian accent 
that at Wellesley, they insisted that she take elocution lessons to be 
able to succeed in this sort of Ivy League quality school.
  Well, the joke was on Wellesley because my mother-in-law took 
elocution lessons but then became a language major and by the time she 
graduated in 1945, was fluent in French, was fluent in German, could 
speak Spanish, Italian, and a little bit of Russian.
  And so what does a talented woman with a degree in languages do at 
that point? She decided to serve her country.
  She went to New York and went to an institute where she learned to 
take shorthand in multiple languages, and then she got a job offer from 
the CIG, the Central Intelligence Group, the precursor to the CIA, and 
was assigned to work at the US Embassy in Belgium. It was right after 
the war. Belgium and other nations in Europe were still devastated. It 
was hard to find an apartment that had a coal heater that you could get 
coal on occasion to heat, because ration cards were still being used.
  But for 2 years in Europe and then 3 years here in Washington, this 
young lady from Roanoke, VA, served her country.
  We had heard in my family these stories, but vaguely, because Jinks 
was of an age where you didn't talk about the fact that you had worked 
for an intelligence agency, even if it was 60 or 70 years ago.
  But upon her death right before Christmas, we found letters 
squirreled away in the attic, and we spent much of the Christmas 
holidays reading letters that she wrote to her parents in the 1940s 
from Brussels--coded, yes, and a little bit diplomatic, but talking 
about the work that she was doing for her country.
  Some who know the history of the CIA know that in that period, in the 
Cold War, the United States had all kinds of agents around Europe. What 
Jinks's job was in Brussels was to take reports from them and then help 
cable those back to the United States. When she came back to the United 
States, she worked at the CIA for a very famous founder of the Agency, 
a guy named James Jesus Angleton. Angleton was one of the founders of 
the CIA and became kind of famous--really infamous--because he was in 
charge of counterespionage, figuring out were there people within the 
CIA who were actually Soviet agents who were informing on the United 
States. They played a critical role early in figuring out, for example, 
that MI6 agents, including Kim Philby, were spying for the Soviet Union 
while they were working with MI6 in Washington. These were the stories 
at the time my mother-in-law was there.

  That was just the first chapter of my mother-in-law's public service. 
I was inspired, Mr. President, as you talked about Marcy, because my 
mother-in-law never held office, but she was a public servant.
  A year ago almost exactly, I took to the floor to offer a tribute to 
my father-in-law who was a pivotal, history-making Governor of Virginia 
who was most known for integrating Virginia public schools when they 
had been segregated for so long. I can assure you that was a joint 
project. That was not just my father-in-law Linwood Holton. That was he 
and his wife Jinks.
  They got married in Roanoke in the mid-1950s, and they embarked upon 
a joint project, which was to make Virginia a competitive two-party 
State. The Democrats ran everything in Virginia, and it was a very 
different Democratic Party--Dixiecrats--that believed very much in 
White supremacy and segregation.
  But together with his wife Jinks, my mother-in-law, they decided to 
help build a two-party democracy in Virginia, and they hoped that the 
Republican Party would be the racially progressive antidote--opposite--
contrary to the segregation of the Democrats.
  She supported Linwood when he ran for the Virginia House of Delegates 
in Roanoke and lost in the 1950s. He came close. He ran 2 years later 
and was on the verge of victory when Eisenhower sent National Guard 
troops in to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, and 
Republican fortunes tanked in the South that year. He lost again.
  He was the Republican Party nominee for Governor in 1965, and Jinks 
was one of his best campaign assets. He lost that race, but the fact 
that a Republican could even get 35 percent was

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seen as amazing and revolutionary. How could that happen?
  And then they came back and he ran again in 1969 and he became the 
first Republican to be a popularly elected Governor in over 100 years, 
with Jinks by his side campaigning all the time.
  They faced a very critical decision within months of taking office. 
The inauguration was in January of 1970. In the spring of 1970, a 
Federal district court judge, Robert Merhige, ordered that the school 
systems in Richmond be integrated. Now, of course, this was 16 years 
after Brown v. Board of Education, but Virginia had used one delay 
tactic and one stunt after the next to keep schools from truly being 
integrated. But now there was a district court judge who was ordering 
that it happen.
  The political pressure on the Holton family was: You are the 
Governor; you need to keep doing what all Virginia Governors have done; 
and you need to fight against integration.
  Instead, Lin and Jinks got their four children together, including my 
wife Anne, who was a middle schooler, the second of four children, and 
they said: We have a family decision to make. The tradition that we 
think is a bad one is that the powers that be fight against the notion 
that children can sit in a classroom if their skin colors are 
different, and that is what we are being urged to do. But we as a 
family think that all people and all Virginians are equal, and they 
shouldn't be discriminated in the classrooms of this Commonwealth. So 
our decision, in an official capacity, will be not to oppose busing, 
not to fight it, but we want to go further than that. We don't want to 
just make a legal argument. You are living in the city of Richmond. The 
city of Richmond has very segregated schools. The Governor's mansion is 
not in any school zone. You can go to whatever school you want. But we 
think you should go to the neighborhood schools that are predominantly 
African-American schools. If you do that, we can send the loudest 
message possible that education is a value that is important, and kids 
should be able to learn together regardless of the color of their skin.
  When school opened in the fall of 1970, my father-in-law Linwood took 
my wife's older sister Tayloe to a high school--Kennedy High School in 
Richmond. That picture made the front page of the New York Times. The 
New York Times had carried many a picture of southern Governors 
standing in schoolhouse doors blocking African-American kids from 
coming in, but they only had one picture of a White southern Governor 
escorting his own child into a school that was a predominantly African-
American school. The Richmond paper carried a very similar picture. It 
was not of Linwood and Tayloe but of my mother-in-law Jinks and my wife 
Anne--Jinks escorting Anne and her brother into the middle school, 
Mosby Middle School, a nearly completely African-American middle school 
named after a Confederate general, General Mosby--Colonel Mosby.
  But the Richmond paper carried that similar photo, a family deciding 
that they wanted to stand for integration and civil rights and not just 
in words but in deeds that would be viewed by all and understood by all 
as a message.
  Linwood was the Governor and people talk about Linwood, but it is 
impossible to look at a decision like that and not recognize--as is the 
case for so many of us--that what we do we only do with the support and 
the encouragement of our families, of our spouses, of our kids. And 
that family decision made by Linwood Holton and his wife Jinks, the 
Holton administration did the thing that it was most known for, which 
was turn Virginia from a backward-facing Confederate museum piece into 
a forward-facing, more dynamic Commonwealth--a Commonwealth. What we 
hold, we hold in common. We are a community.

  My wife Anne, in kind of an unpredictable storybook tale, went on to 
become first lady of Virginia when I was elected Governor in 2005. She 
is the only person who has ever lived in the Virginia Governor's 
mansion as a child and then as an adult. That means that Jinks Holton 
is the only first lady of Virginia who has ever had a child who also 
became first lady. And during the 4 years I was Governor--Virginia has 
a single 4-year term--we had so many wonderful memories where we had my 
mother-in-law and father-in-law, 36 years after they had been Governor 
and first lady, staying with us and wrestling with the problems of the 
day just as they did.
  One of my proudest memories of my father-in-law and my mother-in-law 
came during the fall of 2006. My legislature, over my objection, had 
placed on the ballot a constitutional amendment to ban any recognition 
of same-sex couples, not just marriage, civil unions--any recognition 
of same-sex couples. And my legislature put that on the ballot even 
though I objected.
  I campaigned against it. I campaigned very hard to convince 
Virginians that they should not place in their constitution a 
limitation on civil rights. Instead we should be placing in the 
constitution a protection of civil rights. But I will always remember 
the phone call I made to my father-in-law and mother-in-law when I said 
my wife and I were going to stand on the steps of the Governor's 
mansion and come out forcefully against the amendment. And I asked Lin 
and Jinks: How would you guys feel, as a great civil rights family, to 
join us?
  Now, they are of a different era. Linwood was born in 1923 at Big 
Stone Gap, VA, and Jinks was born in 1925 in Roanoke, VA. But they 
didn't hesitate for a minute. They remembered being in the Governor's 
mansion and making a stand as a couple for civil rights. And they said: 
We will be there tomorrow to join you.
  And we stood on the steps of the capital in 2006. And at that point, 
Anne and I had been married 22 years, and they had been married about 
52 years. We said: We are standing here. We have got 74 years of 
marriage, and we are going to tell you that there is nothing in this 
that harms our marriage in any way, and marriage is the most wonderful 
institution. All should have the right to marry whom they choose, and 
that is why this amendment should be refuted.
  I can think of many other instances where I was so proud of my 
mother-in-law, but that was definitely one of the most memorable.
  We were with my mother-in-law on Thanksgiving. We go down and spend 
time in the little community of Kilmarnock, where she lived in a 
retirement community. The first thing we do on Thanksgiving every time 
we visit is we run in a 2-mile ``Turkey Trot,'' Irvington Turkey Trot. 
It is a fundraiser for a local charity. And it was many different 
cousins and grandchildren and my wife and I, and we were going to do 
that and then be with my mother-in-law and have lunch with her.
  But we heard when we were there that, no, she wants to come out and 
watch. Well, it was about 30 degrees. We figured, Well, your health 
isn't that great. That is not such a good thing. But my mother-in-law 
got all bundled up and came out in her walker and watched us run the 
race.
  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving together. And then she declined 
rapidly, but peacefully and not in pain, in the 3 weeks after 
Thanksgiving, and she died 3 weeks after Thanksgiving Day.
  But again, hearing my colleague and friend Sherrod Brown talk about 
Representative Kaptur and the unique role that she has played as a 
Congresswoman and doing wonderful things for her constituents but also 
setting an example of women in leadership, I thought: You know what. I 
gave a speech about my father-in-law and his historic governorship a 
year ago. Nothing that he did--nothing that he did in politics or life 
would have been possible without the wonderful partnership that he 
forged.
  And my mother-in-law Jinks, from her Central Intelligence group CIA 
days all the way to becoming a path-breaking first lady and then a 
board member of every charity known to man in Roanoke, Richmond, 
Fairfax, or Kilmarnock, where she lived in the last 20 years of her 
life--she was a public servant from day one until her death, and I am 
so happy to have a chance just to put on the record a tribute to a 
great mother-in-law and a wonderful public servant.
  With that I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.

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  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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