[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 15845]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        THE BELL TOLLS FOR THEE

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, today, as the Senate recalls the tragic loss 
two years ago of two fine Capitol Police Officers, Officer Jacob J. 
Chestnut and Detective John M. Gibson, our hearts also bear fresh 
bruises from the loss of a Senator and a former Senator.
  Mr. President, on Saturday I traveled with several other Senators to 
Atlanta, GA, to attend the funeral of our late Senate colleague, Paul 
Coverdell. Senator Coverdell's departure from this life had been 
sudden. It had come without warning. Paul was only 61 and he could look 
forward to many fruitful years of service to the Nation and to his 
people. But it was not to be. The Scriptures tell us:

       As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the 
     field, So he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it 
     is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

  On Wednesday of last week, I journeyed to Rhode Island with several 
other Senators to pay our last respects to a late departed former 
colleague, John O. Pastore, and to commiserate with his bereaved family 
and a great host of friends. We said the last goodbye to a man who had 
given much to the service of his country and who had retired from this 
body 26 years ago. A great throng paid homage to the remembrance of one 
whom they loved and who had served them so well, as was the case with 
our beloved late colleague, Paul Coverdell. There was a great throng, a 
large church filled to overflowing.
  In both instances to which I have just referred, the choirs sang 
beautifully, the eulogies came forth from wounded hearts, the final 
farewells were spoken; then the crowds departed, and each person went 
on his or her own way to family hearth and home.
  Over a long life of more than 80 years I have traveled this same 
journey many times. It is always the same. We travel the last mile with 
a departed friend and we come to the end of the way, when we can go no 
farther. That is as far as we can go. There we must part forever--
insofar as this earthly life is concerned. From there, the loved one 
must go on alone, to ``The undiscovered country,'' as Shakespeare said, 
``from whose bourne no traveler returns''.
  So it is, and so it has been since the very beginning of our race, 
and so it will be in all the years to come. We are here today, and gone 
tomorrow.

     The clock of life is wound but once,
     And no man has the power to know just when the clock will 
           strike,
     At late or early hour.
     Now is the only time you have, so live, love, work with a 
           will;
     Put no faith in tomorrow for the clock may then be still.

  Mr. President, John Pastore lived to be the ripe old age of 93; for 
Paul Coverdell, the grim reaper beckoned earlier, and the end came at 
61. For those of us who remain on this side of the vale of trials and 
tears, the message from both of these lives is clear: be ready, be 
ready to go. William Cullen Bryant said it for you and for me:

       All that breathes will share thy destiny. The gay will 
     laugh when thou art gone, the solemn brood of care plod on, 
     and each one as before will chase his favorite phantom; . . .

  As one who has lived in this town of inflated egos for nearly half a 
century, I can testify that William Cullen Bryant had it right. I have 
seen the great, the near great, those who thought they were great, 
those who would never become great, and each incoming wave of life's 
sea surges forward on the sands of humanity's rocky coast, and then, 
just as quickly recedes into the vast emptiness of the past. But what 
cannot be washed away is the love and the memory of man's deeds and 
service to his fellowman.
  So, each of us will carry within ourselves the memory of Senator 
Pastore's, Senator Coverdell's, Officer Chestnut's, and Detective 
Gibson's deeds and service to his fellow man. They have touched all of 
us, and we have been changed by them, because it was Tennyson who said, 
``I am part of all that I have met.'' And so, in this small way, they 
live on in our hearts and in our dedication to do good with the hours 
and days that remain to us. The poet John Donne expressed it well, how 
each man's life--and each man's death--touches ours:

       No man is an island, entire of itself;
       Every man is a piece of the continent,
       A part of the main;
       If a clod be washed away by the sea,
       [America] is the less,
       As well as if a promontory were,
       As well as if a manor of thy friend's
       Or of thine own were;
       Any man's death diminishes me,
       Because I am involved in mankind;
       And therefore
       Never send to know for whom the bell tolls:
       It tolls for thee.

  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kyl). Without objection, it is so ordered.

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