[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15846-15847]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                   REMEMBERING SENATOR PAUL COVERDELL

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I rise at this time to talk about our 
beloved friend, Senator Paul Coverdell of Georgia. I had hoped to be 
able to make some further comments last week, after it fell my duty to 
come to the floor and announce his very untimely death, but I just 
could not do it because I was so emotionally disturbed and grieving 
over the loss of this good friend.
  I guess maybe the week and the services in Georgia on Saturday have 
helped me come to peace with this very difficult loss and to say a fond 
farewell to my good friend from Georgia. But I wanted to speak now 
because I felt, even this morning, a void for this week; Paul will not 
be here. He will not be here saying, What can we do next? How can I 
help? He was willing to work with all of the Republicans and all of the 
Democrats, going over to the Democratic side of the aisle and seeking 
out Senator Harry Reid or Senator Torricelli, trying to find some way 
to make a bipartisan piece of legislation possible. So we will have a 
void this week.
  But, as I was thinking about it a few moments ago, there will be a 
void forever in the Senate with the loss of Paul Coverdell because his 
was an unfinished symphony. A lot more beautiful sounds were going to 
come from that somewhat uncertain trumpet from Georgia.
  Folks have talked about his flailing hands and his squeaky voice, but 
that is what really made Senator Coverdell all the more attractive. He 
was not always as smooth as some of us like to think we might be, but 
he was always effective. Maybe it was because of the way he presented 
his speeches and the way he came across in his daily relationships with 
all of us.
  The Chaplain of the Senate, Lloyd Ogilvie, at the church services in 
memory of Paul Coverdell on Saturday, referred to him as a peacemaker. 
And maybe this is a good time of the year to be thinking about the 
beatitudes because I think it really did describe Paul. Even though he 
felt very strongly about the issues he believed in or that he was 
opposed to, he was always binding up everybody else's wounds. He would 
find a way to make peace and get results.
  I thought the Chaplain's description of him as a peacemaker was 
apropos. When I did my Bible study this morning, I came to that 
particular passage, ``Blessed is the peacemaker.'' Again I thought, 
that is just one more message about Paul and the great job he did in 
the Senate.
  I met Paul years ago actually, way back in the 1970s when there was a 
very fledgling Republican Party in Georgia. We didn't have much of a 
Republican Party at that time in my State, but we were beginning to 
make progress. Maybe Georgia was even a little bit behind us. I 
remember going down to Atlanta and then having to go to Albany, GA, to 
attend events, then back into Atlanta. It was one of those occasions 
where a number of Congressmen and Senators came in for a fly around the 
State, and then we all came back in for the big dinner. It was 
logistically hard to orchestrate. Then I finally met the maestro; the 
maestro was Paul Coverdell.
  Typically, I learned later, it was the way he would work. He had five 
or six of us come in. We went to five or six different places in the 
State like spokes on a wheel. We came back. We had dinner. It was a 
very effective event. Everything worked like clockwork. It worked like 
clockwork because Paul Coverdell was making it happen.
  In those days, as I recall, he was in the State legislature, in the 
State senate. They had three Republicans. He was the minority leader. 
They had a minority whip and they had a whipee. There were three of 
them. That is the way he used to describe his powerful role in the 
senate, although, as I came to find out a lot later, he was a very 
effective member of the State senate, working as always both sides of 
the aisle, even though he only had three in his party in the State 
senate at that time.
  Of course, he went on to work in the Bush administration in the Peace 
Corps. I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I am sure he did a 
great job at the Peace Corps. I remember then supporting him when he 
actually ran for the Senate in 1992. I wasn't that intimately involved 
in the campaign but knew him to be a good man. I remember making a 
pitch for him both here and in Georgia.
  When I really got to know him was when he came to the Senate. Almost 
immediately he started throwing himself into the fray, whatever was 
going on. I remember we had the Clinton health care plan. I think he 
made 147 appearances in one State or another, on one occasion or 
another, against the Government takeover of health care. He felt 
passionately about it. He took off on the trail with Senator Phil Gramm 
and Senator John McCain. They had a lot to do with the eventual, and in 
my opinion, appropriate demise of that legislation. I learned that he 
wouldn't just talk a good game or wouldn't just give direction; he 
would put his body on the line. He would go anywhere, anytime to see 
that the message was delivered.
  Immediately he started saying: If we are going to do this in a 
positive way, if we are going to be fighting this legislation, how are 
we going to get our message out? He would be persistent about it. He 
would follow you around and keep wanting to talk about it. I remember 
he actually instigated meetings, at that time between the Speaker of 
the House and me, first as whip and then as majority leader, in which 
he would get the two of us together. He would have charts. Here he is 
from Georgia in probably his fourth year in the Senate, and he is using 
charts to explain the situation to the Speaker of the House and the 
majority leader. Only we listened because he had thought about it; he 
was organized. He had some ideas.
  I remember one occasion he said: You have to come to Atlanta.
  I said: I don't want to come to Atlanta.
  He said: Just come for lunch; Newt and I want to sit and talk with 
you.
  So I flew down. We had lunch. He had charts and he had a video this 
time. He

[[Page 15847]]

talked about how we should be planning our strategy. Then we flew back. 
I thought about that many times, in a way, the temerity of that. But 
that was Paul. Nobody objected. Nobody took it as a threat. Nobody 
worried he was stepping on their turf. And thank goodness, somebody was 
thinking and planning. That was Paul.
  Then after that, of course, he got involved as a member of the 
leadership team. I really liked that because I can remember very early 
on I realized that if there was a task that needed to be performed that 
nobody else would do, I could call on Paul; he would be glad to do it. 
I can remember going down the leadership line: Would you have the time 
to do this? Do you have the staff to do this? It would come down to the 
third person. He always sat at the other end of the leadership table. I 
would get to Paul, having had three turndowns, and Paul would say: 
Sure, I'll do it.
  Very quickly I developed the moniker for Paul of ``Mikey.'' I like to 
nickname Senators. Most of them wouldn't like for me to talk about it 
publicly. But Paul actually kind of liked being called Mikey. Mikey 
came from the television cereal commercial where the two kids are 
pushing a bowl of cereal back and forth saying: You eat it; no, you eat 
it. Finally, they push it to the third little boy and say: Give it to 
Mikey; he will try anything.
  That was the way Paul was. When all the other great leaders of the 
Senate were not willing to take the time, not willing to do the dirty, 
difficult, time-consuming job, Mikey would do it. I remember every time 
I called him Mikey, he would break out in a big smile. Tricia, my wife, 
picked it up, too. We liked too talk to Nancy about how sorry we were 
to have kept him tied up a little extra, too, sometimes in the Senate. 
But Mikey had his work to do. So it was a very affectionate term I had 
for him, and it described him so perfectly.
  He was not a funny, ha-ha sort of guy, but he was willing to laugh. 
He had a sense of humor. He was willing to laugh at himself, which 
really made him attractive. He was self-effacing. There was no grandeur 
there. He was, as Phil Gramm said in his remarks at the services 
Saturday--I believe it was Phil--or as somebody said: An ordinary man 
with extraordinary talents. He was willing to work hard to make up for 
whatever he lacked in some other way. He surely was loyal. I never had 
to worry about anything I said or asked Paul to do being used in an 
inappropriate way against me or against anybody else. He would handle 
it properly. And he was sensitive. He was always sensitive: Did I do 
the right thing? Did this Senator react some uncertain way?
  I remember asking him to come and help us on the floor on issues he 
cared about. He really cared about education. He wanted education 
savings accounts. He believed it would help parents with children in 
school. He believed it would help low-income parents have the ability 
to save just a little bit of their money, just a little bit to help 
their children with clothes or computers or tutoring. If we ever find a 
way to pass that legislation, instead of education savings accounts, it 
should be the Coverdell savings accounts. That would be an appropriate 
memorial and monument to Paul Coverdell. He believed in it. It wasn't a 
partisan political thing. It was something he thought would make a 
difference.
  As for drugs, I remember him following me around in the well heckling 
me about the need to pay more attention to the drug running in the Gulf 
of Mexico area across the borders in the Southwest. The Senator from 
Arizona worked with him on that issue. I remember his commitment to 
trying to be helpful to the Government in Colombia to fight drug 
terrorism there. He was passionate about it because he felt it 
threatened our country, threatened our very sovereignty, and it 
threatened our children. Once again, as with education, he saw it in 
terms of what it was doing or could do to our children. Again, he was 
involved.
  One of the last discussions I had with him was on the intelligence 
authorization bill. There is a provision in it which he didn't 
particularly like. He was determined to have a way to make his case on 
that. In his memory, we will make sure his case is made by Senator Kyl, 
Senator Feinstein, Senator DeWine, perhaps others. He really would dig 
into issues and make a difference.
  I also called on him at times when there really was nobody else who 
could take the time to do the job.
  He worked with us for a solid week on the floor on the Labor, HHS, 
Education appropriations bill. I came in one day and found that we had 
over 200 amendments pending. Somebody had to take the time to work with 
both sides to begin to get those amendments reduced, accepted, 
eliminated, withdrawn, or whatever. To his credit, Senator Specter 
said: I would like to have Paul spend time helping me with this.
  Other leadership members were involved in other issues. I could not 
be here. Senator Nickles could not be here. We had other things we had 
to do. Within a short period of time, the 200 became 50. Before the 
week was out, it was done.
  Senator Reid will tell you that Paul really made the difference. He 
didn't just hang out on this side of the aisle; he was rummaging around 
on the other side trying to see if we could work through it. I remember 
at the end of the week he was a little pale and, obviously, a little 
stressed. He came to my office and said: Boy, do I understand a little 
bit better what your job entails.
  Well, he was able to do it because nobody felt threatened by Paul. He 
wasn't getting in my hair, stepping on Senator Nickles' turf, or 
inappropriately shoving amendments away. He was working with everybody 
involved. Nobody got mad. Nobody got even. It is sort of a unique thing 
for a Senator to be able to do that.
  So I guess I will be trying to find another ``Mikey.'' But I don't 
think there is one. And so as I thought about doing this speech, I 
tried to find some statement, some poem, something that would pay a 
final appropriate treatment to Senator Coverdell. I came across a 
passage from a poem, ``The Comfort of Friends,'' by William Penn.
  He said:

     They that love beyond the world
     Cannot be separated by it.
     Death cannot kill what never dies,
     Nor can spirits ever be divided
     That love and live in the same divine principle:
     [Because that is] the root and record of their friendship.

  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I thank the leader for his comments and 
his very strong feelings about friends, people with whom he has worked.
  I had a little different experience, I guess, with Paul Coverdell in 
that he was here when I came. So I was not in this business of 
leadership with him. Indeed, he took time to spend time with those of 
us who were new and to say: How can I help you? How can we work 
together? This was the kind of man that Paul Coverdell was. Certainly, 
he was an image that each of us should seek to perpetuate--that of 
caring, that of really feeling strongly about issues, and then, of 
course, being willing to do something about it. So I want to share with 
the leader my sorrow and sadness in not having Paul Coverdell here with 
us. I extend our condolences to his family.

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