[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 24257-24258]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        THE LEGACY OF GUNN McKAY

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, all of us who knew him during his decade of 
service in Congress, and others who knew him only by reputation, mourn 
the recent passing of Gunn McKay.
  Gunn McKay was a leading member of the Committee on Appropriations in 
the other body and chaired the Subcommittee on Military Construction. 
He was effective. He knew how to lead and how to legislate. His voice 
was an influential voice on energy issues and military readiness and 
Federal land policy. And he knew how to bring people together to get 
things done.
  It was not politics that motivated Gunn McKay in his public service; 
it was people. He thrived in being able to help people get and keep 
good-paying jobs. He deeply, unequivocally believed that there is a 
role for government, through programs like Medicare and Social Security 
and in other ways, in helping those who struggle.
  Gunn achieved all of the good he accomplished in life through a deep-
down and infectious optimism about people and about the future. More 
than being a great public servant, he was a good man. Those who worked 
with him will tell you that Gunn did not have a mean bone in his body. 
When he left public life Gunn and his wife, Donna, devoted much of 
their time to church service abroad.
  The Nation and its Congress are better for the fact that Gunn McKay 
served here. And so, certainly, are the people of his beloved State of 
Utah.
  I ask unanimous consent that an article from the Salt Lake Tribune 
about Gunn McKay be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                      [From the Salt Lake Tribune]

                    Utah Demo Gunn McKay Dies at 75

                            (By Judy Fahys)

       K. Gunn McKay, the Weber County farmer's son and Democrat 
     who served five terms in Congress in the 1970s and earned 
     bipartisan praise for his down-home warmth and political 
     skill, died Friday night from cancer. He was 75.
       ``Tell the facts and leave the right impression,'' McKay 
     used to tell his young congressional aides, and that credo 
     served the former teacher through a career in state and 
     national politics and on Mormon mission assignments in 
     Europe, Africa and Asia.
       ``Unassuming'' and ``determined'' are the words Barry 
     McKay, a Salt Lake City lawyer, used to describe his eldest 
     brother. He recalled Friday how Gunn McKay spent most of one 
     Christmas, the day he returned home from a church mission in 
     England, helping neighbors start their frozen cars.
       Political scientist J.D. Williams called McKay ``the 
     personification of Huntsville,'' McKay's hometown in the 
     Ogden Valley.
       ``He talked with a rural Utah slang when he wanted to,'' 
     said Williams. ``He had a beautiful smile and demeanor, and 
     he was everybody's friend.''
       ``You didn't have to guess what he meant,''said former Sen. 
     Jake Garn, a Republican who served with the Democrat in 
     Congress and lived near him outside the nation's capital.
       ``He was extremely well-liked,'' said Garn, whose U.S. 
     Senate service overlapped with six years of McKay's time in 
     Washington. ``Whether you agreed with him or not, you could 
     trust him. He would always follow through.''
       McKay even converted David L. Bigler, a Utah historian and 
     former public-relations director for Geneva Steel, then known 
     as U.S. Steel. Bigler switched political parties to raise 
     money for McKay's first campaign.
       ``He really did care for people,'' said Bigler, who was 
     struck at once by McKay's integrity. ``All politicians say 
     that, but few of them do. He did.''
       Politics may have been in McKay's blood. His grandfather, 
     Angus, was House Speaker in Utah's first Legislature. And his 
     father, James, had run for the 1st Congressional District 
     seat that McKay would win 35 years later, in 1970.
       And unlike most emerging politicians, name recognition was 
     never a problem for McKay, whose father was a cousin to one 
     of the most beloved presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ 
     of Latter-day Saints, Huntsville-born David O. McKay. The 
     church leader died just a year before his relative took the 
     oath for his first term in Congress.
       The eldest of eight children, McKay was a three-sport star 
     at Weber High School before serving in the U.S. Coast Guard 
     during World War II and on an LDS mission to England the 
     following three years. He later graduated from Utah State 
     University with a degree in education.
       He was teaching history in Ogden City Schools and running a 
     deli when he was appointed to the first of two terms in the 
     Utah Legislature.
       From there, he was tapped to be chief of staff to 
     Democratic Gov. Calvin L. Rampton.
       During his five terms in Washington from 1971 to 1981, 
     McKay built a reputation for being one of the half-dozen most 
     conservative Democrats in a Congress long controlled by 
     Democrats.
       He fought federally funded abortions and backed the U.S. 
     Supreme Court's decision to outlaw prayer in schools. He 
     pushed the Central Utah Project, military appropriations that 
     bolstered Hill Air Force Base and other Utah installations, 
     ``gasohol'' and a balanced-budget law. He also fought higher 
     fees for ranchers who leased federal range.
       McKay's powers of persuasion helped land him a seat on the 
     coveted Appropriations Committee upon entering Congress--the 
     first ever for a Utahn.
       ``Most people have to wait [10 years] to be considered,'' 
     said Jim McConkie, a Salt Lake City lawyer who served on 
     McKay's congressional staff for five years.
       McConkie recalled how McKay used his influential role as 
     chairman of the Military Construction Subcommittee to become 
     close to President Carter, who invited McKay to Camp David a 
     few times.
       ``But he never lost his roots,'' said McConkie. ``He could 
     see to the heart of an issue.''
       Nothwithstanding his Washington successes, McKay lost his 
     seat to Republican Rep. Jim Hansen in the Ronald Reagan 
     landslide of 1980.
       In 1986, when McKay unsuccessfully challenged Hansen for 
     his old seat he shared his view of Utah voters, one that 
     contemporary Utah Democrats have taken to heart.
       ``Utah voters are independent thinkers,'' McKay told The 
     Salt Lake Tribune. ``They

[[Page 24258]]

     are concerned with ineffective federal policies and lack of 
     congressional action on issues which are increasingly having 
     a negative impact on their lives.''
       The year after he left Congress, McKay went on an LDS 
     mission to Scotland with his wife Donna. Later, the couple 
     was called to serve in Kenya, where McKay found himself a 
     block away from the embassy bombing in 1998.
       They also served in Singapore and Malaysia. McKay took ill 
     while serving in Pakistan.
       The McKays, who married in 1950, had 10 children, 40 
     grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
       Said former Utah First Lady Norma Matheson: ``He loved 
     being in public service, and it showed.''

                          ____________________