[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 18] [Senate] [Pages 26270-26271] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov][[Page 26270]] PARK RINARD MEMORIAL Mr. HARKIN. I should like to take a few moments today to honor the life of a great Iowan and a great American--a man who dedicated many years of his life in service to the people of Iowa and our nation--our friend Park Rinard. It's been said that on the day John F. Kennedy died, a tailor in New York put a sign on the door of his shop that read, ``Closed Due to a Death in the Family.'' Well, that's how I felt when I heard that Park had passed away, like we had had a death in our family. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Park's funeral. It was held during the week before election day, and I had committed to campaign for Al Gore and other Democratic candidates in Iowa. I felt awful that I would be missing the service, and I thought about taking the day off to attend it. But then it occurred to me--by hitting the road and working to get good Iowa Democrats elected, I was paying my respects just the way Park would have wanted. Park Rinard was a legend in Iowa Democratic politics. He began his political career back in 1957 as an aide to Governor Herschel Loveless. He then befriended a rough-hewn, young, Iowa truck driver who had a beef with the state's trucking policies. Park persuaded this disgruntled fellow--a man by the name of Harold Hughes--to join the Democratic party and run for office. The rest, as they say, is history, and Hughes later referred to Park as his tutor in government. Park went on to advise Senator John Culver, Congressman Neal Smith, and many others who have made their mark on our Nation. Mr. President, when I think back on Park's career, I'm reminded of something that Adlai Stevenson once said: ``Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of things that are to be.'' That's a perfect description of Park Rinard. Like my hero, Hubert Humphrey, Park believed that ``. . . the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life--the sick, the needy . . .'' And Park had a vision of government big enough and bold enough to encompass all of them. He envisioned a government that trusted citizens--that believed in their strength and capacity to learn, work and serve a government that would invest in people and leave the potential of no citizen untapped. Through his work with Governor Hughes, Park transformed that vision into the wave of progressive legislation that characterized the ``Golden Age'' of Iowa politics. During these years, Park helped establish Iowa's community college system, create the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, and appoint the first black state judge in Iowa. He worked to grant home rule for cities, increase spending for schools, and abolish the death penalty. And he successfully convinced Governor Hughes to oppose the Vietnam war. These achievements were Park's proudest legacies, and some of his most enduring. But Park also had a vision for America--a vision which he spent the remainder of his career fighting for in Congress. He believed deeply in expanding women's rights, and he was a strong supporter of the equal rights amendment long before it penetrated the popular consciousness. He also spoke passionately about ending discrimination against gay Americans, long before many others. But make no mistake about it, Park wasn't a knee-jerk liberal, not by a long shot. He just believed in a fundamental, basic, golden rule kind of fairness. That was his moral compass, and he steadfastly followed where it led. It is therefore unsurprising that Park had such disdain for polls and focus groups. For Park, politics wasn't about pandering and spin, it was about leadership and telling the truth. And tell the truth he did. No matter whom he was speaking with, Park Rinard did not mince words. He was once asked by a hostile audience how his boss could even consider supporting food stamps for union strikers. Park simply replied, ``hungry people are hungry people.'' A gifted speechwriter, Park wielded the written word as forcefully as the spoken. He spent hours pecking away at his old manual typewriter, massaging policy into poetry often finishing a speech at the last possible moment, sometimes just minutes before his boss was scheduled to deliver it. Park never hesitated to use his gift for strong language to stand up to his bosses--some of whom were nearly twice his size--when he thought they were wrong. Park once told a fellow staffer, ``Remember, you might work for one particular Senator, but your paycheck is from the Senate of the United States, and every employee of the Senate works for the people of America.'' That was Park's ultimate loyalty--to the people his bosses served. When Park stood up to his bosses, he was standing up for the American people. And perhaps most extraordinary in this city that's seen its share of egos and ambition is that Park worked his magic entirely behind the scenes, happy to slip through back doors and pound out details in back rooms. Park felt that, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted, ``There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets the credit.'' He never cared who got the applause and the pat on the back for his own hard work. He just cared about doing right. Park was fundamentally humble. He spent a lot of time among giants-- Governors, Presidential candidates, great political leaders--but his ego never swelled to match. Park believed, as the saying goes, that ``you don't have to be who's who to know what's what.'' He was as comfortable lending a hand to a lost tourist, saying a kind word to a new intern, or shooting the breeze with a cafeteria employee as he was chewing out a Senator whom he felt had gone awry. There were no small people with Park Rinard. All people mattered to Park--and his family mattered most of all. He was a devoted husband to his wife Phyllis, a proud father to his children Judy, David and Grant, and a doting grandfather to his grandson David Bayard. Their generosity in sharing him is appreciated by all of us enriched by his life. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote that ``Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.'' Park was a great man. And he left lasting footprints on the political landscape of Iowa and America. Today, in part because of the foundation he laid, Iowa leads the nation in education and literacy, and it's ranked as one of the top ten states to raise a child. And today, because of the dialogues he helped begin, the idea of banning discrimination against women and minorities or passing hate crimes laws no longer seems novel, but natural. These are Park Rinard's footprints--echoes from a golden time in our history when this slight, softspoken man made it his mission to create a more humane world for the most vulnerable among us. With his words and ideas, both written and spoken, Park Rinard appealed to the best in those he worked for and stood for nothing less. We are lucky that so many great men and women heeded his call and made good on his dreams. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the eulogy read by Senator John Culver at Park Rinard's funeral. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Eulogy for Park Rinard (By John C. Culver, November 3, 2000) I am very honored that the family has asked me to say a few words today in memory of Park and in celebration of his remarkable life. He dearly loved his wife Phyllis for fifty- five years and deeply revered her knowledge of and passion for the arts. He took great pride in daughter Judy's work at the National Geographic and Smithsonian as a writer, and, of course, his grandson David Bayard. Son Jeff's career at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian gave him enormous satisfaction. Park and Phyllis' devotion to their son Grant during his life was inspiring to all. [[Page 26271]] On behalf of everyone here, I want to sincerely thank the Rinard family for sharing Park who so greatly enriched each of our lives. Senator Harold Hughes once described Park Rinard as ``a quiet, peaceful man with a core of steel and a ``heart of gold.'' He also said, ``Park was the toughest man he ever met.'' When he worked for us Harold Hughes and I were both over 6'2" tall and unfortunately usually over 250 lbs. It was also falsely rumored that on occasion we could be somewhat intimidating. Harold and I had one other thing in common. We were both scared to death of Park--who was only half our size. I am convinced that what we respected was Parks' integrity and what we feared was that we would fail to live up to his expectations. Park believed that being a good politician required one to lead and educate public opinion and not just to reflect it. Park always said that one of his primary responsibilities was to tell the elected officials he served what they didn't want to hear. Theoretically I agreed with him. However, there were times, I have to confess, that I found his zeal in carrying out this duty a bit excessive. But certainly his good judgment and candor served me well as I know it did Hershel Loveless, Harold Hughes, Bonnie Campbell, Neal Smith and countless others both in and out of public office. As many of you know, Park had been secretary, friend, and companion to Iowa artist Grant Wood, who reportedly Latinized his name and called him Parkus. Several original Wood paintings graced Park's small office in Capitol Hill. Among the many roles Park played for Wood was to model for some of his paintings. Apparently, on one occasion, he actually posed as George Washington. Now Park was a wonderful man and Grant Wood was a brilliant artist. But somehow that particular collaboration never survived to replace Gilbert Stuart's famous portrait of the Nation's first President. Park was responsible for the transformation of Grant Wood from a shy individual, who avoided public speaking, into the national spokesman for Regionalism as a significant American Art Movement. When Grant Wood died, Park was there. He promised Wood that he would look after Grant's sister, Nan, which he did for the rest of her life. Nan's last conversation with Park was when he called to tell her that the U.S. Postmaster General had approved use of a Grant Wood painting for a postage stamp. The image of the stamp was Young Corn and Park said, ``The painting represented Iowa as a state that nurtures its young people that they may grow to their full potential.'' Park was a beloved figure because he treated everyone-- regardless of their status in life--with genuine warmth and kindness. Once in a while, I couldn't find him, and someone would track him down in the Senate office basement, where he was providing personal counseling to one of the cafeteria workers. His son Jeff reminded him that his supportive advice, was often, ``Don't lose your nerve.'' Over the years, Park befriended an elderly woman named Ann, who operated a small newsstand where he would buy his newspapers each evening. One day Ann was upset because she had not received her New York Times delivery. Park was distressed because this would be a significant economic blow to her modest income. A group of wealthy N.Y. businessmen were coming that day to Washington to attend a conference Hughes was sponsoring on Vietnam. Park immediately called them and ordered them to bring a large bundle of New York Times newspapers with them. Thanks to Park, Ann did not lose a single sale that day! Park loved to play tennis and he enjoyed cooking but his real passion was his garden. He was particularly proud of his blueberries and would bring boxes of them into the office and the staff would eat them out of paper cups on their desks during the day. One day Ed Campbell got a call from the Fairfax Hospital that Park would be late to work because he had been in an automobile accident. Ed rushed to the hospital where he found Park with a gash over his eye. Park explained that a newspaper flew onto his windshield and blinded him and his car hit a telephone pole. Ed said, ``Park's only concern was that he could not deliver his prized blueberries and tomatoes to the office as they were now splattered all over the interior of his car.'' One of the worst-kept secrets in the 1960's was that Park was Governor Hughes' right hand man, even through he held no official portfolio in state government, and was actually working with the Iowa League of Municipalities. Park operated not from a desk at the state House but downtown from a booth in King Ying Low's restaurant. The establishment didn't have a liquor license. Whenever I occasionally joined Park there for lunch, the proprietor, Park's close Chinese American friend, Louie Lejon, would inquire, ``Mr. Rinard, your usual?'' Park would respond, ``That would be fine.'' I noticed that Park's ``usual'' somehow never smelled quite like the tea the rest of us were drinking out of our tea cups. When Park agreed to join me in the Senate, I inherited what was undoubtedly the largest Asian immigration caseload in the U.S. Congress. There must have been at least 550 Chinese immigrants certified to work in King Ying Low's Des Moines restaurant during my Senate term alone. Park Rinard was the intellectual god-father of Iowa's progressive agenda for a half-century, and those years with Governor Hughes were really the ``Golden Age.'' It was a time when: Community colleges were established; the Iowa Civil Rights Commission created; home rule for cities granted; state spending for schools, prisons, and welfare increased; the first black state judge appointed; and the death penalty abolished. It is worthy of note that Iowa's State Government has not taken the life of even one person since Park involved himself in Iowa politics. Decades later Park remained at the forefront of enlightened political thinking. He strongly advocated an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution for women. He surprised younger members of my Senate staff over 20 years ago by accurately predicting that the next significant civil rights challenge would be to overcome discrimination against gay Americans. Bonnie Campbell once remarked that Park was so completely centered and certain in his liberalism that he knew instantly the proper position on an issue because of his ``fundamental sense of fairness,'' while the rest of us had to at least think about it. Growing up in Northern Iowa over four score years ago Park acquired values he would never abandon: common sense, cooperation, love of the land, sincerity, compassion, civility and justice. These values formed the underpinning of his political philosophy: phrases like ``the milk of human kindness,'' ``the least of these'' and describing something as being ``clear as the noon whistle at Ida Grove.'' These phrases all slipped easily into his own speech patterns and the language he crafted for those in public life. Many of us here today recall Park, smoking his pipe, while hunched over his ancient Olympia typewriter pecking out those many speeches. Park was a most gifted writer. However, unlike Federal Express he was reluctant to guarantee a precise arrival time for the finished speech draft. On more than one occasion, this led to serious staff anxiety and a near nervous breakdown for the person expected to deliver the prepared remarks at a particular event. In 1968 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago Harold Hughes was to place Eugene McCarthy's name in nomination. Park was in a Des Moines Hotel room where he was supposed to be writing Hughes' speech. Ed Campbell called Park and told him to put the speech on a plane. This was a time, of course, which predated the era of fax machines and e-mail. As zero hour approached, Hughes asked Ed ``Where the hell is the speech?'' Ed called Park. Park said ``he was working on it and would send it by Western Union.'' Ed frantically got a room beneath the podium and with a technician arranged to have the speech pages put on a teleprompter as they arrived over the wire. Hughes was called to the Convention podium with no text and had to ad lib his opening before the first page arrived and was put on the teleprompter. Hughes literally gave the speech in Chicago while Park wrote it in Des Moines. At what appeared to be the conclusion Hughes turned to Ed and, putting his hand over the mike, asked in a stage whisper, ``Is that the end?'' It was, and Gene McCarthy's name was thereby officially placed in nomination as the Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States. I know Park was not pleased with the condition of American Politics in recent years where mechanics have overwhelmed the issues. Park thought the dialogue had grown sterile and he had little interest in pollsters and consultants. However, he had an abiding faith in democracy and believed that politicians who speak to the best in their constituencies will draw it out. He did his best to make sure that we office holders did just that. Whatever Governor Herschel Loveless, Governor and Senator Harold Hughes, Attorney General Bonnie Campbell, Congressman Neal Smith and I were able to collectively contribute in our public service careers was, in no small park, made possible because of Park Rinard. Park was truly an ``Iowa Original.'' He uniquely sensed the soul of the state he selflessly served and loved for a life time. His legacy will endure for generations and Iowans will enjoy more opportunities and have a better life because of Park Rinard. What greater reward does life afford? ____________________