[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3272-3273]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        IN MEMORY OF TOM WINSHIP

  Mr. KERRY. Madam President, I share a loss which many in New England, 
and Massachusetts particularly, feel today. Thomas Winship, editor of 
the Boston Globe from 1965 to 1984, and a champion of the role that the 
American newspaper plays in our lives and the lives of our country, 
died early this morning after a long and brave battle with cancer, 
leaving behind his wife Beth, a sister, Joanna Crawford; two sons, 
Lawrence and Ben; two daughters, Margaret and Joanna, and eight 
grandchildren.
  Our condolences from all in the State of Massachusetts and all who 
knew him. Our prayers go out to them today as they grieve the passing 
of this very special man.
  Their loss is also our country's loss. I can say without 
embellishment that Tom Winship was one of America's great newspapermen. 
He was an extraordinary editor, a giant among a generation of editors 
that includes people such as Ben Bradlee and Joe Lelyveld, and a host 
of others, all of whom were a band of brothers at that time, who sought 
to change the face of America, our politics, our culture, and our 
lives, in a positive way, using their power of the print to be able to 
reach the American people with what they thought were best 
interpretations and aspirations of our country.
  Tom was a man who lived the word ``citizen'' to its fullest. He loved 
his family, his country, his community, and the newspaper business, all 
with a burning passion. In his years at the Boston Globe, he left an 
indelible mark on the newspaper lore of our Nation. It is not an 
exaggeration to say that

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through his efforts and the efforts of others, they made a real and a 
significant contribution, certainly to the history of Massachusetts, of 
New England, and, in the conglomerate of all of them, of the country.
  I first met Tom Winship when I was a young veteran, recently returned 
from Vietnam. I went to see him to talk about the war, a visit which 
led to a friendship that lasted some 31 years. When we veterans came to 
Washington in the early 1970s to speak our minds about the war in which 
we had fought, as veterans who believed we had no other choice but to 
tell another side of the story, something we thought was not 
sufficiently reported, Tom Winship showed a special and personal 
interest. He understood the meaning of that effort. He insisted that 
his paper cover that story, our story, and I think, even fairly stated, 
America's story. He insisted that be covered when others were not so 
sure that was wise or that it mattered.
  Tom's courage was measured not just in printing ``The Pentagon 
Papers,'' for which he was bitterly attacked by some, but in covering 
all the words of the time--harsh words sometimes, honest words always, 
and words that might much more easily, were it not for him, have been 
ignored.
  Tom's brand of special leadership did not begin or end with Vietnam. 
Perhaps it began even with the civil rights movement when he faced not 
just the segregation of the South but a segregation that he also 
recognized existed at home in the North. It was also his early 
activism, his willingness to protect the environment in the days when 
Rachel Carson and her book ``Silent Spring'' touched a new 
consciousness about clean air, clean water, and the birth of the 
environmental movement that never could have reached full momentum 
without Tom's stewardship of a newspaper determined to make it an 
issue.
  It was the unflinching effort to press for reforms--in Massachusetts, 
in the State legislature, in the State constitution--and his creation 
of the Globe's Spotlight Team that awoke citizens to what was happening 
in too many instances in government, that made it possible for a new 
generation of reformers, Governors, to have a voice and find the 
platform that ultimately helped usher in the modern era of politics in 
our State.
  On all these issues and so many more, it was Tom Winship who never 
shied away from steering the Boston Globe by his own moral compass. He 
believed that a newspaper served an important national purpose: To 
report the news, yes, but also, he believed equally importantly, to 
help his fellow citizens understand how events in their neighborhoods 
and beyond their borders impacted their lives. He believed in the role 
of the newspaper to help frame choices for each of us, to help us find 
a direction as a people, to open our eyes to the outcomes and 
possibilities which, as it always is in a democracy, are left up to the 
people to decide.
  Tom thought it was entirely appropriate to make public a sense of 
moral outrage about the actions of people in public life whose choices 
or whose unwillingness to make choices, their inaction, came into 
conflict with the public interest. Tom Winship did not easily accept 
the changes he perceived in America's print media which seemed more and 
more interested in personality and conflict and less and less 
interested in ideas and ideals. Tom's sense of what was news and what 
was merely new never shifted. It was seared into him by his passion for 
a debate on big choices and his deep and unshakable belief that the 
newspapers were there to help us wrestle with those decisions.
  For his enduring faith in the responsibility of journalists to our 
country, and for his remarkable energy spent to preserve that special 
role of the American newspaper in our democracy, for his courage in 
fighting to put real news, however contentious, on the front pages of 
America's consciousness, Tom earned the enormous and unfailing respect 
of his peers. He also earned the admiration of a generation of 
activists and outsiders who might well have otherwise been written out 
of our Nation's dialog.
  For all that he did in his life and throughout his career, Tom leaves 
an enormous legacy, one that will endure, even as newsprint fades and 
newspapers yellow with age. It will not be just a memory but a 
standard, a standard that teaches us lessons about telling the truth 
and focusing on what is really important. When you lose a man such as 
Tom Winship, your first instinct is to say you will not see another one 
like him. But knowing what we do about Tom Winship, knowing all he 
stood for and all he accomplished, we also know he would not want that. 
He simply would not believe it. He would want us to think that the 
world we live in, in the future will be a world with more people 
pursuing the same goals, with more people who believe they can change 
things and follow his example.
  He would have believed nothing less than that. Although the standard 
he set is exceedingly high, it will mean so much more to our country to 
see another generation that walks the path Tom Winship so courageously 
blazed for all of us.
  I yield the floor.

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