[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 18]
[Senate]
[Pages 23963-23965]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTES TO RETIRING SENATORS


                              Zell Miller

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, I rise this morning to pay tribute to 
a very special friend of mine and a friend of Georgia's and a friend of 
the United States of America. We are in what we think are our last 
couple of days of the 108th session. That being the case, this will be 
the last few days that Senator Zell Miller will be in Washington in his 
capacity as the senior Senator from our great State of Georgia. I want 
to take a minute just to talk about this man who has been such an 
inspiration to any number of politicians and others in my State 
relative to his public service to our State and to our country.
  Zell Miller was born in a little town called Young Harris, GA, which 
is in the mountains of north Georgia, one of the most beautiful parts 
of our State. His father, unfortunately, died when he was 17 days old, 
so he was raised by his mother, whom he has repeatedly talked about in 
the books he has written as well as in his speeches.

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His mother Birdie was the most influential person in his life. She did 
a heck of a job with Zell Miller as a young man and remained an 
inspiration to him throughout his adult life, and particularly in his 
life as a public servant to our State.
  Zell did one of the best things any man can do; and that is, he 
married way over his head early in his life. He married his sweetheart, 
Shirley. Before he went into the Marine Corps, he tells the story about 
leaving for boot camp and he was afraid when he got back she might not 
marry him, so while they were in the mood they ran over to South 
Carolina, which is not far away from his hometown of Young Harris, and 
got married; and they have had decades of glorious years together. They 
have two wonderful sons and four grandchildren and now four great-
grandchildren whom the two of them have enjoyed. Now he will have even 
more of an opportunity to spend time with them and enjoy them even 
more.
  Zell entered the Marine Corps at an early age. Again, as he has 
repeatedly said in his books, as well as in his speeches, it is the 
best thing he ever did in his life from the standpoint of straightening 
him out. All of us go through difficult times in our early years, and 
there are specific instances that make us what we are and sort of chart 
the course for where we are going to be in future years. Zell has been 
very open about the fact that the Marine Corps is the institution that 
really put his mind in the right frame that it needed to be for his 
adult years.
  Zell began his educational career at Young Harris College following 
his tenure in the Marine Corps, and then ultimately graduated from the 
University of Georgia, which happens to be the same institution of 
which I graduated. Again, having a colleague such as Zell to look to as 
a fellow alumnus is a great privilege.
  Zell then began a teaching career, and also very shortly entered a 
public service career. He served two terms as a State senator from his 
home county area of Young Harris. I think that was the foundation for 
what was going to ultimately become an outstanding career for him in 
public service. Like all of us, he suffered defeat as well as victory. 
He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives twice. 
Having run for Congress myself, and lost the first time, I know it is 
not much fun, but you also find out it is the greatest experience of 
your life. You meet the nicest people in the world, and you get a real 
sense of the fact that there are just literally thousands and thousands 
of people in that congressional district who have the same beliefs and 
philosophy that you do, so you want to continue to make a difference.
  Even though Zell lost those races when he ran twice, that did not 
deter him from continuing in public service. He served as our 
Lieutenant Governor for four terms, 16 years. He just did a masterful 
job. The Lieutenant Governor in Georgia has a little more power than 
some of the Lieutenant Governors in other States around the country. He 
presided over the State senate, and in that capacity had the obligation 
and the power to appoint committee chairmen and to be involved in 
legislation from a direct standpoint. He did an outstanding job as 
Lieutenant Governor.
  Following those four terms, he ran for Governor and, in 1990, was 
elected Governor of our State for the first of his two terms. In 1990, 
he campaigned on the fact that if we were going to have a State 
lottery--that was one of the hot issues on the ballot that year--that 
if we were going to have a State lottery, he wanted to make sure the 
funds that were generated by that lottery were used for one purpose, 
and one purpose only, and that was to improve the quality of education 
in our State.
  I have to say if there is any one man who is responsible for the 
improvement of the quality of education in my State of Georgia, it is 
Zell Miller because he not only campaigned on doing that, he made 
absolutely certain all the funds generated from that State lottery went 
to improve the quality of education.
  He is the father of the HOPE Scholarship. It is kind of interesting, 
in every campaign now, every statehouse campaign and gubernatorial and 
lieutenant gubernatorial race now, those folks who have been involved 
in State politics for a while who are running for those races all claim 
responsibility for the HOPE Scholarship. But everybody knows that the 
father of the HOPE Scholarship, the person who was responsible for its 
passage and implementation, is Zell Miller.
  The HOPE Scholarship is a provision in our law which says, if you 
graduate from a high school in Georgia and you have a B average, you 
can go to any State institution that you are successful in applying to 
and getting into, and your tuition will be paid for. As long as you 
maintain a B average, that tuition will be paid for throughout your 
college career. It has been one of the best things we have ever had 
happen in our State.
  We have been successful keeping our top students at home and 
attending our State universities. One of the main reasons is the HOPE 
Scholarship. We have kids who might otherwise go to a school in the 
Northeast or the West Coast that has a much greater national 
reputation, but they do not give the scholarships like the HOPE 
Scholarship to all their students who maintain those averages.
  So Zell Miller has been primarily responsible for keeping an awful 
lot of the top kids graduating from our public institutions as well as 
our private institutions in Georgia at our State institutions. As a 
result of that, we have seen the average SAT scores at the University 
of Georgia, for example, rise every single year since the HOPE 
Scholarship went into effect. I do not know what the exact number is 
for the entering class this year, but I have confidence in saying the 
average SAT score for the entering freshmen class at the University of 
Georgia this year is well in excess of 1250, probably closer to 
something in excess of 1300. At Georgia Tech it is higher than that. 
And in other institutions we have seen the same impact. We are simply 
getting the brightest and the best because of Zell Miller and his 
commitment to the people of Georgia and his commitment to increasing 
the quality of education in our State.
  As Governor, he put into effect a voluntary pre-K program for 4-year-
old kids. All of us know that the earlier we involve our children in 
the education process, the more likely they are to come out, at the end 
of the day, with a better education. It is one of the best things we 
ever did from the standpoint of putting our kids in touch with the 
school system at an early age. And it has worked.
  I could go on and on talking about the things that Senator Miller did 
as Governor, but I want to sum it up with two anecdotes.
  First, again, education-wise, he was committed to ensuring that the 
education of the children of our State improved every year he was in 
public service. I will never forget his last 4 years--and I know this; 
I remember specifically because my wife was a teacher in the public 
school system at that point in time. We were ranked 49th out of 50 with 
respect to the average teacher salaries. Zell Miller put into place--
and he made a commitment to the teaching community and made a 
commitment to the legislature that they were going to have to abide by 
this. He was going to provide a 6-percent increase in teacher salaries 
every year for his last 4 years, about a 25-percent increase for 
teacher salaries across the board. He not only made the commitment, but 
he did it. We went from 49th in average teacher salaries to somewhere 
in the high twenties over the 4 years of Zell Miller's last tenure as 
Governor of our State.
  He also made a commitment to the people of Georgia that if you elect 
me for 4 more years, then I am not going to be just your average 
Governor and put it on cruise control and go out as a popular guy--and 
he had every opportunity to do that.
  I will never forget riding back up here on an airplane after one 
weekend, and I happened to sit beside Zell. This was several years 
after he had left the Governor's office, but I was a Member of the 
House. I said: Zell, I guess if there is anything about you, and I were

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to remember one thing over everything else, it is the fact that in your 
last 4 years you did what you thought was right, irrespective of the 
fact that you could allow the legislature to pass whatever they wanted 
to and you could sign it into law. A lot of the legislation were very 
popular bills with the people back home, but they simply were not the 
right thing to do. He would veto them. He would veto them, not because 
he had anything against the issue or the people promoting the bill, but 
it was the right thing to do. It was not in the best interest of all 
Georgians.
  A lot of people ask me today, Why has Zell Miller changed? Zell 
Miller has never changed. In his heart, he believes we live in the 
greatest country in the world. He believes in his heart that he and I 
live in the greatest State in this great country. He is totally 
committed to doing what he thinks is right. He did it then when he 
vetoed a lot of popular bills, and he didn't have to do that; it would 
have been easy not to do that. That is why today when he speaks it is 
from his heart because he is doing what he thinks is right.
  As he closes out his career, he and I are both mindful every day of 
the fact that Zell Miller didn't want to be here. It was not his wish 
that he serve in the Senate when he was asked to serve. He ran for the 
Senate in 1980 and was not successful. But he had no intention of 
coming back to the Senate. Unfortunately, Paul Coverdell, who was his 
very close friend and one of my political mentors, passed away in 2000, 
and our Democratic Governor, Roy Barnes, went to Zell Miller and said: 
Your State needs you, your country needs you, and I need you to fill 
the unexpired term of Paul Coverdell. So Zell, after much thought about 
it, decided to leave the mountains of north Georgia and his hometown of 
Young Harris and go back into public service, to come to Washington. He 
and Shirley have been here since July of 2000, when he was appointed to 
fill that unexpired term. He ran in 2000 and was elected to the 
remainder of the unexpired term. So it wasn't his desire to come back, 
but, as always, when he has been called upon to fill a void and to be a 
public servant for his State and his country, he has answered that 
call--not unlike when he joined the Marine Corps.
  As he leaves this great institution at the end of this term in 
another 6 or 8 weeks, this man is going to be missed by those who have 
looked up to him from a political perspective. He has been a person 
that all of us in politics admire because he has always operated in a 
bipartisan way and made sure he reached across the aisle and brought 
Republicans into his Democratic administration when he served as 
governor. Probably one of the highlights of that is the man who is 
replacing him in the Senate, my good friend Johnny Isakson, who has 
been a longtime Republican in our State.
  In Zell's second term as governor, he knew that with education being 
a priority he needed a top-flight person to head up our State board of 
education. He reached out to Johnny Isakson, who was then out of 
politics, and brought him into his administration to chair the State 
board of education. Johnny did a terrific job. As a result of that, he 
came on to the House to replace Newt Gingrich, and now he will be 
replacing Zell Miller in the Senate. That is simply the kind of guy 
Zell Miller is.
  So it wasn't politics; it was what was in the best interest of our 
State, what could he do to continue to improve the quality of the 
education of our kids. He just did the right thing. It is the same as 
he did in supporting our Republican President. He knew it was the right 
thing to do. That is why he was so vocal about it. Irrespective of the 
consequences politically, he did what in his heart he thought was the 
right thing to do.
  So now as Zell goes back to Young Harris, I fully expect him to stay 
engaged in the process. He is not the kind of guy who is going to wilt 
away, but he will not be as active as he has been for the last three 
decades. He will be sitting on his front porch with his two dogs, Gus 
and Woodrow, playing with his grandchildren, and enjoying his family. I 
am sure his mind will, at times, wander back to his times in Atlanta at 
the State capital, and to the days he spent in this institution, and he 
will have some great memories. But those of us who have had the 
privilege and the opportunity to serve with him are going to have even 
better memories.
  Zell Miller is a great American, a great Georgian, and he is somebody 
all of us are going to miss in the day-to-day world of politics. But he 
is somebody who, when we look back and say, you know, if I charted my 
course the way he did, I can leave this institution with a great 
feeling knowing that I have done what was in the best interest of my 
State and in the best interest of my country. So to Zell Miller and to 
Shirley, I say thank you. Julianne and I have a great appreciation for 
you and a great friendship with you. We look forward to continuing that 
friendship. We will miss you here in the U.S. Senate. God bless you.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ensign). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary 
procedure that we find ourselves in?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in morning business.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I will address the Senate in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.

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