[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 19]
[Senate]
[Pages 25240-25241]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTES TO RETIRING SENATORS


                             Fritz Hollings

  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, when the man who sits right next to me 
across this aisle over here, the senior Senator from South Carolina, 
Fritz Hollings, retires at the end of this Congress, this body will 
lose one of its most distinctive and eloquent voices. We will lose a 
master legislator, a person who will go down in history as one of the 
truly consequential Senators of the second half of the 20th century. Of 
course, we will lose the presence of a great friend, a colleague whose 
passion and wit burn just as intensely today as when he first entered 
this Chamber nearly four decades ago.
  As I said, Senator Hollings sits directly across the aisle to my 
left, at the desk that was once occupied by another extraordinary 
individual from South Carolina, Senator John C. Calhoun. But Calhoun 
was a voice of the Old South, a defender of slavery in the great 
debates prior to the Civil War. Fritz Hollings, first as Governor, and 
for the last 38 years as a Senator, has epitomized the New South.
  Fritz Hollings became Governor in 1958, at the tender age of 36. He 
immediately set about diversifying South Carolina's textile and farming 
economy. He planted the State thick with technical colleges. He 
aggressively recruited new industries to the State. But, most 
importantly, he set in motion the peaceful transformation of racial 
relations in South Carolina.
  Now, remember--I remember it well; I was a senior in high school just 
going into college at that time--this was a time when other Southern 
Governors were pledging massive resistance to integration. They 
literally stood in the schoolhouse door. They incited people to keep 
African Americans from going into school or sitting at lunch counters 
or riding on buses.
  But Fritz Hollings charted a different course as Governor. He showed 
tremendous leadership, real political courage, as he orchestrated the 
peaceful integration of Clemson University. So Fritz Hollings 
epitomizes the New South.
  He also epitomizes the Greatest Generation. In World War II, right 
out of the Citadel, he served as an Army officer in North Africa and 
later in Italy earning seven campaign ribbons and the Bronze Star.
  But I have always believed that what made the Greatest Generation 
truly great was not just what they did during the war but what they did 
after the war. As I said, Fritz Hollings played a transformational role 
in South Carolina. Then he came to the Senate, and he played an equally 
dramatic role on the national stage.
  In 1968, he conducted a series of ``hunger tours'' across South 
Carolina, exposing poverty and Third World living conditions. He went 
on to coauthor national legislation that created the Supplemental Food 
Program for Women, Infants and Children, which we now know today as the 
WIC Program. He championed the Community Health Center Program, 
bringing medical care to the poor and underprivileged. And now 
thousands of community health centers dot the landscape in every State 
of our Union.
  Fritz became a passionate advocate for medical research and the 
National Institutes of Health, especially cancer research. I know how 
proud Fritz is of the nationally respected cancer research and 
treatment center at the Medical University of South Carolina, now known 
appropriately as the Hollings Cancer Center. In fact, at his farewell 
gala a couple months ago that I went to downtown, Fritz Hollings raised 
more than $2 million for the center's programs.
  Well, it would take a long time to stand here and do justice to 
Senator Hollings' legacy of legislative accomplishments. I will not do 
so. I am tempted to do so because there is so much there. But those of 
us who have served with him over the decades know there is no more 
dedicated fighter for fiscal conservatism in this body or anywhere in 
this Congress. There is no one who has fought harder for what I call 
fiscal rationality in our spending and taxing programs than Fritz 
Hollings.
  There is no one who has done more when it comes to protecting our 
oceans and coasts. It was Senator Hollings who passed the Coastal Zone 
Management Act in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the 
Oceans Dumping Act of 1976, and the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996. 
So the next time you go out to look at whales or you see the dolphins 
swimming, the next time you walk along a beach and you don't see all 
that junk washing up on the shoreline, thank Fritz Hollings. He led the 
charge on it.
  And long before it became fashionable, Fritz Hollings was speaking 
out against the indiscriminate outsourcing of American jobs, first in 
the textile industry, then jobs in the steel industry and 
manufacturing. In literally scores of speeches on this floor, he has 
educated Members of this body about the fallacies and human costs of 
so-called free trade. That is not fair trade. He has spoken out with 
passion and persistence for fair trade and a fair shake for American 
workers.
  Fritz Hollings leaves a personal legacy in this Senate. We will 
always remember his sharp mind in debate, his wit, and a very sharp 
tongue that could cut to the quick and get at the essence of what the 
debate was all about. And there is no one who had a greater sense of 
humor or was more generous and more kind than Fritz Hollings. He could 
craft humor about others, and he could craft humor about himself--a 
great individual, Fritz Hollings.
  I would be remiss if I did not also publicly pay a big thank you to 
Fritz Hollings for the opportunity he gave me 16 years ago. I had just 
been elected to the Senate. I was in my first term. It was 1988. Lawton 
Chiles, who was then a Senator from Florida, was retiring as chairman 
of the Appropriations

[[Page 25241]]

Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.
  I was a freshman Senator. I was at the bottom of the ladder. So 
Lawton left that position and went back to Florida. Most of the 
Democrats ahead of me--the Democrats were in charge at that time--had 
other subcommittee chairmanships they didn't want to give up. So it 
came down to Fritz Hollings and me. I knew of the passion that Fritz 
had for health and education issues. So I assumed he was going to take 
chairmanship of that subcommittee. But I called up Fritz. I let him 
know that if he didn't take it, I was next in line, that I always had a 
great interest in this area. Well, he said he would take that into 
consideration. I will never forget it. I was at home on a Sunday night. 
He called me up and said: Well, Tom, I have been thinking about this. 
He said I would really like to have the Labor, HHS, Education; this is 
in my interest. I have spent so much time on health issues.
  Well, I thought this was his nice way of telling me, I am sorry, Tom, 
I am going to take the chairmanship, tough luck. But at the end, he 
said: Well, I want you to know I am going to stay with the Commerce-
State-Justice Subcommittee.
  I could hear him laughing. He had kind of strung me out during this 
whole phone call, leading me to the point where he was going to say, I 
am really sorry, Tom, but I am going to take it. Then he turned 180 
degrees and said: I am going to stay with Commerce-State-Justice. I 
could hear him chuckling in the background, knowing that he had given 
me a great gift.
  It was a huge opening for me as a freshman Senator to chair the 
second largest Appropriations subcommittee. I will always be grateful 
for the confidence and the trust that he had in me at that time. I hope 
I have not disappointed him.
  Fritz Hollings has cast more than 15,000 votes here. He has passed 
major bill after major bill. He has spoken out courageously on issues 
of war and peace, trade and budget, civil rights and human rights. He 
has been a voice for the poor and for the sick and for those who have 
no voice in the political arena. I know Fritz is very fond of a 
particular quote from Elibu Root, Teddy Roosevelt's Secretary of State. 
Those of us who were at the farewell banquet for Fritz in September 
heard him repeat it on that occasion. He said:

       Politics is the practical art of self government, and 
     someone must attend to it if we are going to have self 
     government. The principal ground of reproach against any 
     American citizen should be that he is not a politician.

  For more than five decades, Fritz Hollings has been a proud 
politician, an extraordinary public servant, one of the truly 
magnificent Senators in the history of this body. We will remember his 
legacy. I am going to miss him as a friend and as someone I could 
converse with, gain insight from, and share a laugh with, listening to 
Fritz go on about fiscal responsibility.
  Peatsy and Fritz have been a team. I was fortunate to have taken a 
congressional delegation trip with Fritz and Peatsy last December. We 
went down to Brazil, looking at all the different things in Brazil--
everything from rain forests to agriculture to labor conditions. It was 
truly a magnificent week to spend with Fritz and Peatsy. I will never 
forget it. I will never forget both of them. So I wish both Fritz and 
Peatsy a long and wonderful retirement in their beloved Charleston, SC.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.

                          ____________________