[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10755-10756]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTE TO SENATOR ROBERT C. BYRD

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, it is Monday. The Galleries do not have many 
people in them. We have a new batch of pages. Others graduated 
recently. But everyone here--pages and those in the Gallery--should 
recognize that today is a day of history in America.

       Public service is about personal sacrifice for the greater 
     good. It is about reaching for the better angels of our human 
     nature.

  That quote is a great quote for today, but that quote is from Robert 
Byrd, which should come as no surprise because the description fits him 
to a tee.
  As we have heard from the distinguished majority leader, Senator Byrd 
passes Strom Thurmond, who I had the good fortune to serve with, and 
becomes the longest serving Senator in American history, with 17,327 
days--17,327 days--of service in the Senate.
  You add that to his 6 years in the House of Representatives, and 
Robert Byrd has served in the Congress 25 percent of the time we have 
been a nation. Seventy-five percent of the time other people served in 
the Congress. But this one man has served 25 percent of the time we 
have been a country. This gives us some perspective of what a 
significant day this actually is. The U.S. Senate first met in New York 
City in 1789.
  Robert C. Byrd has served a distinguished career. His career in the 
Senate is significant, important, and impressive. But his life is 
impressive.
  America is a place where everyone has a chance. It does not matter 
that you are an orphan at age 1. It does not matter that you are raised 
with an aunt and uncle. It does not matter that your new parents work 
very, very hard in the coal mines of West Virginia. Because, you see, 
in America people can succeed no matter what the status of their 
parents.
  Robert Byrd is testimony to that. He graduated valedictorian of his 
high school class. He went to work in the depths of the Great 
Depression because he had no way of paying to go to college. He worked 
at a number of different jobs. He worked odd jobs wherever he could 
find them, pumping gas, selling produce, working as a meat cutter, a 
butcher, and even during World War II doing some welding on ``Liberty'' 
and ``Victory'' ships.
  After the war, he returned to West Virginia and began his 
distinguished career of public service.
  The West Virginia House of Delegates was his first elected position. 
Then he was elected to the West Virginia Senate. Then he was elected to 
the U.S. House of Representatives in the early 1950s. In 1958, he was 
elected to the U.S. Senate.
  His career of leadership is unsurpassed and will always be 
unsurpassed. He has been a mentor to me for all these many years and a 
leader for whom all of us in this body have the highest respect.
  But as we have already heard, for all of his accolades--and there 
have been many--Senator Byrd himself will tell you his greatest success 
truly came on a late day in May, 1937, when he put on his best suit, 
traveled to the nearby town of Sophia, WV, and married his high school 
sweetheart, Erma. Today is her birthday.
  Now, I had the good fortune to travel, on a couple of occasions, with 
Erma Byrd and the Senator. We had work to do around the world. What a 
wonderful, wonderful woman. She was kind, thoughtful, and quiet, but 
with a great presence about her. I remember having the honor, really--
and it was that--of Senator Byrd asking me to go to West Virginia. We 
had a parliamentary exchange with the British Parliament.
  I had heard this song, ``West Virginia Hills,'' but it never meant 
anything to me until that occasion in a mesa in West Virginia where we 
gathered with those British parliamentarians for an evening event to 
listen to some bluegrass music, to watch the Sun go down in those West 
Virginia hills. That is something I will always remember of Robert Byrd 
and his lovely wife Erma.
  There has been no greater advocate in the almost 18,000 days this man 
has served in the Senate, and the more than 18,000 days he has served 
in the Congress, no greater advocate for the State of West Virginia 
than Senator Robert Byrd.
  He has fought to improve access to education and health care. The 
things he has done for transportation in West Virginia are legend. He 
has brought jobs there. He has done things to protect pensioners.
  We just passed on May 24 an example of what Senator Byrd does for 
West Virginia. The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 
2006 was passed on May 24. President Bush will sign this into law. 
Again, it is important legislation for miners across the country. It 
means a lot to me. I have spoken to Senator Byrd about miners. My 
father was a miner. And I am proud of the work Senator Byrd has done 
for West Virginia because it helps all miners.
  I asked, as I was coming here, my long-serving personal assistant 
Janice Shelton: What do you want me to say about Senator Byrd? She has 
worked with me all the time I have been in the Senate.
  She said: No Senator comes and talks to the country like Senator 
Byrd.
  The Fourth of July you prepare your own speech; you read your own 
speech about the Fourth of July. Thanksgiving, if we are here, you give 
a speech on Thanksgiving. Christmas, Mother's Day, wonderful--I can 
still remember your speeches on Mother's Day. The reason those speeches 
are so important to every one of us--of course, they are important to 
you; they reflect upon your mother, the woman who raised you--is 
because it causes us to reflect on our own mothers. Every time you gave 
one of those speeches, I thought of my red-haired mother working so 
hard, taking in wash so that I could have clothes like the other kids. 
So every speech you give is not only for the people of West Virginia. 
It is for the country. It is for the people who work here with you.
  I have had the good fortune--in fact, I visited with one of my 
friends who I practiced law with for 12 years. A brilliant man, he is 
so smart. He reads books, has from the time he was a boy until now, 
many books each week. I have always admired Rex Jemison and how smart 
he is. But Senator Byrd, to those of us who have worked with you, you 
have no peer.
  I can remember as if it were yesterday when you decided you were 
going to take over the Appropriations Committee and no longer have a 
leadership position. We had an event in the Russell Building, the 
caucus room. There was no press, Senators, very limited staff. You 
stood and talked to us a little bit. You told us things we thought we 
always knew, and I have retold this story so many times. I am going to 
retell it again. You told us you could get in your car in Virginia, 
drive to West Virginia and back--and it takes about 8 hours--reciting 
poetry over and back without stopping and never recite the same poem 
twice. Think about that. Calculate it for a minute. How many people 
have read the Encyclopedia Brittanica from cover to cover? Senator 
Robert Byrd. How many people have sat down when we have a break and 
read the dictionary? This man has done this. How many people can recite 
poetry as he did? I have just talked about this. How many people can 
recite Shakespeare verse after verse, passages out of Scripture?
  Senator Byrd gave a series of speeches here, 10 speeches, each 
lasting for 1 hour. The subject was the line-item veto was going to 
ruin the Senate. The comparison was to the Roman Empire, the rise and 
fall of the Roman Empire. Senator Byrd gave 10 speeches. When I was not 
able to listen personally, I listened to the recording. So tremendous 
were those speeches that the head of the political science department 
at UNV-LV, Dr. Randy Tuttle, taught a course on Robert Byrd based on 
these 10 speeches.
  I asked Senator Byrd: You gave those speeches, you quit right on 
time, you had an hour set aside. How did you know when to stop?

[[Page 10756]]

  He said: It was easy. I memorized all 10 of them.
  When we met with the British parliamentarians, as I just recounted, 
in West Virginia, the blue grass music stopped, and Senator Byrd had 
staff pass out a little tablet and pencil to everybody. He said: If I 
make a mistake, write it down. And he proceeded to give us a 
demonstration of memory that I have never seen before, starting with 
the first ruler in Great Britain, the years the person served, the 
name, how to spell it, and very briefly what was accomplished during 
that period of time, from the beginning to the present Queen Elizabeth. 
Those parliamentarians were dumbfounded. How could an American do 
something they had never even thought about without a note?
  There are some professors, I am sure, who are experts on ancient 
Rome, but I would tell all those academics, they don't have anything on 
the Senator from West Virginia as far as knowledge of the Roman Empire.
  I consider myself so fortunate to have been able to serve in the 
Senate with Robert Byrd. And not only serve in the Senate with Robert 
Byrd, but all the time I have been here, I had the good fortune of 
serving on his Appropriations Committee.
  The great Senator Daniel Webster said that ours:

     . . . is a Senate of equals, of men of individual honor and 
     personal character, and of absolute independence. We know no 
     masters, we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for 
     mutual consultation and discussion; not an arena for the 
     exhibition of champions.

  The prayer that was uttered today by Reverend Black, our Chaplain, 
says exactly what Daniel Webster said. That was a wonderful prayer, 
tremendously well done for this occasion. But I would say in response 
to the great Daniel Webster, there are champions among us. There are 
giants as well. I have served in public office a long time, but no one 
can dispute the fact, as far as I am concerned, that Robert Byrd is a 
giant.
  I want him to know how much I appreciate all he has done for me. I 
care a great deal about this man. I love Robert Byrd. I love Robert 
Byrd. He is a person who sets a standard for all of us.

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