    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [January 28, 1999]
    [Pages 116-117]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Memorial Service for Lawton Chiles
    January 28, 1999

        Lawton would get a huge kick out of knowing that I have just been
    upstaged by his 10-year-old granddaughter.
    [Laughter] When both the grandkids were singing, I was thinking, you
    know this is what Lawton would liked to have done if he had not been a
    politician, sort of the wandering minstrel for America. [Laughter] And
    in some ways, he was.
        I looked through the Scripture to find something that referenced how
    he started his political campaign, and there's a verse in Genesis which
    says, ``Arise, walk through the land and the length of it and in the
    breadth of it, for I will give it to thee.'' I think in so many ways God
    gave Florida to Lawton so that he could give himself to the people of
    his beloved State. And in so many ways, his homespun humor and his
    common sense became the glue that held Florida together as it exploded
    and diversified and changed in ways that make it almost unrecognizable
    to people who were there three decades ago.
        Every one of us who knew Lawton Chiles feels blessed. If we knew him
    very well, we loved him. He gave something to all of us. He gave me a
    lot when we were serving together as Governors. I mean, I couldn't
    imagine--I was serving as Governor with someone who had been chairman of
    the Senate Budget Committee. And he made sure that I was always aware of
    what I should know before I voted however he wanted me to vote in the
    Governors conference on whatever it was. [Laughter]
        I loved campaigning with him in Florida. I loved--it's almost a sad
    thing to say, but it was very moving for me--Florida had a lot of
    natural disasters during the period in which we served together. It was
    very moving to me to be in these places with Lawton Chiles, to see the
    pulse of the people beating in him and the feeling he had for them. I
    loved all the opportunities he gave me to help Florida, with late-night
    phone calls about every conceivable subject, the recommendations he gave
    that Carol Browner and Janet Reno ought to be in the Cabinet.
        And like everybody else, I loved the humor. I knew Lawton Chiles
    long before ``he-coon'' became a part of our political lexicon. And one
    of the most humbling nights of my life was a night at the Governors
    conference that I spent with Ann Richards and
    Lawton Chiles. [Laughter] I thought I was a good storyteller. I thought
    I knew every phrase that had ever been coined. I listened to them talk
    about how a stuck pig squealed, how a cut dog barks, how if you can't
    run with the big dogs, you ought to just stay on the porch. [Laughter]
    Listen, I lost that night. [Laughter] But I never forgot it.
        You know, Lawton may have worn a coonskin cap and coat to his own
    inaugural ball in 1995, and he did a lot of that ``aw, shucks'' stuff
    with all of us, but we all know that he was really a visionary. He saw
    the possibilities and the challenges of the future, and he saw his own
    life as a sort of continuing obligation to push people toward them.
        Long before most of the rest of us, as Senator Domenici and others
    have already said, he knew that we had to put our budgetary house in
    order if we wanted our children to have a future. And I'm very glad he
    got to live to see it come to pass--even though Pete's right, he'd want to see all the numbers and all the books
    and be a little suspicious.
        Carol Browner talked about how he saw that in Florida and in the
    United States we had to reconcile the imperatives of economic growth and
    preserving our environment. And because of his vision, the forests and
    the swamps that

    [[Page 117]]

    he loved so much as a boy, and especially the beautiful Florida
    Everglades, are going to be preserved.
        He saw long before the rest of us the promise in every child and the
    need to give every child decent health care and a world-class education.
    The fragile cry of his young grandson who
    sang for us today, born several months premature, inspired him as
    Senator and Governor to want to give every child a healthy start in
    life, the chance to make the most of their God-given talent. How proud
    he would be to see his grandson making the most of those talents today.
        I'm told that as he lay in state in Tallahassee a few weeks ago, a
    woman from Gadsden County, where Rhea and Lawton
    first began working to improve prenatal care in Florida, brought her
    young son to pay his respects. She said that Lawton Chiles had saved her
    son's life. That boy, and the millions of Florida children growing up
    healthy and ready, may well be his greatest legacy.
        I'd also like to thank him publicly for something else. As Florida
    explodes and diversifies, he worked so hard to make all his native
    Floridians--those who were like him--see all the new immigrants as their
    own, to see those children as a rich resource that would make life more
    interesting and the future more prosperous.
        I thank him for being an early supporter of political and campaign
    finance reform but in doing it in a way that made sense and didn't raise
    people's defenses. I don't think he had a sanctimonious bone in his
    body. He just didn't want everybody to have to spend all their time
    raising money. He thought it would be better if people talked to one
    another, face-to-face. He thought it would be better if, on television,
    people had honest debates and discussions. He didn't go around telling
    you how much better he was than everybody else because he only took a
    hundred bucks. And he knew that only one person could have ever made
    that walk, and then you couldn't just repeat that over and over again.
    He tried to convince us to relax and think. And he did it in the right
    way.
        Some of you know that, right before he died, I think I had about won
    a long, intense campaign that I waged to persuade Lawton to become
    America's Special Envoy to Latin America. He said, ``Well, I don't want
    to spend a lot of time in Washington.'' I said, ``Lawton, it's Latin
    America, not Washington.'' [Laughter] I said, ``You know, you'll have to
    breeze through every now and then and give me a report. There's a
    telephone. There are fax machines. You can do this.'' And he was really
    getting interested in it.
        And I say that not to make anyone sad, but to say that the reason
    his life was so rich is that he lived to the last hour of the last day
    thinking about tomorrow, thinking about other people's interest,
    thinking about other possibilities still to be developed.
        So I thank you, Lawton, for teaching us that public service is not a
    position, it's a mission; that our job is not to posture, but to
    produce. I thank you for feeling the pulse of the people and making
    their hopes and dreams your own. I thank you for never losing the light
    in your eyes, the steel in your spine, the love in your heart.
        Young Lawton's song was reminiscent of
    the wonderful lines from Wordsworth, ``We can make our lives sublime,
    and departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.'' What
    wonderful wide, deep footprints our friend left for us to walk in.

    Note: The President spoke at noon in the Russell Senate Caucus Room,
    Room 325, at the Russell Senate Office Building. In his remarks, he
    referred to Ann W. Richards, former Governor of Texas; Rhea Chiles,
    widow of Governor Chiles; and his granddaughter, Christin Chiles, and
    grandson, Lawton Chiles IV.