[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 7 (Monday, February 17, 1997)]
[Pages 181-182]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the Funeral of Ambassador Pamela Harriman

February 13, 1997

    We gather in tribute to Pamela Harriman, patriot and public servant, 
American Ambassador and citizen of the world, mother, grandmother, 
great-grandmother, and sister, and for so many of us here, a cherished 
friend. She adopted our country with extraordinary devotion. Today her 
country bids her farewell with profound gratitude.
    Hillary and I have often talked about what made Pamela so 
remarkable. It was more than her elegance, as unforgettable as that was. 
It was more than the lilt of her voice and her laughter, more even, than 
the luminous presence that could light up a room, a convention hall, or 
even the City of Lights itself. It was more than her vibrant sense of 
history and the wisdom that came to her from the great events she had 
lived and those she had helped to shape from the Battle of Britain to 
the peace accord in Bosnia. I think it was most of all that she was 
truly indomitable.
     One day the train she was on to London was bombed twice during the 
Blitz. She simply brushed off the shards of glass, picked herself up, 
and went to the office to do her work at the Ministry of Supply. She was 
21 years old.
    More than 40 years later, all of us who knew her saw the same 
resolve and strength again and again, most tenderly, in the way she gave 
not only love but dignity and pride to Averell who, as long as he was 
with her, was at the summit, even to his last days.
    In 1991, she put her indomitability to a new test in American 
politics, forming an organization with a name that made the pundits 
chuckle because it did seem a laughable oxymoron in those days: 
Democrats for the Eighties. For members of our party at that low ebb, 
she became organizer, inspirer, sustainer, a captain of our cause in a 
long march back to victory. She lifted our spirits and our vision.
    I will never forget how she was there for Hillary and for me in 
1992: wise counsel, friend, a leader in our ranks who never doubted the 
outcome, or if she did, covered it so well with her well-known bravado 
that

[[Page 182]]

no one could have suspected. Today I am here in no small measure because 
she was there.
    She was one of the easiest choices I made for any appointment when I 
became President. As she left to become our Ambassador to France, she 
told us all with a smile, ``Now my home in Paris will be your home. 
Please come and visit, but not all at once.'' [Laughter] It seemed she 
had been having us at her home all at once for too many years. So a lot 
of us took her up on her invitation to come to Paris. After Hillary and 
I had been there the first time, I must say I wondered which one of us 
got the better job. [Laughter]
    In many ways her whole life was a preparation for these last 4 years 
of singular service and achievement. She represented America with 
wisdom, grace, and dignity, earning the confidence of France's leaders, 
the respect of its people, the devotion of her staff.
    Born a European, an American by choice, as she liked to say, Pamela 
worked hard to build the very strongest ties between our two countries 
and continents. She understood that to make yourself heard you had to 
know how to listen. And with the special appreciation of one not native 
born, she felt to her bones America's special leadership role in the 
world.
    Today, we see her legacy in the growing promise of a Europe 
undivided, secure, and free, a legacy that moved President Chirac last 
week to confer upon Pamela the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, 
France's highest award. He said then that seldom since Benjamin Franklin 
and Thomas Jefferson had America been so well served in France.
    There is one image of Pamela Harriman I will always treasure. I can 
see her now, standing on the windswept beaches of Normandy on the 50th 
anniversary of D-Day. She had told many of us of the long, tense night 
in England half a century before, as they waited for news about the 
transports plowing toward the shore, filled with young soldiers, 
American, British, and Free French. Now, 50 years later, history had 
come full circle, and she was there as an active life force in the 
greatest continuing alliance for freedom the world has ever known.
    I was so glad that Randolph read a few moments ago from the book of 
Sir Winston Churchill's essays that Pamela loved so well and gave to so 
many of us who were her friends. The passage he read not only describes 
her own life, it is her valediction to us, her final instruction about 
how we should live our lives. And I think she would like this service to 
be not only grand, as it is, but to be a final instruction from her to 
us about what we should now do.
    Let me quote just a portion of what was said a few moments ago. 
``Let us reconcile ourselves to the mysterious rhythm of our destinies 
such as they must be in this time--in this world of time and space. Let 
us treasure our joys but not bewail our sorrows. The glory of light 
cannot exist without the shadows. Life is a whole, and the journey has 
been well worth making.''
    Throughout her glorious journey, Pamela Harriman lightened the 
shadows of our lives. Now she is gone. In the mysterious rhythm of her 
destiny, she left us at the pinnacle of her public service, with the 
promise of her beloved America burning brighter because of how she lived 
in her space and time. What a journey it was and well worth making.
    May God comfort her family and countless friends, and may He keep 
her soul indomitable forever.

Note: The President spoke at 10:26 a.m. at Washington National 
Cathedral. In his remarks, he referred to Pamela Harriman's grandson, 
Randolph Churchill, and her late husband, W. Averell Harriman.