| Singular Senator: Robert C. Byrd
We are pleased to present this tribute to Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who, on November 18, 2009, became the longest-serving member of both houses of Congress in U.S. history. In his article, writer Paul J. Nyden quotes from personal conversations with Senator Byrd and others, from remarks made at events he attended, and from the Congressional Record.
By Paul J. Nyden
Photographs courtesy of Senator Robert C. Byrd’s office
From fighting "fast track" trade legislation to saving Amtrak, and from protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to working to save steelworkers’ jobs, Sen. Robert C. Byrd has always been there. From vigorously advocating for veterans’ rights and benefits, to questioning the wisdom of pre-emptive wars, to fighting for our civil liberties and Constitutional rights, Byrd has been there. The colleagues of the man who grew up in West Virginia’s coalfields often call him the "Conscience of the Senate."
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), once a major political rival, became one of Byrd’s closest friends. "If ever there was a giant in the Senate, it’s Bob Byrd," Kennedy said. "He’s renowned for his vast ability on the issues, his extraordinary knowledge of Senate history, and his constant dedication to insisting that the Senate live up to the ideals of the Constitution. He ranks with the all-time Senate greats. If the Founding Fathers were meeting today, Bob Byrd would be one of them."
Country Boy in the Coalfields
Born Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr. in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, on November 20, 1917, Byrd was just 11 months old when his mother, Ada Kirby Sale, died of influenza. At the request of his mother, he was moved to West Virginia to be raised by his aunt, Vlurma Sale Byrd, and her husband, Titus Dalton Byrd. His name was changed to Robert Carlyse Byrd.
Byrd spent his early childhood between the steep hillsides of Wolf Creek Hollow near Princeton. "My dad did not do very well at farming, inasmuch as we had little equipment and only one horse, one cow, and a pony," Byrd wrote in his autobiography. "We raised a few chickens and had a small garden alongside the banks of the creek. Pap went away in the summer of 1926 and found work in Stotesbury. Meanwhile, I continued to go to school, and Mom and I did the best we could at our little house. There was no electricity in the house, no running water. We drank water from a nearby spring."
Byrd spent his later childhood in Stotesbury, a small coal town near Sophia in Raleigh County, where his dad worked in the mines. In Stotesbury, many miners’ dwellings were "little more than shacks," Byrd wrote, and "were clustered about the tipple and straggled along the bed of the creek." In a miner’s home, he remembers, "hard ways were simply a fact of life, to be borne with resignation."
Byrd never forgot the day six miners died in an explosion at McAlpin, a mining camp next to Stotesbury. "I recall going to the hill leading to the mine that evening, where miners’ wives boiled coffee over fires at the foot of the hillside and served it to the rescue men," Byrd wrote. "The sound of the weeping and wailing of wives and mothers and children has never left my memory."
At Mark Twain High School, Byrd played first violin in the school orchestra and was the bass drummer in the band. As a teenager, he began playing his fiddle in homes and churches in the southern coalfields. Later, when he began running for office, fiddle playing became part of his campaigns.
A voracious reader with, according to one teacher, "a competitive spirit," Byrd became valedictorian of his high school class. After graduation, having little money, the young man went to work pumping gas, then selling produce and cutting meat. During World War II, he toiled as a welder in shipyards in Baltimore, Maryland, and Tampa, Florida.
 At 19, Byrd married Erma Ora James, his high school sweetheart and closest companion. Erma died on March 25, 2006, shortly before she would have turned 89.
"She was the greatest pillar of strength, a central pillar of my life, during the many years God put us together," Byrd said of his late wife.
The Byrds had two daughters, Mona Carole Byrd and Marjorie Ellen Byrd. Today Byrd has five living grandchildren (and one who died) and six great-grandchildren.
Former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) said, "His devotion to his family is second to none in the Senate."
When Byrd became the longest-serving member in Senate history on June 12, 2006, he talked about growing up as a country boy "who came from scratch in West Virginia."
"I have known the people’s hardships," he said. "I have known the lot of the people Erma and I came up with through the Great Depression. I know how much prosperity the country experienced later and how much West Virginia was bypassed, how much of Appalachia was bypassed."
Personal and economic losses suffered by people in Appalachia have always motivated Byrd. "Today, there are still people in West Virginia—and across the country—who do not have safe drinking water and who have to take a bus a long way to see a doctor," Byrd said. "The people of West Virginia are my bosses. I try to help them where I can."
Over the years, Byrd has brought thousands and thousands of jobs to West Virginia. He has secured federal money to build roads and highways, as well as new offices for a number of federal agencies.
When Byrd began serving in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1947, the Mountain State had just four miles of divided, four-lane highways. Today there are more than 1,000 miles of four-lane roads, most of them part of the Appalachian Highway System Byrd helped create.
Byrd has also brought major funding to medical and research centers at West Virginia University and Marshall University. In addition, he played a central role in financing the University of Charleston’s new pharmacy school.
In May 2001, the State Legislature and then-Gov. Bob Wise named Byrd "West Virginian of the Century" and dedicated the large bronze statue of him under the Capitol rotunda in Charleston.
Defending the Constitution
Today, at 92, Byrd can look back on one of the most distinguished political careers in United States history. Through the years he has carried a copy of the Constitution in his pocket and never hesitates to defend it from anyone, Republican or Democrat, whom he believes is undermining its principles.
Over the years, Byrd has fought to protect the integrity and independence of Congress, particularly from White House efforts to usurp its power. He has served with 12 presidents, from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama.
 Between 1993 and 2000, Byrd vigorously opposed some of President Bill Clinton’s key political goals, among them the "line-item veto," which would have allowed presidents to strike out lines they wanted to remove from any piece of legislation Congress passed. Byrd won the fight against the line-item veto.
Beginning in 2002, Byrd opposed the Iraq War Resolution backed by President George W. Bush. Byrd believed that resolution, which passed the Senate 77 to 23 on October 11, 2002, unconstitutionally shifted more critical power away from Congress.
On February 12, 2003, Byrd delivered a moving speech criticizing his Senate colleagues for failing to stop that shift:
"On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war. Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent—ominously, dreadfully silent.
"There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events."
 In 2008, Byrd was an early supporter of Barack Obama. But less than a month after Obama took office, Byrd criticized his decision to appoint administrative "czars," who did not have to win Senate approval, to oversee federal agencies.
On November 18, 2009, the day Byrd established his record as the longest-serving member of Congress, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said, "There has been only one Robert C. Byrd. He is a unique patriot, a singular senator, a senator’s senator.... We thank him for his lifetime devotion to America, the Senate and his beloved Constitution. West Virginia can be proud of this great man, who has served them so well for so long."
On December 12, 2009, a special ceremony inside the U.S. Capitol honored Byrd for his record length of service. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said, "The Constitution does not defend itself. All of us must focus on its principles. Perhaps no one has done that in history as well as Robert C. Byrd."
Byrd’s proposed "Constitution Day" became law on December 8, 2004. Today high school students across the country must spend time studying the Constitution on or near September 17, the day the Constitution took effect in 1787.
A Remarkable Career
Byrd has now held political office for 64 years. He was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1946, the West Virginia Senate in 1950, the U.S. House of Representatives in 1952, and the U.S. Senate in 1958.
After his election to the House of Delegates, the first bill he introduced was to liberalize Workers’ Compensation benefits for injured workers. In the 1970s, in the aftermath of the 1968 Farmington mine explosion, which killed 78 miners and sparked passage of the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, Byrd continued to fight for better miners’ benefits.
 In January 1977, the same month Jimmy Carter became president, Byrd became Senate Majority Leader and began playing a major role in promoting foreign policy reforms. These included the 1977 Panama Canal treaties, which returned control of the canal to local residents, and the 1988 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, under which the United States and Soviet Union agreed to eliminate midrange guided and ballistic missiles.
Through the years, Byrd has also generated controversies. Over the course of his career he has changed many of his views. In 1942, he joined the Ku Klux Klan and was later elected Exalted Cyclops of its chapter in Crab Orchard. Ten years later, he left the Klan but remained a critic of the civil rights movement.
On June 9 and 10, 1964, Byrd filibustered the Civil Rights Act for 14 hours and 13 minutes, then voted against that historic legislation. Fours years later, he voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Byrd has since called that 1964 vote one of the biggest mistakes in his career. Today, the NAACP routinely gives Byrd top ratings for his Senate votes.
Over the years, Byrd has also changed his views on war and become an outspoken opponent of foreign wars he considered irresponsible. On April 7, 1964, he voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which played a major part in escalating the Vietnam War under President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Byrd later said that was another one of the worst votes he cast, praising Sens. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) and Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska), who cast the only two votes against that resolution. During the debate, Morse warned, "Senators who vote for it will live to regret it." Byrd later said he was one of those senators. His state, West Virginia, saw a greater percentage of its sons die in Vietnam than any other state in the nation.
When the Bush administration prepared to invade Iraq in 2002, Byrd was one of the impending war’s most eloquent and adamant opponents.
"Today I weep for my country," Byrd told the Senate on March 19, 2003, on the eve of the U.S. invasion. "I, along with millions, scores of millions, of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent women, children, babies, old and young, crippled and deformed, sick civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland ...
"We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place."
Columbia University Professor Eric Foner said of Byrd, "I salute him for his courage in raising serious questions about the administration’s course toward war. A lot of people have been cowed, unwilling to appear unpatriotic or afraid of being accused of being weak. Democracy requires vigorous debate about issues like this."
Author and Orator
Over the years, Byrd has become renowned among colleagues and constituents as a prolific writer and impassioned orator. He has authored a number of books that evidence his great love of history and reverence for the U. S. Senate, which he has called "the anchor of the Republic, the morning and evening star in the American Constitutional constellation."
Dr. Richard Baker, the Senate’s official historian until he retired in August 2009, said Byrd "knows more about the institutional operation of the Senate than anybody in the entire history of the Senate, at least since Daniel Webster and Thomas Hart Benton."
Between 1991 and 1995, Byrd published a remarkable four-volume history of the Senate from 1789 to 1989. The first volume, The Senate 1789-1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, contains 39 speeches Byrd delivered on the Senate floor between May 1981 and December 1987, each one about a different period in its history. The remaining volumes include additional speeches by Byrd and classic speeches by other senators.
At the December 12 ceremony in the U.S. Capitol honoring Byrd, Richard Baker said that he had watched Byrd "give 14 speeches without any text or notes." These speeches were published in 1995 as The Senate of the Roman Republic: Addresses on the History of Roman Constitutionalism, a fascinating analysis of the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire.
Two recent collections of Byrd’s Senate speeches are Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency (see the Bookshelf, page 32) and We Stand Passively Mute, both published in 2004. In 2005, West Virginia University Press published Byrd’s definitive, 832-page autobiography, Robert C. Byrd, Child of the Appalachian Coalfields.
At the December 12 event honoring Byrd, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told those gathered that Byrd was the "only senator in U.S. history to use a fiddle case for a brief case. He first won a seat in the Senate with 59 percent of the vote in 1958. That was the smallest margin of victory he’d ever get.
"Sen. Byrd reveres the Founding Fathers," McConnell said. "I have no doubt they would revere him too."
Paul J. Nyden has been an investigative reporter for the Charleston Gazette since June 1982, covering political, environmental, labor, and foreign policy issues. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in 1974, after completing his dissertation, "Miners for Democracy: Struggle in the Coalfields." He also teaches part time at the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Montgomery.
MILESTONES
June 10, 1963
Robert C. Byrd became the only person to earn a law degree while serving in Congress. President John F. Kennedy handed Byrd his diploma during ceremonies at the American University College of Law.
November 1970
Byrd became the first West Virginian in any election to win majorities in all 55 counties. In 2000, when he was re-elected to his eighth term as senator, he lost just seven precincts in the state.
March 25, 2006
Byrd’s marriage to Erma Ora James, who died on this date, was the longest marriage in the history of Congress.
June 12, 2006
Byrd became the longest-serving U.S. senator in history, reaching 17,327 days of service.
November 7, 2006
Byrd became the only person ever elected to nine terms in the U.S. Senate.
November 18, 2009
Byrd became the longest-serving member of both houses of Congress, reaching 20,774 days of service.
Through March 2010
Byrd had cast 18,661 votes in the Senate. He had missed a total of 519 votes. His voting percentage is 97.29 percent.
Since January 14, 1958
Byrd has served on the Senate Appropriations Committee longer than any senator has served on a single committee in U.S. history. During his career, Byrd has held more Senate leadership positions than anyone else, including Majority Whip, Majority Leader, Minority Leader, President Pro Tempore, and Secretary of the Majority Conference.
|
The Falls of Dowdy Creek
