By David Jackson, USA TODAY
Updated 2010-07-02 4:52 PM
By Steve Helber, AP
"He was a Senate icon, he was a party leader, he was an elder statesman, and he was my friend," Obama told thousands who gathered for Byrd's funeral on the steps of the golden-domed West Virginia statehouse. "That's how I'll remember him."
A variety of speakers traced the eventful 92-year life of a former gas station attendant who became a fiddle-playing, Shakespeare-quoting senator who strongly backed the new health care bill, fiercely opposed the Iraq war and enthusiastically directed many federal projects to his home state.
Elected to the House in 1952 and the Senate in 1958, Byrd was the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history.
Obama also alluded to less admirable aspects of Byrd's life, including his youthful membership in the Ku Klux Klan and his early opposition to civil rights laws. The nation's first African-American president said Byrd told him when they met, "there are things I regretted in my youth, you may know that.'"
"And I said, 'none of us are absent some regrets, Senator, that's why we enjoy and seek the grace of God,'" Obama recalled. "And as I reflect on the full sweep of his 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent towards justice."
Other speakers included Vice President Biden; former president Bill Clinton; Gov. Joe Manchin; Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"The Senate chamber was Robert C. Byrd's cathedral," Biden said. "And West Virginia was his heaven."
The funeral program featured lyrics from John Denver's song Country Roads, which describes West Virginia as "almost Heaven." A military band played song at the end of the service.
Byrd's casket, draped with a West Virginia flag, rested on a table beside the speakers' podium.
Biden, a long-time senator from Delaware, joked that Byrd "stole" money from other states to help his beloved West Virginia, telling the crowd of mourners: "So be nice to the rest of us."
The speakers lauded Byrd's learned knowledge of history, from ancient Rome to the development of the U.S. Constitution, a copy of which he always carried with him. They praised his ornate speaking style, sprinkled with quotes ranging from Thomas Jefferson to the Bible, from Shakespeare to Cicero.
Obama noted that in early days Byrd used his fiddle case as a briefcase, and often played tunes for voters and constituents.
Pelosi reviewed Byrd's three terms in the U.S. House before he joined the U.S. Senate in 1959. Reid, one of Byrd's successors as top Senate Democrat, praised Byrd's thirst for knowledge, and how he taught him to also carry a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket.
"He never thought he'd done enough for West Virginia," Reid said. "No one has meant more to a state than Robert Byrd meant to West Virginia."
Ex-president Clinton also referenced Byrd's past membership in the KKK, quickly adding: "Then he spent the rest of his life making it up."
Rockefeller, his West Virginia colleague, said: "Sen. Byrd, thank you. We will not forget you."
(Posted by David Jackson)
Original article:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/obama-lauds-sen-robert-byrd
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