Just one of a kind

Plenty of eulogies for U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd will be written this week. Most of them will tell how he rose from poverty to become one of Washington’s most powerful people and the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history. Some will mention his early association with the Ku Klux Klan and how he evolved through the years.

But when we think of Senator Byrd, we picture a series of more personal encounters.

There was a morning in the 1980s when we were in our office typing away and sensed that someone was behind us. We looked back to find Robert Byrd standing in the doorway. “Where’s the closest grocery store?” he asked. At the time, he’d just bought a house near Hedgesville and came to Berkeley Springs to do his shopping.

Another time, we spotted him walking his dog on Fairfax Street as we were driving to work. It was an early 1990’s day when there was a political crisis in the disintegrating Soviet Union. We stopped and said, “I’d have thought you’d be at the Capitol on a day like this?”
He smiled and said, “I don’t know what’s happening in Russia, and if I were in Washington, everyone would be asking me.” He didn’t care about sound bites on the evening news.

We spent the next couple hours walking around town. Given his love of learning, he was particularly interested in the renovations and construction plans for the new library at the time. That was also the day he gave us an autographed copy of his history of the U.S. Senate, a memento we treasure.

Other times he came to town for more formal reasons. When the Morgan County Recreation Area was dedicated in the mid-1980s, he stopped at the newspaper office for directions. He’d arranged for the Army Corps of Engineers to do much of the earth-moving at the ballfields and he wanted to be at the ceremony. So, with Byrd behind the wheel, the two of us headed out there. He had no entourage. He certainly needed none in West Virginia.
As we recall, he gave a warm speech that day, but speaking always was one of his great skills. He had a knack for quoting the Constitution, lines of poetry, Bible verses, bits of history and political oratory all in one stream-of-consciousness speech. When he talked at the dedication of the Paw Paw Industrial Park, he managed to work in the names of nearly half of the people in the crowd.

Byrd was a proud man who could be politically fearless.
While he supported the coal industry because of its importance to the state’s economy, he was not one to kowtow to King Coal like so many Mountain State politicians. He spoke out against the way that coal companies control the life and politics of so many places in southern West Virginia.

While he was a steadfast supporter of U.S. troops, he opposed wars that he didn’t feel were in America’s interest.
During last year’s battles over health care reform, he chimed in on the progressive side, favoring coverage for all and showing up for late-night votes even with his health failing. He wasn’t bought by insurance company lobbyists.

No matter how long he stayed in Washington, or how powerful he got, Robert Byrd never forgot that he came from working people in West Virginia. He tried to make our lives better.

If only there were more like him.