State leaders present, past remember
By CHARLES S JOHNSON, IR State Bureau
Mike Mansfield praised as a great world and national leader in memorial ceremony at the state Capitol on Friday.
HELENA — Former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams remembered the U.S. Sen. Mike Mansfield’s ageless physical presence, with “that face with all those wrinkles and wisdom lines.”
Former AFL-CIO chief Jim Murry recalled shaking the hand of a fellow working man when he met Mansfield, the former mine mucker, and knowing he understood workers and their issues..
Republican Sen. Conrad Burn talked about Mansfield’s eyes, “which had seen and experienced so much” and his kindness in helping him as a freshman senator in 1989.
And Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said Mansfield had a poet’s soul and recited the beginning of his famous paean to Montana that began: “Montana is a symphony. A symphony of color painted by a thousand different paints and shrubs, which sets the hills ablaze. Each with its own kind of inner fire.”
They and other speakers told of the Mike Mansfield they knew and loved at a two-hour tribute for the late Senate majority leader in the House chambers in the Capitol one week after he died in Washington, D.C., at age 98. More than 200 people attended the ceremony, organized by the Montana Democratic Party. Gov. Judy Martz, a Republican, recalled Mansfield’s “amazing memory and ability to remember names, faces and people, his incredible sincerity and concern for all whose paths he came across.”
“His compassionate touch, his kindness to every individual with whom he came in contact, will be remembered always,” Martz said.
Former South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, who now lives part of the year in Stevensville, recalled serving in the Senate with Mansfield:
“Mike had a remarkable sense of modesty, and I think in a way he had total self-confidence. He would tell the truth all the time. I think that was Mike’s strength. He never said anything he didn’t believe.”
The 1972 Democratic nominee for president , McGovern told of asking Mansfield as the most respected person he knew to run after his vice president after Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton dropped out after revealing he had a history of being treated for mental illness.
McGovern recalled Mansfield declining, saying: “George, Lyndon Johnson practically twisted my arm off to get me to run for vice president with him in 1964. I don’t want to be vice president, I don’t want to be president, I just want to be a senator from the state of Montana.”
State Senate Minority Leader Steve Doherty, D-Great Falls, who was master of ceremonies, said: “We long for his wisdom in these days of tragic insanity.”
Leaders of Montana’s Indian communities praised Mansfield for his friendship and assistance.
“He was real,” said Earl Old Person, longtime chairman of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council. “He was a person you felt confidence with him when you were with him.”
“A week ago, this country lost a gentle giant,” said Tony Incashola, director of the Salish Pend’Oreille Cultural Committee for the Flathead Nation, as he burned sage for the invocation. “ This gentle giant had no barriers. He assisted those young and old. He touched many hearts. He touched my family.”
Fumiko Saiga, Japanese counsel general in Seattle, told how Mansfield, U.S. ambassador to Japan under Presidents Carter and Reagan, “was one of the most beloved and respected ambassadors that Japan was honored to receive.”
“He never lost humbleness, decency and integrity,” she said, noting how Mansfield always served the coffee himself to his guests.
Paul West, director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, said Mansfield summed up his political philosophy for him one time.
“He told me, ’Work with both sides of the aisle,’ ” West said, “and with his very spare Irish brogue, he said, ‘It never hurts to listen to the other side.’ “
Baucus quoted Mansfield as saying his three loves were his wife, Maureen, Montana and the U.S. Senate.
“When Maureen passed away last year, we all mourned the loss,” Baucus said. “Today, we mourn the loss of Mike. But we also find comfort in knowing that the love affair that started so long ago has come full circle. Now, Mike and Maureen are together.”
Williams recalled the Mansfield era in Congress, from the 1940s to the 1970s when the West sent strong leaders of both parties to Congress such as Idaho’s Frank Church, Arizona’s Barry Goldwater and Stuart and Morris Udall, Washington’s Tom Foley, Warren Magnuson and Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Oregon’s Mark Hatfield, Wyoming’s Gale McGee and Teno Roncalio, South Dakota’s McGovern and Montana’s Mansfield and Lee Metcalf (whom Williams inadvertently omitted).
“We elected a certain kind of quality of leaders from the West and then it was Westerners who ruled the country,” he said, citing the landmark civil rights, environmental and other legislation they sponsored and passed. “They did not quiver at anti-government politicians nor did they rush to join them.”
Finally, Williams recalled a meeting in the late 1970s at his home with writer Wallace Stegner, historian K. Ross Toole and soon to be governor Ted Schwinden.
“Those were men to match our mountains,” he quoted Stegner as saying. “The first and tallest of them was Mike Mansfield.”
30
It included an audio of Mansfield’s famous tribute to the assassinated President John F. Kennedy in the U.S. Capitol rotunda on Nov. 24, 1963.
AP-NY-10-12-01 2121EDT
translated by GENERIC
HELENA — Former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams remembered the U.S. Sen. Mike Mansfield’s ageless physical presence, with “that face with all those wrinkles and wisdom lines.”
Former AFL-CIO chief Jim Murry recalled shaking the hand of a fellow working man when he met Mansfield, the former mine mucker, and knowing he understood workers and their issues..
Republican Sen. Conrad Burn talked about Mansfield’s eyes, “which had seen and experienced so much” and his kindness in helping him as a freshman senator in 1989.
And Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said Mansfield had a poet’s soul and recited the beginning of his famous paean to Montana that began: “Montana is a symphony. A symphony of color painted by a thousand different paints and shrubs, which sets the hills ablaze. Each with its own kind of inner fire.”
They and other speakers told of the Mike Mansfield they knew and loved at a two-hour tribute for the late Senate majority leader in the House chambers in the Capitol one week after he died in Washington, D.C., at age 98. More than 200 people attended the ceremony, organized by the Montana Democratic Party. Gov. Judy Martz, a Republican, recalled Mansfield’s “amazing memory and ability to remember names, faces and people, his incredible sincerity and concern for all whose paths he came across.”
“His compassionate touch, his kindness to every individual with whom he came in contact, will be remembered always,” Martz said.
Former South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, who now lives part of the year in Stevensville, recalled serving in the Senate with Mansfield:
“Mike had a remarkable sense of modesty, and I think in a way he had total self-confidence. He would tell the truth all the time. I think that was Mike’s strength. He never said anything he didn’t believe.”
The 1972 Democratic nominee for president , McGovern told of asking Mansfield as the most respected person he knew to run after his vice president after Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton dropped out after revealing he had a history of being treated for mental illness.
McGovern recalled Mansfield declining, saying: “George, Lyndon Johnson practically twisted my arm off to get me to run for vice president with him in 1964. I don’t want to be vice president, I don’t want to be president, I just want to be a senator from the state of Montana.”
State Senate Minority Leader Steve Doherty, D-Great Falls, who was master of ceremonies, said: “We long for his wisdom in these days of tragic insanity.”
Leaders of Montana’s Indian communities praised Mansfield for his friendship and assistance.
“He was real,” said Earl Old Person, longtime chairman of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council. “He was a person you felt confidence with him when you were with him.”
“A week ago, this country lost a gentle giant,” said Tony Incashola, director of the Salish Pend’Oreille Cultural Committee for the Flathead Nation, as he burned sage for the invocation. “ This gentle giant had no barriers. He assisted those young and old. He touched many hearts. He touched my family.”
Fumiko Saiga, Japanese counsel general in Seattle, told how Mansfield, U.S. ambassador to Japan under Presidents Carter and Reagan, “was one of the most beloved and respected ambassadors that Japan was honored to receive.”
“He never lost humbleness, decency and integrity,” she said, noting how Mansfield always served the coffee himself to his guests.
Paul West, director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, said Mansfield summed up his political philosophy for him one time.
“He told me, ’Work with both sides of the aisle,’ ” West said, “and with his very spare Irish brogue, he said, ‘It never hurts to listen to the other side.’ “
Baucus quoted Mansfield as saying his three loves were his wife, Maureen, Montana and the U.S. Senate.
“When Maureen passed away last year, we all mourned the loss,” Baucus said. “Today, we mourn the loss of Mike. But we also find comfort in knowing that the love affair that started so long ago has come full circle. Now, Mike and Maureen are together.”
Williams recalled the Mansfield era in Congress, from the 1940s to the 1970s when the West sent strong leaders of both parties to Congress such as Idaho’s Frank Church, Arizona’s Barry Goldwater and Stuart and Morris Udall, Washington’s Tom Foley, Warren Magnuson and Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Oregon’s Mark Hatfield, Wyoming’s Gale McGee and Teno Roncalio, South Dakota’s McGovern and Montana’s Mansfield and Lee Metcalf (whom Williams inadvertently omitted).
“We elected a certain kind of quality of leaders from the West and then it was Westerners who ruled the country,” he said, citing the landmark civil rights, environmental and other legislation they sponsored and passed. “They did not quiver at anti-government politicians nor did they rush to join them.”
Finally, Williams recalled a meeting in the late 1970s at his home with writer Wallace Stegner, historian K. Ross Toole and soon to be governor Ted Schwinden.
“Those were men to match our mountains,” he quoted Stegner as saying. “The first and tallest of them was Mike Mansfield.”
30
It included an audio of Mansfield’s famous tribute to the assassinated President John F. Kennedy in the U.S. Capitol rotunda on Nov. 24, 1963.
AP-NY-10-12-01 2121EDT
translated by GENERIC
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