HELENA - Some of those Montanans who knew Mike Mansfield best remembered the late US senator's integrity, his intellect, his love for his late wife, Maureen, and for Montana, and his humility.

Mansfield died Friday morning of congestive heart failure in Washington, D.C., at age 98.

In interviews Friday, politicians from both parties praised Mansfield, with many calling him Montana's most distinguished public servant ever.

"To me, what Mike stands for is kind of a monument that politics is and can be, at least, a very honorable career of public service," said former Gov. Ted Schwinden, a Democrat. He said Mansfield enjoyed great respect in the Senate or else he wouldn't have been the majority leader for 16 years, longer than anyone in history.

"He could be partisan," Schwinden said. "He always said support Democrats from the courthouse to the White House. He always reminded us that Dwight Eisenhower was our president too."

Paul Lauren, a University of Montana history professor who worked on creating the Mansfield Center and was its director from 1985 to 1991, got to know both Mike and Maureen Mansfield well.

"Mike Mansfield was one of those extraordinarily rare individuals of character - honest, a man of integrity, a man of genuine humility at a time when humility is rare, especially among the accomplished, a man who was what he was, a man who was loyal to the state, loyal to his nation, loyal to his marriage, a man who was genuinely human," Lauren said.

Lauren cited Mansfield's lengthy record of ethical behavior that included: being intimately involved in passage of major civil rights legislation; pushing for democratic control of the Central Intelligence Agency; his pushing forward on the Senate hearings by a select committee, headed by Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., that helped expose the abuses of Watergate by President Nixon and his associates; his opposition to the Vietnam War; his efforts to revamp the Senate; his role in getting the War on Poverty passed and his amendment to give 18-year-olds, who were eligible for being drafted to go to Vietnam, the right to vote.

"When it came to controversy, if Mike felt deeply about it, he didn't shy from it," said former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams, a Democrat who is now a senior fellow at UM. "If Mike felt Montanans were wrong about an issue, he would say so and he would vote that way as he did when he voted for gun control."

"I think Mansfield was the greatest living American," Williams added.

Former Gov. Marc Racicot, a Republican, remembers as a kid helping his father, Bill, put up Mansfield campaign posters on telephone polls in Libby.

"There are so many things that seem so profound yet are so simple," Racicot said. "The lasting legacy that we see and feel are the honesty, integrity and respect for every person were the values he lived every day and never wavered from that. I just think he was the most faithful and unselfish public servant in Montana history by a far measure."

"I thought, like almost everybody, he was a statesman," said former Rep. Francis Bardanouve, D-Harlem, who served in the state House from 1959 to 1995. "He was a gentle person, very dedicated, very honest, a family man. He was a negotiator. He didn't like to make a lot of waves. He would rather settle an issue."

Mansfield's integrity led him to block efforts to solicit funds from Japanese businesses for Mansfield centers before and after he was an ambassador, often much to the frustration of those trying to raise the money.

"When he was ambassador, he wouldn't let us raise money," former Gov. Thomas L. Judge, a Democrat, said. "We could have raised a mint from the Japanese. He didn't want us to. The Japanese just worshipped him."

His life was his wife

The last time he visited Mansfield two weeks ago, Baucus said the former majority leader began reminiscing about his wife, Maureen, who died about a year ago.

"He was looking off in the distance with a big smile on his face, and he said, 'What a girl. What a girl,' " Baucus recalled. "I know of no one who has served so fully and with such worldwide esteem yet with such humility. And such a love story, Mike and Maureen."

Former Gov. Stan Stephens, a Republican, said Maureen and Mike Mansfield "were a tremendous team." He recalled the story about how Mike Mansfield was a Butte miner when his wife told him he ought to go back to school and get his high school and college educations.

Racicot led a bipartisan effort to raise funds to commission a sculptor to make a statue of Mike Mansfield for the state Capitol. The sculpture has been completed, is draped and will be unveiled some time at a dedication ceremony.

"He didn't want it," Racicot said. "He said it would be absolutely, totally unacceptable unless Maureen was with him."

So plans were changed to include both Mansfields, and he consented. Racicot said. The money was easy to raise, he said, backed by a unanimous legislative resolution.

Fought hard for Montana

Former Gov. Judge recalled appointing a blue-ribbon committee during his administration to examine the Montana university system. The committee's staff made a preliminary recommendation to the committee to downgrade Montana Tech from a four-year to a two-year school.

"Mansfield came out and blasted it, and that was the end of it," Judge said.

Judge said Mansfield fought hard for Montana, pushing the federal government to find a use for the abandoned Glasgow Air Force Base, to keep the veterans' hospital open in Miles City and to build the Hungry Horse and Libby dams.

"Mike Mansfield never forgot his roots in Montana," said Jim Lopach, a UM political science professor. "He, of course, went way beyond that. The French political philosopher Maurice Duverger said, 'A true democratic politician is one who springs from the people.' "Mike really sprung from the people and never forgot Montana."

Holly Kaleczyc, a Helena resident active in Democratic politics, worked for Mansfield part-time while she was attending Georgetown University in the early 1970s. He came to work at 5 a.m. and personally opened all of the letters from Montana, she said. One of her duties was to take Montanans who dropped by Mansfield's office to meet the senator off the Senate floor.

"I would send in a note to him," she recalled. "He would come out and meet them. No one interrupted him while he was with Montanans. Not (aides) Stan Kimmitt, not Charlie Ferris, not the president. They always had his full attention. It was never one of those shake your hands and good bye things. They always had a visit."

Kaleczyc also talked about the detailed condolence letters -- instead of the usual form letters -- that Mansfield had his staff to prepare to send to families after the deaths of loved ones. In those pre-computer days, his office kept an detailed index card file that took up an entire wall. Each card noted any news about individual constituents as well as the dates and subjects of any correspondence they had with Mansfield.

"They were typed and prepared," she said. "A very high percentage of them he knew and would hand-write a note on the letter. It was a priority for him. It was very sincere because he felt so connected to people."

(((((UNPRETENIOUS))))))))

"What you couldn't help notice was in a city of the self-promoting, he was self-effacing," said former Rep. Williams. "That alone made him unique in the Capitol."

Mansfield's campaigns were not slick and pretentious, with advance staff and the like, Williams said, adding: "It was, as he used to advise people, all handshakes and shoe leather."

"Mike was notorious for coming into a town unannounced and simply dropping by or strolling down the street or when in Butte, simply sitting in the lobby of the Finlen Hotel."

Once when running for re-election, Mansfield wanted to meet the labor leader father of Jim Murry, later AFL-CIO executive secretary, in Laurel. The elder Murry suggested Sonny O'Day's bar, which was where great political discussions took place in Laurel.

"Mike campaigned just as Mike," Murry said. "He looked kind of rumpled and unkempt. He had maybe a day's growth of beard and wore a rumpled old jacket and an old hat. Montanans could identify with him. Well, he went into Sonny's to meet my dad and went into the sides where the booths are and waited, reading a paper.

"Sonny sees this guy coming in and he's absolutely convinced what has happened is he is one of the transients that rode the rails. He goes into the other room, madder than hell, grabs Mike and escorts him to the sidewalk. They were wrestling until Mike convinced him who he was."

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AP-NY-10-05-01 2248EDT

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