WV Executive

The name Robert C. Byrd is legendary across the country. Byrd’s oratorical talent and love of knowledge have made him a unique participant on Capitol Hill. Some may not agree with his views or like his style of leadership, but here in West Virginia the fruits of his more than 60 years of political labor are seen on numerous federal and university buildings and federal infrastructure projects across the state. Advertisers featured in this issue’s special tribute section to Senator Byrd represent just a fraction of the businesses that have reaped the benefits of having this outspoken statesman represent West Virginians in Washington, D.C.

Regardless of your views of Byrd, his lifetime of service to the United States and the state of West Virginia cannot be denied. He entered politics in 1946 and since then has devoted his time, his knowledge and his heart to his fellow Americans. He has stood up against opposition and maintained his course, and while he is no stranger to ridicule, I think he would tell anyone who asked that facing that opposition is part of his job and the right of every American citizen—to question their leaders and to, as he has done throughout his lifetime, make a stand.

Sen. Byrd has maintained an office in the U.S. Capitol for nearly 40 years. From his perch on Constitution Avenue, he has watched the world around him change with the leadership of 12 American Presidents. He has seen eight military conflicts, the most recent being Iraq, of which he voted against and continues to condemn. He has served as the secretary of the democratic conference, the senate democratic whip, the democratic leader, the senate majority and minority leader, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the president pro tempore, and through all of his appointments and all of his successes, his fight for improving the lives of his friends and neighbors back in the Mountain State has never fallen to the wayside.

It is with this tribute that West Virginia Executive honors the lifetime of leadership that Sen. Robert C. Byrd has devoted to the United States. A great speaker, an embracer of education and a down-home Mountaineer raised in the coal fields that knows first-hand the obstacles West Virginians face, Sen. Byrd has given us much to be thankful for.

The Roots of Greatness

Since his early childhood in Mercer County, West Virginia, Robert C. Byrd has been an ambitious fellow with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Byrd is a man who has overcome adversity and embraced the lessons of history to help steer the United States down a path of democracy while offering the insight provided by his life and career experiences. He has given West Virginia something to be proud of and has shown through his determination and hard work that a person who has the desire can make a difference, regardless of where his roots lie. Like the phoenix from the ashes, Byrd has risen from the hills of West Virginia as a passionate, self-driven Mountaineer who has found his destiny as a great leader of men.

By the time young Byrd was two years old, his adoptive parents had moved him to the coal mining region of Southern West Virginia. He remembers his foster father Titus working many different jobs in order to take care of his wife and son, including farming, coal mining and driving a team and wagon for a local brewery. The family moved often throughout West Virginia in search of jobs and finally settled in Stotesbury in Raleigh County where the future statesman started grade school.

By the time young Byrd was two years old, his adoptive parents had moved him to the coal mining region of Southern West Virginia. He remembers his foster father Titus working many different jobs in order to take care of his wife and son, including farming, coal mining and driving a team and wagon for a local brewery. The family moved often throughout West Virginia in search of jobs and finally settled in Stotesbury in Raleigh County where the future statesman started grade school.

In the two-room school house where his education began, he developed early on a deep love for knowledge and a drive for personal betterment through books. His home didn’t have electricity and he often read by the light of an oil lamp, determined to overcome yet one more obstacle that stood in the way of his education. The valedictorian of his 28-member high school graduating class at Mark Twain High School in Stotesbury in 1934, he couldn’t afford to go to college and became an active member of the workforce instead.

Eight months after high school graduation, when the country was in the middle of the Great Depression, Byrd began his career as a gas station attendant. He also held positions as a grocery store clerk, a shipyard welder during World War II and a butcher before winning a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1946. In 1937, he married his high school sweetheart Erma Ora James, with whom he had attended Mark Twain High School. They later had two daughters.

The first taste of leadership for Byrd came in the form of the Ku Klux Klan. The year was 1942 and he was at the ripe, impressionable age of 24. His foster father, Titus, had also been a member and membership into the racially-biased organization was held by many community leaders, judges and professional people at the time. He served in the position of Kleagle (recruiter) for the organization after hosting a meeting to interest people in joining. At the same meeting, Byrd was elected Exalted Cyclops. A Klan official, who was also an active church official, once told Byrd, “You have a talent for leadership, Bob. The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation.”

This was the future senator’s wake-up call. He embraced the meaning of those words and took them in a direction that none of those KKK members probably ever imagined, turning his back on the organization and stepping up to be a voice for the people of his home state. Four years later, he was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates.

Since his early childhood in Mercer County, West Virginia, Robert C. Byrd has been an ambitious fellow with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Byrd is a man who has overcome adversity and embraced the lessons of history to help steer the United States down a path of democracy while offering the insight provided by his life and career experiences. He has given West Virginia something to be proud of and has shown through his determination and hard work that a person who has the desire can make a difference, regardless of where his roots lie. Like the phoenix from the ashes, Byrd has risen from the hills of West Virginia as a passionate, self-driven Mountaineer who has found his destiny as a great leader of men.

A Legacy of Leadership

Byrd was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1946 as a representative for Raleigh County. He remained the voice for that area of the state until 1950, when he was elected to the West Virginia Senate. In 1952, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, marking the rapid rise of a coalfields native from a gas station attendant to a politician on the national stage in Washington, D.C.

Despite the hours devoted to his state and country, Byrd finally found the time to attend college. He began night classes at The George Washington University School of Law in 1953 and later transferred to American University. Before he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, he attended four higher education institutions in West Virginia—Mountain State University, Concord University, University of Charleston and Marshall University. Over the course of a decade, he utilized night classes to finish his law degree.

Re-elected to the House twice, Byrd was sworn in to the U.S. Senate on January 3, 1959. He has been a member of the Senate Democratic leadership since he was elected as secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference in 1967. Byrd became the senate majority whip, the second-ranking democrat, in 1971 and served as senate majority leader from ’77 to ’81 and ’87 to ’89. He was elected senate minority leader in 1981 and held that position until 1987. Becoming the chair of the Appropriations Committee in 1989, he made it a priority to steer $1 billion to West Virginia’s public works. That goal was met and surpassed in 1991, and he continued to direct funds for dams, highways, educational institutions and federal office buildings to West Virginia.

Byrd currently holds the constitutional title of President pro tempore, a position usually given by the Senate to the most senior member of the majority party. This position puts him third in line in the presidential succession after the vice president and house speaker. As the President pro tempore, bills passed by Congress are sent to Byrd for his signature before reaching the President, who either vetoes the bill or signs it into law. Byrd has held this position several times over the course of his career, including a stint from 1989 to 1995, a short period in January 2001 and from June 2001 to January 2003, and he resumed his role in this position in January 2007 after Senate control returned to the Democrats in 2006.

A Celebration of Achievement

Known as “West Virginia’s favorite son” for steering federal funds to his home state to create jobs and spur economic development, Byrd is also known for a commendable voting record and a lifetime of public service. Re-elected to an unprecedented ninth consecutive full term in 2006, he has set many records—and broken a few—where his career in politics is concerned.

In 2006, Byrd became the longest-serving senator in American history with more than 17,300 days of service. His total political service, including his years as a state legislator, exceeds 60 years. The West Virginia statesman has never lost an election, ran unopposed once in 1976 and won all 55 West Virginia counties in both 1994 and 2000. He has cast more than 18,000 votes, the most of any senator in history. Byrd became the last living U.S. Senator from the 50s in 2007 when Senator George Smathers of Florida passed away, which means he has outlived every senator who has had seniority over him. Byrd is the last remaining senator to have voted on a statehood bill. He has served longer in the Senate than nine of his colleagues have been alive, including President Barack Obama. Byrd has also served alongside 12 U.S. Presidents during his tenure as a federal legislator or member of Congress. Of the 12, his favorite was President Harry Truman, whom he says “took responsibility for his actions as President and for the actions of those who served him in his Administration.”

Controversy and Conviction

Despite the many successes, moving speeches and honors of his long career in politics, the elephant in the room on Capitol Hill has remained Byrd’s brief association with the Ku Klux Klan. He has been an outspoken opponent of the Bush Administration and its war in Iraq, he has been a strong proponent of the growth and success of his home state and he has utilized his stance as a life-long scholar to educate not only the young people of the country but the politicians around him, and yet one foolish mistake from his pre-political life follows him like a black cloud.

Approximately one year after becoming involved in the KKK, Byrd says he became disinterested and dropped his membership, explaining that he had joined the Klan because he felt at the time that it offered excitement and was anti-communist. Byrd has referred to the ideology of the KKK as “the typical southern viewpoint of the time,” of which his father educated him. His father was a member of the KKK, a factor that held much influence over the young West Virginian’s beliefs and moral bearing.

“My mom told me, ‘Robert, you can’t go to heaven if you hate anybody,’” Byrd told Tony Snow in a 2001 interview. In 1997, he was quoted as encouraging young people to get involved in politics but to “Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don’t get that albatross around your neck.” As he entered the political arena, he struggled with the teachings of his parents versus the great responsibility he had to his fellow Americans as a statesman. He says now that he regrets voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and would change his vote now if he could. He sees his induction into the KKK as “the greatest mistake I ever made,” and while he has recognized his sin and asked God for forgiveness, he continues to face the skeletons of that unfortunate adolescent decision every day.

Byrd has said of his membership, “(I was) sorely afflicted with tunnel vision—a jejune and immature outlook—seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions.” In another interview in 2005, he said, “I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times…and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.”

His former status as an Exalted Cyclops may be a stain on his otherwise impressive political resume, but he has worked over the years to show that his ideals have changed with time, experience and education. In the 108th Congress (2003-2004), the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Congressional Report Card awarded Byrd an approval rating of 100 percent for favoring the organization’s position regarding all 33 bills presented to the Senate of which they were concerned. Only 16 other senators of the same session received this approval rating.

Prior to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, Byrd had referred to the civil rights activist as a “self-seeking rabble-rouser.” However, when the federal holiday for King came to the Senate floor in 1983, approximately 15 years after the activist’s death, Byrd said, “I’m the only one in the Senate who must vote for this bill.” In 2005, Byrd proposed an additional $10 million in federal funding for the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington, D.C., stating that, “With the passage of time, we have come to learn that his dream was the American dream, and few ever expressed it more eloquently.”

Byrd endorsed America’s first black presidential nominee, Barack Obama, in 2008, whom the Senator referred to as “a shining young statesman who possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq,” marking a complete 180-degree swing from the prejudiced ideals of the very organization that had encouraged him to enter the political arena.

He cannot run from the association of his past with the KKK and he doesn’t try. He doesn’t focus on the dark moments of his past, either. A man who has accomplished so much must be focused and must be at peace with his mistakes after admitting them and making concessions for them. Man, after all, must learn from his own mistakes to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.

Byrd has become known for being a great speaker and perhaps his most impassioned speeches of late have been those of which the war in Iraq has been the topic. As one of the war’s most outspoken critics, in 2003 he said, “Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination.” In his 2004 book Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency, Byrd criticized the Bush Administration for taking the U.S. into the war in Iraq. Of the more than 18,500 votes he has cast as a senator, he is most proud of his vote against this military conflict.

In his early years, Byrd found inspiration in America’s Founding Fathers—inspiration that helped guide him to the Senate with a heavy heart for his people. Of men like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, he has said, “After winning the Revolution, this generation put their vision of America into a workable form, a government that embodied the principles, ideas and values for which they had fought and died.”

It took Byrd 16 years after graduating high school before he could attend college. Ten years after enrolling in his first class, he graduated with a law degree. When he graduated, he became the only member of Congress to begin and complete law school while in office. In 1994, he finished his baccalaureate degree at Marshall University. In stories like these, one can see that the importance of education was never lost to him. He has made it a priority to impart this appreciation and necessity for knowledge to young people everywhere. “Across this country,” he has said, “we need to instill a passion for education in our students. We must cultivate a bumper crop of excellent students if we are to keep pace in this rapidly changing global environment.”

In light of this need, Byrd established the Scholastic Recognition Award in 1969, which gives each West Virginia high school valedictorian a savings bond. This program has awarded a total of 10,339 bonds with an expenditure of more than $241,000 over the last 40 years. In 1985, he created the only national, merit-based scholarship program funded through the U.S. Department of Education, which was later named after him by Congress. The Robert C. Byrd National Honors Scholarship has grown from one-year, $1,500 awards to students who demonstrated outstanding academic achievement and who had been accepted at an institution of higher learning to a four-year program in 1993 that provides stipends of up to $6,000 over the course of the program today. In support of academics-based scholarships, Byrd has said, “Too often scholarships are awarded on the basis of excellence on a playing field and not enough priority is given to excellence in the classroom. We need to recognize and salute those students who work hard in the classroom and we need to encourage more students to succeed academically.”

The Heart of the Man

Many people see Byrd as a serious man with a deep affection for the Constitution, for politics and for knowledge. What they may forget at times is that he is a man with a family, a deep reverence for God and a fiddle that helped get him where he is today.

His wife Erma followed his lead and became active in Washington, D.C. A member of the Senate Wives’ Club, she was also involved in the Senate Wives’ Red Cross projects. She was named Daughter of the Year in 1990 by the West Virginia Society of Washington, D.C. and Mother of the Year by the Thunder of the Tygart Foundation in 1999. She was awarded a degree from the University of Hard Knocks at Alderson-Broadus College in West Virginia in 1991 and a bachelor’s degree from Wheeling Jesuit College in 1997. In honor of the Senator’s wife, Marshall University started the Erma Byrd Scholars Program in 1994, which was followed by the Loyalty Permanent Endowment Fund of the West Virginia University Alumni Association, the founders of the Erma Ora Byrd Scholarship. Davis & Elkins College dedicated the Erma Byrd Garden at the Graceland Mansion in 1997, followed shortly by the dedication of the Erma Ora Byrd Center for Educational Technologies at Wheeling Jesuit. His wife and two daughters kept him centered and provided what he calls an oasis of peace at home after long days and nights consumed by politics.

Erma passed away in 2006, and six months later, her husband dedicated the West Virginia University Erma Byrd Biomedical Research Center. She left behind two daughters, Mona Byrd Fatemi and Marjorie Byrd Moore, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. The couple was married for almost 69 years. They were inseparable, spending their time traveling the hills and hollows of West Virginia and exploring the world.

Byrd begins every day by visiting his wife’s final resting place and saying a prayer for his country, for his state and for his beloved Erma. He says that God has been central to his life, a guide through troubled waters. “The Bible teaches wonderful life lessons,” he says, adding that he still enjoys reading the Bible in addition to good history. If politics had not found him, he admits that he might have been a minister, and no doubt his great oratorical skills would have reached many with the lessons of God’s love and forgiveness.

One of his few remaining lifelong companions is his fiddle, which he learned to play as a teenager. He was no stranger to square dance bands, and he utilized his gift for music to attract attention and win votes when he entered the political arena. He used to carry the instrument everywhere he went, even using his fiddle case as his briefcase. His skill didn’t go unnoticed. He has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Grand Ole Opry and on the national television show “HeeHaw.” He recorded his own album called “U.S. Senator Robert Byrd: Mountain Fiddler.”

A published author, Byrd has written several books as a vehicle through which to share the knowledge he has gained in his lifetime. His debut publication, The Senate, 1789-1989, Vol.1: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, was the first of a four-part series that was available only through the Government Printing Office. He followed the series with Senate of the Roman Republic: Addresses on the History of Roman Constitutionalism in 1995; Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency on the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq in 2004; the autobiography Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields in 2005 and 2008’s Letter to a New President: Commonsense Lessons for our Next Leader.

Today Senator Robert C. Byrd is as much of a fighter as he has ever been. Through circumstance and fate—poverty in the coalfields, parents that taught him the importance of hard work and caring for one’s family, a deep-rooted appreciation for education and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge—he has, as some would say, pulled himself up by his boot straps and made a name for himself.

Fame was never his intention. He was mesmerized by politics because he liked public speaking and he wanted to help his state, and one can neither deny his speaking skills nor the many great things he has done for West Virginia. Byrd had a lot to learn when he was first elected to the West Virginia House in 1946. More than 60 years later, he has much to teach the upcoming generations of state leaders and defenders of the Constitution.

A lifetime of service,
A legacy of leadership.
And at 92 years old, he's still fighting.