Stevens, Murkowski remember Robert Byrd as a friend to Alaska

June 29, 2010

West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd (standing, right) said Sen. Ted Stevens regularly took the time to shake his hand in 2007, when Stevens became the Senate's longest-serving Republican. (File/KTUU-DT)

by Rhonda McBride
Monday, June 28, 2010

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Even though West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd was a Democrat, former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens counted on his help to bring dollars to rural Alaska -- and likewise, Stevens reciprocated. Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress in history, died Monday morning at the age of 92.

"He takes the time to shake my hand," Byrd said of Stevens in 2007, when he became the longest-serving Republican in the Senate. Byrd also spoke warmly of Stevens' ability to put partisan politics aside and work for the common good, and Stevens says he felt the same way.

"We worked together on various issues," Stevens said. "We disagreed on some things, but we never argued. We never shouted at one another, we just worked out our differences and said, ‘OK, you're going to go that way and I'm going to go my way,' that sort of thing, whether it was his project or mine. He was a real gentleman."

The former Alaska senator says Byrd had a rare combination of qualities: the soft heart of a gentleman, a fighting spirit and a sharp mind.

"He had the best memory of any man I ever met," Stevens said. "He could read a poem, read a story, and 10 years later he could recite that poem and tell you what was in the book."

Over the years, Stevens said he marveled at his colleague's capacity to re-invent himself -- starting with his childhood, when he was orphaned and adopted by a butcher.

"And he had to quit school, and he worked in the butcher shop," Stevens recalled. "He later got a job and he went back to school, and he finished high school. And he actually finished high school as a member of the West Virginia legislature. And then he got elected to the U.S. Congress, to the House of Representatives. Then when he got selected to the Senate, he decided he wanted to be a lawyer, so he went to law school at night."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski credited Byrd for providing the blueprint for the Denali Commission, which was modeled after an anti-poverty agency that Byrd created.

"A son of the Depression, growing up in impoverished Appalachia, he understood and empathized with the isolation and Third World conditions that plagued our Alaska Native people of rural Alaska," Murkowski said in a statement Monday.

Byrd was not above admitting his mistakes. Early in his political life he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, which he apologized for throughout his career, along with his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Contact Rhonda McBride at rmcbride@ktuu.com

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