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Robert C. Byrd, the longest serving member of
the U.S. Senate, a fiery orator and hard-charging power broker who
steered billions of federal dollars to his beloved West Virginia,
died Monday. He was 92.


      A spokesman for the family, Jesse Jacobs, said that Byrd died
peacefully at about 3 a.m. at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Va. He had
been in the hospital since late last week.


      At first Byrd was believed to be suffering from heat exhaustion
and severe dehydration, but other medical conditions developed. He
had been in frail health for several years.


      A man of humble, Depression-era upbringing, Byrd held his seat
for over 50 years, working tirelessly all that time to make sure
his state never missed out on its share - or even more, in some
cases - of the federal largesse. He was the Senate's majority
leader for six of those years and was third in the line of
succession to the presidency, behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.


      Flags at the Capitol and the White House flew at half-staff
Monday as Washington mourned Byrd's passing.


      Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a fellow West Virginian in the Senate,
said it was his "greatest privilege" to serve with Byrd.

      "I looked up to him, I fought next to him, and I am deeply
saddened that he is gone," Rockefeller said.


      The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said
Byrd "combined a devotion to the U.S. Constitution with a deep
learning of history to defend the interests of his state and the
traditions of the Senate."


      "We will remember him for his fighter's spirit, his abiding
faith, and for the many times he recalled the Senate to its
purposes," McConnell said.

      Former President Jimmy Carter said Byrd "was my closest and
most valuable adviser" during his presidency, when Byrd served as
Senate majority leader. Byrd was skilled "in using arcane Senate
rules to achieve his goals, and was proud of his ability to count
votes and forge prevailing coalitions," Carter said in a
statement.


      West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, will appoint Byrd's
replacement. For a declared vacancy more than two years and six
months before the expiration of a senator's term - Byrd's term was
to end Jan. 3, 2013 - the appointee serves until an election is
held to fill the rest of the term.


      Manchin issued a statement Monday saying Byrd "was a fearless
fighter for the Constitution, his beloved state and its great
people." The statement did not mention the succession issue.


      Byrd's death followed less than a year after the passing of
venerable Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a nationally recognizable figure
who had been a most vociferous spokesman for liberal causes for
years.


      In comportment and style, Byrd often seemed a Senate throwback
to a courtlier 19th century. He could recite poetry, quote the
Bible, discuss the Constitutional Convention and detail the
Peloponnesian Wars - and frequently did in Senate debates.

      Yet there was nothing particularly courtly about Byrd's pursuit
or exercise of power.


      Byrd was a master of the Senate's bewildering rules and longtime
chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which controls a
third of the $3 trillion federal budget. He was willing to use both
to reward friends and punish those he viewed as having slighted
him.


      "Bob is a living encyclopedia, and legislative graveyards are
filled with the bones of those who underestimated him," former
House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, once said in remarks Byrd later
displayed in his office.


      In 1971, Byrd ousted Kennedy, the Massachusetts senator, as the
Democrats' second in command. He was elected majority leader in
1976 and held the post until Democrats lost control of the Senate
four years later. He remained his party's leader through six years
in the minority, then spent another two years as majority leader.

      "I have tangled with him. He usually wins," former Sen. Dennis
DeConcini, D-Ariz., once recalled.


      DeConcini supported Byrd's bid for majority leader. "He
reciprocated by helping me get on the Appropriations Committee,"
DeConcini said. Years later, DeConcini said, he displeased Byrd on
another issue. "I didn't get on the Intelligence Committee when I
thought I was up to get on it."

      Byrd stepped aside as majority leader in 1989 when Democrats
sought a more contemporary television spokesman. "I ran the Senate
like a stern parent," Byrd wrote in his memoir, "Child of the
Appalachian Coalfields." His consolation price was the
chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee, with control over
almost limitless federal spending.


      Within two years, he surpassed his announced five-year goal of
making sure more than $1 billion in federal funds was sent back to
West Virginia, money used to build highways, bridges, buildings and
other facilities, some named after him.


      In 2006 and with 64 percent of the vote, Byrd won an
unprecedented ninth term in the Senate just months after surpassing
South Carolinian Strom Thurmond's record as its longest-serving
member. His more than 18,500 roll call votes were another record.

      But Byrd also seemed to slow after the death of Erma, his wife
of almost 69 years, in 2006. Frail and at times wistful, he used
two canes to walk haltingly and needed help from aides to make his
way about the Senate. He often hesitated at unscripted moments. By
2009, aides were bringing him to and from the Senate floor in a
wheelchair.

      Though his hands trembled in later years, Byrd only recently
lost his grip on power. Last November he surrendered his
chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee.


      Byrd's lodestar was protecting the Constitution. He frequently
pulled out a dog-eared copy of it from a pocket in one of his
trademark three-piece suits. He also defended the Senate in its
age-old rivalry with the executive branch, no matter which party
held the White House.


      Unlike other prominent Senate Democrats such as 2004
presidential nominee John Kerry of Massachusetts, who voted to
authorize the war in Iraq, Byrd stood firm in opposition - and felt
gratified when public opinion swung behind him.


      "The people are becoming more and more aware that we were
hoodwinked, that the leaders of this country misrepresented or
exaggerated the necessity for invading Iraq," Byrd said.

      He cited Iraq when he endorsed then-Sen. Barack Obama for the
Democratic presidential nomination in May 2008, calling Obama "a
shining young statesman, who possesses the personal temperament and
courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly
misadventure."


      Byrd's accomplishments followed a childhood of poverty in West
Virginia, and his success on the national stage came despite a
complicated history on racial matters. As a young man, we was a
member of the Ku Klux Klan for a brief period, and he joined
Southern Democrats in an unsuccessful filibuster against the
landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.

      He later apologized for both actions, saying intolerance has no
place in America. While supporting later civil rights bills, he
opposed busing to integrate schools.

      Byrd briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination in
1976 and later told associates he had once been approached by
President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, about accepting an
appointment to the Supreme Court.


      But he was a creature - and defender - of Congress across a
career that began in 1952 with his election to the House. He served
three terms there before winning his Senate seat in 1958, when
Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House.


      He clashed with presidents in both parties and was implacably
against proposed balanced budget amendments to the Constitution.


      "He is a fierce defender of the Senate and its prerogatives in
ways that I think the founding fathers really intended the Senate
to be," said one-time rival Kennedy.


      In a measure of his tenacity, Byrd took a decade of night
courses to earn a law degree in 1963, and completed his
long-delayed bachelor's degree at West Virginia's Marshall
University in 1994 with correspondence classes.


      Byrd was a near-deity in economically struggling West Virginia,
to which he delivered countless federally financed projects. Entire
government bureaus opened there, including the FBI's repository for
computerized fingerprint records. Even the Coast Guard had a
facility in the landlocked state. Critics portrayed him as the
personification of Congress' thirst for wasteful "pork" spending
projects.


      Robert Carlyle Byrd was born Nov. 20, 1917, in North Wilkesboro,
N.C., as Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr., the youngest of five children.
      Before he was 1, his mother died and his father sent him to live
with an aunt and uncle, Vlurma and Titus Byrd, who renamed him and
moved to the coal-mining town of Stotesbury, W.Va. He didn't learn
his original name until he was 16 and his real birthday until he
was 54.

      Byrd's foster father was a miner who frequently changed jobs,
and Byrd recalled that the family's house was "without
electricity, ... no running water, no telephone, a little wooden
outhouse."

      He graduated from high school but could not afford college.
Married in 1936 to high school sweetheart Erma Ora James - with
whom he had two daughters - he pumped gas, cut meat and during
World War II was a shipyard welder.

      Returning to meat cutting in West Virginia, he became popular
for his fundamentalist Bible lectures. A grand dragon of the Ku
Klux Klan suggested he run for office.


      He won his first race - for the state's House of Delegates - in
1946, distinguishing himself from 12 rivals by singing and fiddling
mountain tunes. His fiddle became a fixture; he later played it on
the television show "Hee Haw" and recorded an album. He abandoned
it only after a grandson's traumatic death in 1982 and when his
shaky hands left him unable to play.


      At his 90th birthday party in 2007, however, Byrd joined
bluegrass band Lonesome Highway in singing a few tunes and topped
off the night with a rendition of "Old Joe Clark."


      After six years in the West Virginia legislature, Byrd was
elected to the U.S. House in 1952 in a race in which his brief Klan
membership became an issue. He said he joined because of its
anti-communism.


      Byrd entered Congress as one of its most conservative Democrats.
He was an early supporter of the Vietnam War, and his 14-hour,
13-minute filibuster against the 1964 civil rights bill remains one
of the longest ever. His views gradually moderated, particularly on
economic issues, but he always sided with his state's coal
interests in confrontations with environmentalists.


      His love of Senate traditions inspired him to write a
four-volume history of the chamber. It also led him to oppose
laptops on the Senate floor and to object when a blind aide tried
bringing her seeing-eye dog into the chamber.      In 2004, Byrd got Congress to require schools and colleges to
teach about the Constitution every Sept. 17, the day the document
was adopted in 1787.

Politics and Government News

Robert C. Byrd, the longest serving member of
the U.S. Senate, a fiery orator and hard-charging power broker who
steered billions of federal dollars to his beloved West Virginia,
died Monday. He was 92.


Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia dead at 92

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