As I mentioned to my friend Erin on twitter, I think it is fitting that the death of Senator Byrd has created an extra long Independence Day weekend to West Virginians.
Most who have never lived here do not understand precisely what Senator Robert C. Byrd meant to the state and its residents. They know he was was a member of Congress longer than anyone else ever. They know he was called the King of Pork. They may even know he had been majority leader, minority leader, and President Pro Tem of the Senate. What they don’t understand–can’t understand really–is what all this meant to those of us who lived here.
Senator Byrd had a checkered past in some ways. He was born in a time when racism was accepted and spent the first part of his life believing in those principles. However, he came to discover that outside differences mean nothing, and he came to profoundly regret his earlier beliefs and apologized for his earlier beliefs and actions.
Senator Byrd was the first person in his family to go to school past the second grade. While he was in Washington D.C. representing West Virginia, he got his law degree by taking night classes. But his education was far greater than that. He was a musician, a lover of poetry and verse, and he revered the Constitution and this country.
He went to Washington DC with one objective–to represent his state and to do everything in his power to improve the lives of its citizens. The “King of Pork” wasn’t an insult to him, or to those of us who lived here. He didn’t want to build a bridge to nowhere, he wanted to bring in money to improve the state and its population. He helped us build roads. He helped us build infrastructure. He helped drive government agencies and projects to the state. And he helped build the educational system in the state.
The building in which I work is officially called the Robert C Byrd Health Sciences Center, and within that complex of structures we have one of the top Rural Health programs in the country. The money he brought in did far more than provide jobs–it helped to create an educational system dedicated not just to educating future health professionals but to improve the health of all the citizens of the state by sending its students throughout the state to help provide health care in isolated and impoverished areas.
This is the legacy he left us.
He helped create systems that do more than create a handful of jobs, these systems support and improve the entire state and all its citizens. These systems attempt to reach out to those in isolation and poverty and provide them with the things that most people take for granted: Roads. Education. Health care.
He was a great man, and his like will not be seen again.
