IN MEMORIUM,
Senator Robert Byrd, West Virginia,
November 1917 – June 2010

IN THE NEWS:  West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd died early Monday morning at a hospital in Fairfax, Virginia. He was 91. He had been admitted to a hospital last week for heat exhaustion and severe dehydration. They thought he would remain only a few days; however, upon admittance, doctors realized he was seriously ill. West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller said about Byrd’s passing, “I looked up to him. I fought next to him, and I am deeply saddened that he is gone.”

One of our Presidential Prayer Team members asked that we remember that he was also a wonderful Uncle.

He was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr. in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina in November 1917. When he was one year old, his mother Ada Mae died in the 1918 Flue Pandemic. Custody of the infant was given to Titus and Virginia Byrd, his uncle and aunt, who adopted him and named him Robert Carlyle Bird, and raised him in the coal-mining region of southern West Virginia.

He was valedictorian of Mark Twain High School and married his high-school sweetheart, Emma Ora James (who preceded him in death by only two years). Together they had two daughters.

He worked as a gas-station attendant, grocery-store clerk, shipyard welder during World War II and butcher, before he won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates. He served there two years, and was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He enrolled at American University’s Washington College of Law, but did not receive his degree until a decade later, by which time he was a United States Senator.  Byrd also attended the George Washington University Law School and graduated from Marshall University.

Byrd penned five books and recorded a Glue Grass album entitled “Mountain fiddler” for which he won the Grand Ole Opry’s Distinguished Fiddler Award. 

He was the last surviving senator to have voted on a bill giving statehood to a U. S. territory. He came to the Senate before 12 current or former Senators were even born, and outlived every other senator who had seniority over him.  He listed his faith as Baptist.

 

Monday Morning in West Virginia
By Greg Asimakoupoulos

 In Morgantown, they’re mourning
as they are in Huntington.
In Beckley, too, and Wheeling,
Summersville and Charleston.

He old crow of the Senate
has fallen from his nest.
May God look down upon Bob Byrd
and grant him final rest.

His eye is on the sparrow.
God sees each one that falls
from Mines in West Virginia
to Appalachian stalls.

It was a Hebrew prophet
who wrote how eagles soar
inviting us to wait with faith
and learn to trust the Lord.

So may we find the wings to fly
and strength to run and walk.
May what we claim each week at church
be more than simply talk.