West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd Dies

Robert C. Byrd, who used his record tenure as a United States senator to fight for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and to build a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money, died at about 3 a.m. Monday, his office said. He was 92.  Senator Byrd was elected to the House of Representatives in 1952, becoming a senator seven years later.

Byrd was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr., in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in 1917. When he was one year old, his mother, Ada Mae Kirby, died in the 1918 Flu Pandemic. It was reported that even at age one and the death of his mother still managed to attend school the next day. In accordance with his mother's wishes, his father, Cornelius Calvin Sale, dispersed the family children among relatives. Sale Jr. was given to the custody of Titus and Vlurma Byrd, his uncle and aunt, who renamed him Robert Carlyle Byrd and raised him in the coal-mining region of southern West Virginia. The man was the product of a coal mining community which explains his how his manliness developed.

Byrd was valedictorian of Mark Twain High School and, in 1937, he married his high-school sweetheart, Erma Ora James. He eventually attended Beckley College, Concord College, Morris Harvey College, and Marshall College, all in West Virginia. Erma was a member of the Senate Wives Club, and was involved in Senate Wives' Red Cross projects.  In 1990, she was selected as Daughter of the Year by the West Virginia Society of Washington, D.C. She was later awarded a degree from Alderson-Broaddus College in 1991, and in 1994, Marshall University initiated the Erma Byrd Scholars Program. This was followed with the Loyalty Permanent Endowment Fund of the West Virginia University Alumni Association, who established the Erma Ora Byrd Scholarship. Again, this was a great man and his manliness echoed throughout Washington.

Mr. Byrd served 51 years in the Senate, longer than anyone in American history, and with his six years in the House, he was the longest-serving member of Congress. He held a number of Senate offices, including majority and minority leader and president pro tem. He was truly a man's man and did let let the corruption of Washington politics spill out into his personal life. With more of the greatest generation departing America I fear what direction the United States will go in. It was men like Byrd who led the weaker and feminized generations by the nose in Washington politics.