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• Sunday, January 8, 1989 ■ The Clarion-Ledger / Jackson Daily News ■ 7|
Stennis retires with some memorable moments
This report is based on an interview conducted in December 1988.
By Dan Davis
ClarioivLedger Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — On a December day when the first snowfall of the season covered the nation’s capital, life went on in the offices of U.S. Sen. John C. Stennis.
In the reception area, two secretaries were busy fielding calls for the retiring senator and his staff. The walls were pocked by nails where the mementos and memories of a 41-year career once hung.
But little had changed in the spacious room — originally designated for the vice president — that has served as Stennis’ private office. The “Mississippi Comes First” sign that has stood on his desk for decades remained. The chair behind his desk in which no one ever sits — the one that serves as a reminder of those Missis-sippians unable to come to Washington
—	still held its “reserved” sign.
Stennis, long viewed as the conscience of the Senate, hadn’t changed much Since he came here in 1948, pledging to “plow a straight furrow down to the end of my row.”
The senator sat in the wheelchair that was forced on him in 1984 with the amputation of his cancerous left leg. His voice was powerful, his handshake strong.
His conversation sometimes rambled, but an interviewer wasn’t sure if it was a result of his 87 years or the senator’s way to avoid a direct answer to a question.
He skirted a general question about his career, giving instead a 15-minute tribute to the late Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, Stennis’ mentor.
“He was a high-type man, a very deep thinker,” Stennis said of the man who took him under his wing and later put him on the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations committees.
It was as a member and later chairman of those committees that Stennis guided various military and public works projects to his home state.
“That was the avenue I used to commence learning about the Senate,” he said of Russell’s guidance.
On Gen. MacArthur’s firing: "There was so much mail coming in we couldn’t get it open, much less answer it.”
It was to Russell that his Senate colleagues and White House occupants often turned for guidance. “I was amazed at the extent to which they sought his counsel,” Stennis recalled in wonderment.
For many of the past four decades, it has been to Stennis that presidents and national leaders have turned.
He recalled his surprising speech about the Senate in 1954 when he urged the censure of red-baiting Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy.
McCarthy, Stennis said, had poured “slush and slime” on the Senate floor with his scurrilous personal attacks on various members.
“I thought as an institution if the Senate was not defended and defended effectively, its influence would be lost,” Stennis said, letting his mind wander back more than 30 years to his role in helping stop McCarthy.
“I was told I would suffer greatly politically. Well, I don’t think it affected me one bit,” he said, the hint of a smile on his face.
On serving under eight presidents:
“Excuse me, I haven’t served under any president. I served with them.”
President Harry Truman’s firing of General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 thrust Stennis into his fifst congressional controversy. Stennis was a member of a joint Senate committee named to hear MacArthur’s side of the fight with the White House.
The firing, Stennis said, prompted an outpouring of support for MacArthur from the folks back home.
“There was so much mail coming in we couldn’t get it open, much less answer it,” he said.
Asked to rate the eight presidents under which he has served, Stennis frowned in rebuke.
“Excuse me, I haven’t served under any president. I served with them,” he said.
“I’ve leaned toward the idea that I would support the president when I could because he’s the chief executive.”
He added, “Under the legislative power we have, somebody’s got to help him. He can’t do it all by himself.”
Stennis offered little when asked about racial politics and his moderation on the race issue.
On helping stop McCarthy: "I was told I would suffer greatly politically. Well, I don’t think it affected me one bit.”
“When I was coming along I never was wanting to make a big issue out of this,” he said. “I knew something about the practical side of these things. I was bom and reared on the farm and I have a high regard for a lot of blacks now.”
Stennis was asked about changes in the Senate and reminded of former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s recently published book in which Goldwater complains about the new generation of lawmakers who are eager to complete their business early so they can attend the nightly receptions on Capitol Hill.
“I tell you, I think a man who is a member of the Senate ... if he covers the ground as much as I think he should, he won’t have much time at anything else,” Stennis said.
The job has become too much, he said, for a man his age and in declining health.
“It’s hard, hard work up here and getting harder all the time,” he said.
With the end of his row nearing, has he plowed the straight furrow?
“I’m not the one to judge that,” he replied.
Remembrances from:
Brad Dye
When Gov. John Bell Williams appointed me director of the A&l Board (now the Department of Economic Development) in 1968, one of my first trips was to Washington to visit with Sens.
John Stennis and James O.
Eastland and other members of the congressional delegation.
I told Sen. Stennis at the time that because of his position on the Armed Services Committee I was going to use him to try to get industry to come to Mississippi if he didn't have any objection.
He told me' that I was the first A&l director to ever make such a request, and he told me he wanted to be used.
He turned out to be most helpful in securing new jobs for our st^te.'
■ .
Brad Dye has served as Mississippi’s lieutenant governor since 1980.
Dye
Remembrances from:
Bill Simpson
If someone said to me, “Bill, since you know John Stennis will never stop working and contributing — pick yet another of the roles you would like to see him fill.”
I have a suggestion. It is this: I hope to see him inspire our fine young people. I see him as incontrovertible proof — in this age stained by cynicism — that a man can reach the top of the mountian and stand there a model of integrity, of character, of dedication, of devotion to the common good.
As the years march on, as the season change, as the world spins through space, there is a constant we can surely rely on. It is that the words “Stennis of Mississippi” will sound down the corridors of time, reflecting credit on his family, his friends, his beloved state and nation, and the cause of freedom.
Simpson
Bill Simpson is a veteran lobbyist in Washington for the state of Mississippi.
Remembrances from:
Thomas Bourdeaux
One side of Sen. John Stennis I have particularly appreciated is his love for the law and enjoyment of the company of lawyers.
Not too many years ago, he showed up at my law office late one December afternoon about dusk with the suggestion that we put together a group of lawyers to have dinner one night to "talk about the law.” This was done in due course with the whole of the local bar association being involved.
Of course, his high position and intimate familiarity with the "corridors of power” caused the post-dinner conversation to turn away from lawyers’ war stories to more heady matters of state.
Nevertheless, the senator clearly enjoyed the evening as did everyone else. We came away knowing that some of his most rewarding experiences had been as a lawyer and then as a circuit judge from Kemper County.
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Thomas Bourdeaux of Meridian is a lawyer and a member of the state College Board.