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Sunday, January 8,1989 ■ The Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News ■ 51
As Armed Services chairman, Stennis gave the Vietnam War his total support
■	From 41
“They’d pass each other in the hall and one would say, ‘Talk to that fella, yet?’ The other would respond, ‘Yep.’ And that was the end of the conference,” Simpson said.
Stennis said recently, “We had been together in the (state) House of Representatives and you get to know a fella. We never had a moment’s trouble. When I heard he was considering not running again, I beat it to his office to talk to him. It didn’t do a bit of good. He was determined, and once he was determined, you couldn’t move him.”
Vietnam warning
It was also in 1954 that the visionary Stennis warned that the United States was in danger of being drawn into the fighting in Vietnam by supplying assistance to the French effort to defeat the Vietnamese Communists.
Stennis, who was a member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, warned from the Senate floor that “we are taking steps that lead our men directly into combat. Soon we may have to fight or run.”
Committing U.S. forces to the fight, he said, could result in a “long, costly and indecisive war that will leave us without victory.”
Later, when the United States replaced the French in Vietnam and began a full-scale fight against the Communist forces, Stennis, who had moved up as Armed Services chairman, gave the war his total support.
Stennis says:
In November 1950, opposing the admission of Alaska as a state of the Union:
“If we need some more states, let’s get them from Texas.”
In 1966, he even suggested the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia should the Chinese enter the war.
At another point, during a April 1985 interview, he said: “Once that blood starts flowing and men are on the way over there, you’re in a predicament.” He added, “I wasn’t going to turn my back on them, and America couldn’t turn its back on them.”
Saved Tenn-Tom
Stennis landed on the powerful Appropriations Committee in 1955, and he used the assignment to Mississippi’s longterm benefit.
It was as chairman of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee that he was able to get the $2 billion needed to construct the 234-mile Tennessee-Tombig-bee Waterway, considered by its critics a boondoggle.
Stennis is credited with saving the waterway in the late 1970s when the Carter administration targeted it for funding elimination.
As chairman of the Appropriations
Committee’s space subcommittee, Stennis was called on by President John F. Kennedy to help get the U.S. space program off the ground.
“President Kennedy told me — he didn’t ask me what I thought about going to the moon — he just called me up and said: ‘We’re going and we want some money out of you,’ ” Stennis recalled recently.
Other projects he was instrumental in securing for the state include Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, the Seabee Base in Gulfport, the Meridian Naval Air Station, Columbus Air Force Base, Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg and the Navy home port, which is planned for Pascagoula.
In 1969, Stennis took over as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, a position that gave him a strong voice on national defense issues. But the advancement came at the height of the Vietnam War and at a time when critics of the military wanted to scale back weapons spending.
In a key test of his legislative prowess, Stennis in 1969 guided through the Senate a $21 billion defense procurement bill.
Stennis also used his newfound authority in 1969 to influence President Richard Nixon’s administration to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to delay for a year a desegregation order for 33 Mississippi school districts. It was later learned that pressure for the delay came from Stennis, who had threatened to abandon leadership on an antiballistic missile being debated by the Senate.
Confidant and counselor
Stennis served as confidant and counselor to many of the eight presidents with which he served, a role that thrust him into the national spotlight in 1973 during the Watergate scandal.
Nixon, under fire for refusing to release tape recordings that would have revealed his role in the break-in of the national Democratic Party headquarters, offered to let Stennis listen privately to the tapes rather than turning them over to special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Stennis agreed, but Cox balked. The prosecutor was later fired, but the U.S. Supreme Court ordered release of the tapes.
It was to Stennis and Georgia Sen. Richard Russell that Nixon turned in 1969 when he made his decision to bpmb Cambodia. Nixon said he revealed his plans to those senators because they could be trusted not to leak the bombing news to the media.
Stennis said of Nixon: “He was very able. Now, I didn’t^applaud every time he spoke, but he was very able.”
Stennis was also the man to which the Senate turned to write the chamber’s Code of Ethics. It was Stennis they relied on to handle politically ticklish situations such as the 1962 investigation of the alleged muzzling of military officers by the Pentagon.
Five years later, he led a Senate investigation of charges that Connecticut Sen.
See THE SENATOR, 61
Remembrances from:
Charles Overby
All of us respect Sen. Stennis for his honesty, hard work and virtues that made us all proud.
But one of the things that impressed me the most about the senator was how he personified the U.S. Senate as an institution.
■	Frequently, he was asked to the White House to meet with the president about important issues of the day. When he would Overby return to the office, he never betrayed a presidential confidence. Other senators might hold press conferences or leak information. Not Sen. Stennis. He felt the relationship between a Senate committee chairman and a presidential sacrosanct.
■	Sen. Stennis assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee after serving many years in the shadow of Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia. Sen. Stennis was very deferential toward the seniority system. He wouldn’t have thought of trying to upstage a senior senator. One afternoon after a long Armed Services Committee meeting, Sen. Stennis returned to the office with a serious look on his face. It was clear that he wasn’t happy. His pique was directed toward Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. “Can you believe it?” he asked incredulously. “He’s a freshman senator and he’s already offered an amendment in committee.”
Sen. Stennis is the last of the lions of the Senate. He and his fellow lions — Russell, Eastland, Johnson, Long, Hart, Humphrey — knew how to make things happen.
■
Charles Overby is Vice President/News for Gannett Co. Inc. He was press secretary for Stennis from 1968 to 1969.
Remembrances from:
Donald Zacharias
Shortly after I arrived on campus as president of Mississippi State University, I received word that Sen. John Stennis wanted to meet with me. I knew him only as a senior member of the Senate and as a person much admired for his high standards.
When he came to my office a few days later, he had only two messages. First, he wanted me Zacharias to know how much the university meant to him throughout his career. Second, he told me he wanted nothing for himself from the university but that he wanted me to call upon him any time he could assist Mississippi State.
As we talked about the university and the people of Mississippi, I soon realized how unselfish he is and how determined he has always been to help his state and country. The focus of the conversation was upon the generosity of a small group of alumni who had helped him first to be elected to public office. They had done something that he felt he could never repay except through service to others.
I was reminded of that conversation a few months ago when he told me he would not run for re-election. He said, “I hope the people will not feel that I have let them down by not running again.”
No, senator, you have made us proud, not disappointed. You have set a standard of service above self for every public official to emulate. You have kept your word to me and every Mississippi-an. Come on home and enjoy life with us.
■
Donald Zacharias is president of Mississippi State University.
Remembrances from:
William Winter
Of the many memories of my association with Sen. John Stennis, none remains more vivid than that of my first meeting with him. As a visiting circuit judge from another district, he was holding the summer term of court in the old courthouse in Grenada. I was a law student at the University of Mississippi and a candidate for the Legislature. Jtf inter
It was customary in Grenada County at that time for political candidates to speak at the opening of court. Having come for that purpose, I approached the judge with some trepidation for permission to present my candidacy. He had a reputation for running a very strict court. My worst fear was that he would think I was trifling with his time.
To my great relief not only did he grant my request to speak but he warmly welcomed me to his courtroom. Later, at the noon recess, he and I had the opportunity for a longer conversation. He recalled his own days as a state legislator and encouraged me in the pursuit of my political plans.
I was presumptuous enough to inquire of his. He confided that if, as was expected, a Senate vacancy should soon occur, he would in all probability be a candidate. I then and there on the sidewalk outside the Dyre-Kent Drugstore pledged my support which amounted to all of one vote.
The rest, as they say, is history. Less than a month later a Senate vacancy was created by the death of Sen. Bilbo. In the subsequent November special election, the little-known circuit judge from DeKalb was elected to the Senate to begin what many of us even then were convinced would be a long and distinguished senatorial career.
■
William Winter was governor of Mississippi from 1980 to 1984. He was a legislative assistant for Stennis from 1950 to 1951.