February 11, 1977
Page 4485
PHIL HART: THE BEST OF US ALL
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, it was 18 years ago this January that I first took my seat in the Senate.
It was a memorable day — filled with the excitement of a new adventure, and the anticipation of young men looking into the future with supreme confidence.
We were the Class of 1958. We became friends, and those of us who are still here treasure the memories of those who have left and the special relationship we all enjoyed.
The Senate Chamber is noticeably emptier with each departure.
None is missed more than Phil Hart.
He was my seat mate in this back row for 18 years. We spent hundreds of hours in these seats, sharing our views on the issues before us, watching our colleagues in action, participating in the debates, discussing parliamentary strategy.
He would often observe, in the course of a particularly heated debate on the floor, "We attach a significance to what we do in the Senate that is not shared by anyone outside this Chamber."— a sense of humility that should commend itself to each of us.
We both had young families who went home for the summer months. Phil and I and Gene McCarthy spent long summer evenings together, dining wherever it pleased us, enjoying our summer bachelorhoods together.
Phil was a very special friend. Now he is gone, and each time I sit in this chair, the Senate becomes a lonely place.
The Senate needed Phil Hart. He made it a better place. He was convinced of his own inadequacy, determined to rise above it, and, without realizing it, became the best of us all.
I do not find it easy to say what is in my heart today. Perhaps I can do it best by reading something I said last summer.
It was a time when Phil was visibly wasting away. Jane and I invited a few friends to share the evening with him. It was a memorable evening, filled with good talk, and the love and warmth of friendship. Phil asked me to record the toast I gave that evening so that his Jane might hear it.
This is what I said:
First, I would like to welcome you to our home. Jane and I are delighted that you could all come. This has been our home since the spring of 1961. We have lived here longer than we have lived in any other house. Our youngest child was born here. We don't have many parties. We are having this one because we love Phil Hart.
I have known Phil for more than twenty years — longer than we have been in the Senate. He is my dearest friend in the Senate. I love him more than anyone outside my family.
So Jane and I thought it would be nice to gather a few friends congenial to Phil as testimony of that friendship. It is not my intent to make a long speech, but rather I have tried to find some other way to symbolize what Phil means to me and to others of us.
What I selected, finally, are these sea gulls.
The sea gull is not the noblest of birds in all its habits. The species which is identified with Maine and New England is often called the "laughing gull" because of its strident call which sounds like coarse laughter.
But the sea gull which inhabits Maine's coastline is a symbol of the oceans to us in Maine — and the tempestuous forces which lie under the surface and the distant lands beyond the furthest horizon which we can see on a clear day.
The sea gull is at home in those vast expanses and those great forces. It is not confined to the sea — but follows our rivers and streams and lakes into the lonely wilderness forests which still inhabit so much of the northern regions of Maine.
It does not fear the unknown or the elements with which it lives.
In flying, it is a thing of grace and beauty.
It is not a perfect symbol — or the complete symbol — of the decency, integrity, courage and compassion which we all identify with Phil.
But in its grace, beauty and willingness to dare the unknown, it is the kind of free spirit we see in Phil Hart.
So, I present them to him, as a symbol of the friendship which has brought you all to this house this evening.