ustxtxb_obs_1989_07_14_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

for granted, children playing by the seashore. Yarborough made by law 77,000 acres around Guadalupe Peak our common property at $21 an acre, a price never to be seen again. The parts of the Big Thicket that were saved for us , and our prosperity he Yarborough saved. He did it himself; he had a little help, but he had lots of opposition. As the Rand McNally book, The National Parks, declares, “Senator Yarborough was a rare species himself. Most politicians like to bring their state shipyards and reservoirs. Ralph Yarborough worked to bring Texas \(three national our children’s parks, he had done this for our children and our children’s children. This man here. Who is he, really? He has told us in many ways that are not words. He marched in the sun in Atlanta in April 1968 in the funeral procession for Martin Luther King. He was one of only three Texans on the last train Robert Kennedy rode. He was the only Senator for Eugene McCarthy when that cause was the prow of history. As Larry Goodwyn says in his essay for the program at your hand, “The great truth about Senator Ralph Yarborough is that he has lived an authentic public life: in that most democratic of all political phrases, he was ‘a man of the republic.’ ” This is the man the real special interests thought they had picked off; but you do not pick off a man like this. You here tonight who are younger, perhaps by far, than Ralph and Opal Yarborough cannot by experiences you have lived know even the little of the whole story of the period Yarborough prevailed in that those of us who were watching at the time thought we knew. But let the young people know this now: that but for Yarborough’s work, his courage, his values, and above all what he got done, we in Texas could not now conceivably so strongly advance together toward a better future. This, you see, is not a night about the past, it is not a night about Yarborough’s leadership in the past, it is about his leadership now and it’s about the movement of the future. “This is not something that is done, as Ethel Koeninger said to me the other morning, “it’s not done.” This is not an ending; this is a beginning. The soul of our movement is coming back alive. We take into ourselves the best of those we admire and love. When we have done this they are always in us. Yarborough has led us in the giving of decency and kindliness to our place and time and we will not lose that. As he has not lost us, we will not lose him. He is in us, crankiness and all, and he will always be in us and through us our descendants. This is the way the human race advances. A politician, even a great one, has to cover his or her flanks. guard against attacks from the rear, watch how he or she says things, and carefully time every difficult move. Yarborough as a Senator knew much, much more than a Senator can say, and the politician’s strategies were tenacious in him still are. But I think tonight he is ready to say it all. I proudly present to you who are the best of Texas the La’Follette of Texas, the senior Senator of the 20th century from Texas, Ralph Yarborough. The Road Taken By Ralph Yarborough Madam Chairperson, Senator Kennedy, Ronnie Dugger, public officials, party officials, distinguished guests, all, for any person who has come here tonight to cast his lot with us for democracy is a distinguished person. ‘ Fellow Democrats, fellow Texans, fellow Americans, all of you know that I as one person could not possibly have done all of the things, won these accolades that have been given me by Ronnie Dugger, that he has heaped upon me, and so I could not. But I represent the people of Texas and I accept these for them, for the people, not for myself alone, but for the people of Texas and for all who had a part in causing these things to happen. I will pause before I open my speech to pay tribute, special tribute, to those who meant so much and helped so much in this. First of all, a devoted, highly intelligent, wonderful wife of 61 years, my wife Opal Yarborough. Without her help it could not have been done. But there was other help. When I announced my program for progress for the people of Texas, the establishment of Texas was outraged. They said we will crush that fast, but they reckoned without their host. First and foremost was the family. I had eight adult brothers and sisters, each with a family, and they formed a solid phalanx around me and when they tried to crush us we were too strong. And then there was a phalanx of the Yarborough lawyers inside that phalanx of eight families, there were 12 Yarborough lawyers, two brothers of mine, my son, myself, four nephews, three great-nephews, and a great-niece; 12 Yarborough lawyers, a phalanx inside of a phalanx. They could not break our lines. So I want to pay tribute to them: without that family, alone I could not have done one-tenth of what was accomplished, and we did accomplish some things. Now I want to stop to pay tribute to an inspiration that I received early in life in addition to that. I served under the last progressive Governor we had in Texas, the greatest governor of the 20th century, Jimmy Allred. I saw, I learned from him, Jimmy Allred had four brothers, all lawyers. In all of five campaigns, I saw what five brothers could do tackling this Texas establishment. He became the last progressive and the greatest governor of the 20th century. It was a family affair. So I had an example before me. In my drives across Texas in those campaigns, often alone at night, leaving a dinner at night, driving across the state by myself for breakfast the next morning, I began to wonder, “What am I doing out here driving alone night after night in Texas, looking up at the stars?” And then I had a vision, a thought, as I looked up, I envisioned as I looked up there the whole human race from millions of years past is a great cavalcade in the sky, and I thought, “Out in front are the philosophers, the dreamers, the poets, the doers, they are the outriders, they are the scouts out there. Then come the vast masses of the people. They have the courts and the lawyers and the police and all, they keep the order on the march, but the thinkers, the dreamers out there, they’re the ones envisioning that.” I thought, “I will give up thoughts of a judicial career, I will join those outriders and try to help lead people into a better tomorrow.” And that’s where my real political thoughts developed, driving the roads of Texas alone. And so in those long rides and from that unknown beginning of the human race to an unknown ending, we will have much on the march, and we watch for , a better world as we meet that order. I resolved that I would join those scouts, and I did. And it wasn’t an easy life. When the walls of hate and reaction would not come tumbling down, and what Ronnie Dugger outlined now, when those walls would not come tumbling down a million people of Texas just picked me up and threw me over that iron fence onto the fertile field of the United States Senate in a time when it was a great liberal progressive Senate, and I found friends there. Well, coming from a family of brothers without whose help I could not have been elected, I saw, the Kennedy brothers. I felt an affinity for them. There were three Kennedy brothers; I joined up with them; I received their help passing all of those laws. Those Kennedy brothers, all three of them, helped me on every one of those bills. Let me say to those Kennedy brothers: I added up the other night the years I served on the labor and public welfare committee in those 13 years I served with those three Kennedy brothers, and add up the years I served, sometime with two of them there was a total of 15 years. That’s where the action was. That’s why Ted Kennedy took that chairmanship he has gotten now, where you do things for people on that labor and public welfare committee, health, education, food stamps, all of those things, and 80 percent of it comes through that committee. That’s why he went over and took that chairmanship. And so with the help of the Kennedys 10 JULY 14, 1989