Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Colleagues, President Clinton pay respects to deceased Texas senator
By Victoria Rossi
Daily Texan (U. Texas)
06/01/2006

(U-WIRE) AUSTIN, Texas — Some of former U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's highest achievements were lauded Tuesday when dignitaries from across the country and across party lines gathered at the First Presbyterian Church in Houston to pay their respects.

Bentsen represented Texas in the U.S. House for almost three decades and served as former President Bill Clinton's treasury secretary during his first two years as president. In 1994, Bentsen retired from public life to spend more time with his family, Clinton said. He suffered two debilitating strokes in 1998 and was wheelchair-bound until his death on May 23. He was 85.

"He lived a rich, full life with discipline, energy, grace and joy," Clinton said. "He inspired admiration and respect and, as far as I know, absolutely no resentment."

Clinton credited Bentsen with putting together his administration's economic plan, which led to the "longest peacetime expansion" in U.S. history, he said.

As a conservative Democrat, Bentsen worked to improve trade relations with Mexico and helped pass a plan providing aid to Russia's post-Soviet economy at a time when "we could have gone back to the Cold War," said Clinton. All of which, he said, "had a massive positive impact."

He was also "one of the very few candidates for the vice presidency in the history of the republic who lost and came out better than he went in," Clinton said, garnering laughs. Bentsen's 1988 presidential running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, was present in the audience.

Dukakis was one of the 60 honorary pallbearers named on the back of the service bulletin. Clinton, Lady Bird Johnson, former Secretary of State James Baker and former President George H.W. Bush, whom Bentsen once defeated in a congressional election, were also listed.

The Rev. William Vanderbloemen remembered Bentsen attending Sunday services, in his wheelchair at the time, with a resilience that exemplified what Vanderbloemen called the positive, "solution side of life."

Those same characteristics could be traced throughout Bentsen's life, Vanderbloemen said. As an example, he read the audience a letter Bentsen wrote his father as a B-24 bomber pilot in World War II.

"This morning, another day nearer to my return home," the letter ended.

U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Hillary Clinton, former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay were among the several well-known political figures sitting close to the pulpit.

The crowd at the memorial service filled up the church's main sanctuary and spilled into a second one, where mourners watched the service from a TV screen. A private burial attended by family members was held earlier that morning.

Bentsen is survived by his wife, Beryl Ann, three children and seven grandchildren.

[ Back to Student Voices ]