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Senator Byrd

Leadership.      Character.      Commitment.

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May 26, 2006

Honoring Our Fallen Heroes

May 29 would have been Senator and Mrs. Byrd's 69th wedding anniversary. Mrs. Byrd passed away in March after battling a long illness. Senator Byrd offered these thoughts on marriage and their anniversary.

On Saturday, May 29, 1937, I was working in the meat shop at the Koppers Store in Stotesbury, West Virginia. At 5 p.m., I closed up my department, went home, put on my best suit, actually my only suit, and headed off to the house of the local Hard Shell Baptist preacher, U. G. Nichols, in the little town of Sophia, four miles away.

There I met my high-school sweetheart, Erma Ora James, the daughter, whose coal miner father taught me to play old time tunes on my fiddle.

At 6 o’clock that evening, Preacher Nichols pronounced Erma and me “husband and wife.” That union endured for 68 years, 9 months and 24 days.

This May 29, Erma and I would have celebrated our sixty-ninth wedding anniversary.

The Scriptures tell us that, "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord." (Proverbs 18:22) On that blessed day in 1937, I certainly found a "good thing." In looking back on the life that Erma and I shared, I can say that I must have been favored by the Lord.

“The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth,” wrote the English dramatist, John Ford, five centuries ago. How right he was. When I think of Erma, I still think of the beautiful line from a song that I sang when I played the fiddle: "She came like an angel from the sky.”

For almost sixty-nine years, this angel not only tolerated me, she was a guiding light for me.

She was my teacher. She taught me how to drive an automobile.

She was my banker and my accountant. Very early in our marriage, I gave her my wallet and asked her to handle our family’s finances. What a job she did! From the meager paychecks I got very early in our marriage, to the healthier ones I received when I was the Senate Majority Leader, she bought our groceries, paid the bills, saved some money for a rainy day, and gave me a monthly allowance.

Erma was my greatest critic and my greatest supporter. When I was serving in the West Virginia State Legislature, and carrying twenty-two credit hours at Marshall College (now Marshall University), she managed our grocery store, took care of our children, and kept the "home fires burning." When I was attending law school while serving in the United States Congress, she would drive from our home in Arlington, meet me on Capitol Hill around 5:30 p.m., give me my supper in a paper bag, and I would eat while she drove me to the American University law school for my classes at 6:00 p.m. Then she would return later that evening to pick me up and take me home. I often pointed out that Erma put three kids through school, "our two daughters and me."

Erma was the mother of the two most wonderful children a man could ever have. My daughters, Mona Carole and Marjorie Ellen, grew up to become outstanding women and mothers themselves. Like me, they owe so much to the marvelous woman they called mother.

Through the years, Erma was my constant companion. She was there with me on my campaign trails. She was with me in 1958, when, as a Congressman, I made a tour of the economically depressed areas of the country. She was with me in April 1969 in Mexico City, Mexico, when I served as a delegate to the Mexico-United States Interparliamentary Conference. She was with me on my trip to Europe in the summer of 1978. She was always there, at my side. She is with me now.

For nearly sixty-nine years, Erma was my comfort in times of sorrow. She was stoic and brave and she never flinched in times of trouble.

We have lived and loved together
Through many changing years;
We have shared each other’s gladness
And wept each other’s tears;
I have known ne’re a sorrow
That was long unsoothed by thee;
For thy smiles can make a summer
Where darkness else would be.
(Charles Jeffries, “We have Lived and Loved Together”)

This quiet, self-contained, coal miner’s daughter confronted demonstrators and protesters in front of our home. She spent many evenings alone, when I had to stay late at the Capitol attending to the Nation’s business. While she always was most comfortable with the unassuming, down-to-earth folks back home in the hills of West Virginia, she met with and entertained the high and mighty, the powerful and the wealthy of this Nation and of foreign lands because it was important to her husband.

She did it all with an innate graciousness, an incredible patience, and a soft, warm smile. She was a remarkable lady of great wisdom and great gentleness. Yet, she could be tough when she saw injustice or unfairness.

I was always so proud of her. In fact, the entire state of West Virginia took pride in her. That is why she was named "West Virginia Daughter of the Year" in 1990, and "West Virginia’s Mother of the Year" a few years later.

Marriage is a sacred institution. More than the result of repeating a few vows, marriage is an oath before God, a sacred and noble contract between a man and a woman. It is a glorious commitment, a commitment of love, and a commitment of caring.

It is a commitment that Erma and I honored and enjoyed for almost 69 years, through the bad times as well as the good, down the rough roads as well as the smooth ones. Our life’s journey was not always smooth and easy traveling. In fact, at times it was as bumpy and as curvy as a West Virginia mountain road.

But, over the years, Erma and I learned that the challenge of a marriage is the ability to overcome imperfections, not ignore them. We always remembered our devotion to each other despite our shortcomings, and despite the difficulties we encountered along the way.

When we married on that blessed Saturday evening nearly sixty-nine years ago, we were so poor that I could not even take a day off from work. We did not have the money for a honeymoon, so, after the wedding, we went to a square dance. On Monday morning, I was back at work at the meat counter in the coal mining camp of Stotesbury.

But, although our fortunes did change, allowing us the opportunity to celebrate our anniversary in more special ways, but my Erma never changed.

From being the wife of a meat cutter at the Koppers Store in Stotesbury, West Virginia, to being the wife of the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Erma never stopped being herself. Her enduring patience and her steadfast support were the stabilizing constants in our marriage.

Could I have made this journey without her? Could I have accomplished as much without her? I think not. The more important point is that I did it with her, and I would not have had it any other way.

She was God’s greatest gift to me.

I don’t know what I ever did to deserve her, but somewhere along the line, I must have done something especially good. The Good Lord smiled down on me at 6 o’clock on May 29, 1937.

“An old sweetheart of mine! - - Is this her presence here with me,
Or but a vain creation of a lover’s memory?
A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air,
Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?

Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true --
The semblance of the old love and the substance of the new,--
The then of changeless sunny days -- the now of shower and shine
But Love forever smiling -- as that old sweetheart of mine.
(James Whitcomb Riley, "An Old Sweetheart of Mine")

I want to simply say that I give thanks for a long and good marriage, and the richness which that hallowed institution has given to my life because of one very extraordinary woman, Erma James Byrd.