Sen. Robert Byrd, dead at 92

Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who rose from poor rural roots to become one of the most influential lawmakers of his era and the Senate's longest serving member, died Monday morning at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Va., his office said. He was 92.

Raised in a cabin without running water in a West Virginia coal town by a couple he later learned were not his natural parents, Byrd was prominent in American politics for more than 50 years. In a career that included two stints as Senate majority leader and decades as the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, he was known for his irascibility, legislative skill, power and ceaseless, successful efforts to steer federal spending to his impoverished state.

Byrd became the first lawmaker to earn a law degree while serving in Congress. A self-taught historian, he later wrote histories of the Senate and Roman Senate. For decades the Senate's preeminent parliamentarian, he frequently referred to the copy of the Constitution he kept in his pocket and was an emotional backer of legislative prerogatives.

From his successful campaign for the House in 1952, to his death, Byrd was hounded by his onetime Ku Klux Klan membership, for which he repeatedly called a mistake. Once picketed by anti-Vietnam protestors and loathed by the left, he gained some popularity late in life with young liberals for his attacks on former President George W. Bush's executive power views.

Like many past powerful senators, Byrd's influence was eventually limited by old age. He spent his late years in the Senate wheelchair bound, appearing increasingly infirm, especially after the death of his wife Erma in 2006. He gave up his chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2008 due to his health.

A workaholic, Byrd countered a limited early education with wide reading. He once told a reporter he did not go to professional sports games because he occupied himself with tasks like reading, in one year, all of Shakespeare's plays, the Old and New Testament and, twice, Webster's Abridged Dictionary.

A Democrat who touted humble origins, Byrd was deeply conservative. He celebrated votes he took in the 1950s to refer to god in the Pledge of Allegiance and on U.S. currency. He voted for amendments to ban flag burning and in the late 1960s attacked Vietnam War opponents. Later, he opposed the Iraq War as a dangerous departure from U.S. traditions.

Late in life, Byrd faulted the U.S. education system for peddling "touchy-feely, politically correct twaddle" and attacked "television, movies and rock music" for undermining the foundations of American society. He voted regularly for trade restrictions and against foreign aide. He once spoke on the Senate floor against cancellation of the television show "Gunsmoke."

Byrd was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr., in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina in 1917. His mother died of influenza during the 1918 epidemic. Following her wishes, Byrd's father separated him from his siblings and put him in the custody of an aunt and an uncle, Vlurma and Titus Byrd. Neither had more than a second grade education. They renamed him Robert Carlyle Byrd and raised him mostly in Stotesbury, West Virginia, where the senior Byrd worked in a mine. Robert Byrd learned of his actual parentage after high school.

Stotesbury was one of many towns in the area often referred to as a "camp," where the company had built up living quarters and stores around a mine, all of which it owned. Byrd was a small child in the early 1920s when coal workers attempting to unionize clashed violently with their employers and ultimately the federal troops. He was an adolescent when the United Mine Workers successfully organized West Virginia mines after the onset of the Depression and election of Franklin Roosevelt as president.

In his nearly 800-page autobiography, Child of the Appalachian Coalfields, Byrd quotes a former high school math teacher who in a 1970 interview speculated Byrd was "the only one I taught down there in five years who made it out of the valley." The teacher called Byrd "a good competitor" whose "relatively low station in life had something to do to motivate him." The teacher said he pictured Byrd becoming an "office man" or a clerk at a coal mine.

Byrd was the valedictorian of Mark Twain High School. In 1937 he married his high-school girlfriend, Erma Ora James. He eventually attended college, but after high school worked as a gas-station attendant, grocery-store clerk, shipyard welder during World War II and as a meat cutter before entering public life. A Baptist, Byrd also taught Sunday school and led bible study classes.

He was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1946 at 28 years old. He won a state Senate seat in 1950, then was elected to the House in 1952 -- an election marred by revelations of his Klan membership a decade earlier.

According to his autobiography, Byrd contacted the top national officer of the Ku Klux Klan in late 1941 or early 1942 to express his interest in joining the group. Another Klan official, in response, encouraged Byrd to form a local chapter and he did so, quickly finding 150 members. Byrd was elected the head of the chapter.

Byrd later wrote that he was motivated to join the Klan primarily because of its ardent anticommunism, but acknowledged he also felt "mistrust and suspicion" of blacks, an attitude inherited from his family. His father was also active in the Klan.

Byrd also said he viewed the organization as "an outlet for my talents and ambitions." Byrd acknowledged that it was a Klan official, impressed by his quick establishment of a chapter and leadership ability, first urged him to enter politics.

Byrd was elected to the Senate in 1958 after a campaign in which he employed his fiddle-playing ability in rural areas, frequently quoted the bible and ripped the Eisenhower administration for the recession.

He rarely faced stiff opposition in eight re-election campaigns, despite frequent attacks from the left and speculation, later proved wrong in the late-1960s that his later West Virginia colleague, Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller, then an upcoming state politician, would challenge him in a primary.

An ally of then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, D-Texas, Byrd won a spot on the Senate Appropriations Committee as a freshman. He quickly demonstrated an ability to recall budget details.

In his early years in Congress, Byrd focused largely on local matters, promoting the interests of the coal industry, local infrastructure projects and matters like attempting to force the sale of an unused government-owned synthetic rubber plant to create jobs.

In 1960, Byrd backed Sen. Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., in a crucial West Virginia presidential primary against frontrunner Sen. John F. Kennedy, D-Mass. Byrd hoped stopping Kennedy would help eventually throw the nomination to Johnson. Kennedy prevailed amid much attention on Byrd's past membership in the anti-Catholic Klan.

In Congress, Byrd was a conservative Democrat who opposed civil rights legislation. He joined other Southern Democrats in filibustering the 1964 civil rights bill, which they were unable to block. He opposed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But he backed a 1968 civil rights bill, part of a long shift left on such issues that tracked national opinions and began as he eyed a Senate leadership role.

Byrd was elected secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference in 1967 after outworking several opponents and gaining recognition as a key Senate force. In 1971, he became the majority whip, beating incumbent Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., by seven votes.

Byrd's conservative views led President Richard Nixon to reportedly consider him a Supreme Court nomination in 1971. Byrd was a long-shot candidate for the presidency in 1976, hoping for a chance at the nomination if the convention deadlocked.

After years as Democrats' frequent floor leader, Byrd replaced Sen. Mike Mansfield of Montana as majority leader in 1977, serving until 1981, when Democrats lost control of the chamber. He was the Democratic leader with the chamber under Republican control until 1987, when he became majority leader again until 1989. He was replaced by Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine after stepping down to become Appropriations Chairman.

"I severed my ties with that responsibility ... I'm where I want to be and doing what I want to do," Byrd said at the time.

In that job and in earlier years as a member of the panel, Byrd developed a talent for convincing federal agencies to relocate facilities to his state and for steering other federal spending there for highways, dams and educational institution. Dozens of federal projects and facilities in West Virginia bear Byrd's name.

In the 1990s Byrd clashed with the Clinton Administration on issues including the line-item veto, which he loudly opposed, and health care reform, over which the White House appeared to err in not consulting him early.