Wellstone

As a girl from small town Minnesota, the thought of working in the United States Senate in Washington, DC for my rabble rousing hero Senator Paul Wellstone was beyond belief.

I moved to Minnesota in 1983 and I was married in 1984. For a long time, I thought my life was about carpooling to work with my husband every day, collecting a paycheck to help support our family while raising our children together; thinking that someday I would retire when my boss retired. My professional life came to a sudden stop after I was wrongfully fired from my job in 1995. Shortly after my devastating experience, Senator Paul Wellstone came into my life by sending me a letter indicating that he was furious about people like me not participating in politics.

I was an intern on the Paul Wellstone Campaign in 2002. At the time I was a new mother, working full time and trying to finish my college degree. I was so lucky to work for a Senator like Paul, who didn't always do the popular thing, but always did the right thing. Along with everyone else who worked on that campaign and his constituents, you always knew where he stood. I thank him for being my progressive mentor, and think of Paul often when I need a moral/political compass. I am now living in the wonderful progressive city of Durham, North Carolina. I believe my work would do Paul and Shelia proud. I'm working as an organizer for a progressive community based organization that fights for social and economic justice.

There is not a s single day that goes by when I do not think of Paul Wellstone. My name is Larry Smith, a public school educator who, like Paul, I battle Multiple Sclerosis. I am the son of 4 generations of coal miners in this nestle of Appalachia in Western Maryland. Although I never met Paul Wellstone in person, like many Americans, I feel as though he knew me. When he ran his first US Senate race in 1990 for the US Senate, I was so moved by the fighting spirit of this, "true progressive", that I wrote letters to the editor around various newspapers in Minnesota supporting him.

Paul never lost touch with regular people. He always remembered the names of our children and asked how they were doing. It wasn't a formality. He deeply cared about our families and knew that he had a responsibility to work for bettering regular people's lives. Paul rarely took vacations. One year, a family vacation was planned on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Paul talked about it for weeks. I saw him a few days before his vacation and wished him a happy time. He looked in my eyes and said that he was headed to the Red River Valley instead, as the flood victims needed his attention more than he needed a vacation.

Paul recognized that no politics can serve the needs of justice without great hope. And as a leader, he recognized that we needed strategies for hope; coupled with a vision that extends to the far neighbor as well as the near, and that recognizes much of our work will be realized only in the fullness of time, and perhaps by others.

Ten years after the tragic deaths of Senator Paul Wellstone and Sheila Wellstone, their daughter and staff members, we offer this eulogy, originally delivered November 13, 2002 in Washington, DC, by Senator Wellstone's Chief of Staff, Colin McGinnis.

In 1994, I came to Washington as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow. After an incredible 10 week orientation, meeting with the luminaries of health policy, and living through the 1994 elections and flip of the Congress to the Republicans, I began my quest to find an office in which to work for the remainder of the year. I interviewed with all of the Democrats on the Labor and Finance Committees- I was (and am) a nephrologist deeply concerned about the care of the complex, chronically ill, and underserved. Once I had met with all of the staff folks and some members, I remember my meeting with Paul's staff and the joy I felt at having found my home. 1994-5 with Paul and Sheila, Alex Clyde- a first year (but incredibly knowledgeable and experienced) health LA- was one of the seminal times of my life and for my family.

I worked on the '96 reelection campaign as the statewide college campus coordinator, traveling all around the state in to start up Students for Wellstone groups and to register new student voters. That's me in the middle of the attached photo, holding my Wellstone sign high! What a bunch of crazy kids we were back then. I always relished the opportunities I had to travel with Paul and Sheila during those days, and to meet up with them on college campuses all around this great state. I learned so much from both of them along the way - not only from the things they said, but especially from how they lived their lives. They felt the struggles of ordinary Minnesotans so profoundly and sincerely that they literally couldn't help but fight for them with every ounce of their beings.