WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Tom Udall today honored the late Dennis Chavez with remarks on the Senate floor marking the 122nd anniversary of the legendary New Mexico senator’s birthday.
Chavez served in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1935, where he served until his death in 1962. He remains the longest-serving Hispanic senator in the history of the U.S. Senate.
Below are Udall’s remarks as prepared for delivery:
“Mr. President. Today I rise to pay tribute to a man who served New Mexico – and the entire country – with distinction for more than three decades in Washington. A man who dedicated his life to being, a ‘champion for the least among us.’
“That man is Senator Dennis Chavez, the nation’s longest-serving Hispanic U.S. Senator. This month we mark the 122nd anniversary of his birth.
“In everything he did, Senator Chavez showed his concern for the underdog. He fought for public education, because he knew what it could do to help the children of struggling families become successful adults. He supported farmers, because he knew how difficult life can be in the small communities where the trains don’t stop and the roads don’t go. And he fought for civil rights, because Chavez believed that equality of opportunity is the core of the American creed.
“Dennis Chavez fought for the underdog because he was an underdog. Born into poverty in Valencia County, New Mexico, when the state was still part of Mexico, Chavez walked a long and difficult road to the pinnacle of political power. A child of an isolated small town, he would see the world and help to shape it. A high school dropout, he earned a law degree and became a lawmaker. A victim of ethnic discrimination, he wrote legislation that would eventually make employment discrimination illegal and then unthinkable.
“Dennis Chavez was a man of conviction. He was also a man of courage. At the height of anti-Communist sentiment in the 1950s, Senator Chavez was one of the first to denounce the activities of Joseph McCarthy.
“Here’s what he said on the Senate floor during the McCarthy hearings in 1950: ‘I should like to be remembered as a man who raised a voice, and I devoutly hope not a voice in the wilderness, at a time in the history of this body when we seem bent upon placing limitations on the freedom of the individual. I would consider all of the legislation which I have supported meaningless if I were to sit idly by, silent, during a period which may go down in history as an era when we permitted the curtailment of our liberties, a period when we quietly shackled the growth of men’s minds.’
“My father, who died last month, served in the U.S. Congress with Dennis Chavez in the late 50s and early 60s. He always described Senator Chavez as a visionary and a man of courage.
“When Senator Chavez left this world in 1962, he was eulogized by Vice President Lyndon Johnson. In that eulogy, Vice President Johnson remembered Senator Chavez as ‘a man who recognized that there must be a champion for the least among us.’ And four years later, when the U.S. Congress placed Senator Chavez’s statue in Statuary Hall, Reverend John Spence summed up the man nicely. Senator Chavez, Spence said, was ‘ever a champion of the underdog, the poor and oppressed.’
“But it’s the quote inscribed at the bottom of that statue that best reveals the legacy of Senator Chavez. Written in three languages – Spanish, English and Navajo – it reads simply: ‘He left a mark that will never be forgotten in the hopes that others would follow.’
“El Senador makes me proud to be a New Mexican and humbled to follow in his footsteps as a senator representing the great state of New Mexico. America is a better place because of Senator Chavez. For that, we honor him today.”
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