Tribute to Mary McGrory

TRIBUTE TO MARY MCGRORY

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Nevada for trying to accommodate a number of us who are anxious to come to the floor and say a few words about a great woman.

America lost one of its greatest journalists last night. Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory filed her last story at George Washington Hospital. Mary McGrory has been described by her peers as a "luminous writer," "the clearest thinker in the business," "a pioneering force in today's journalism," "a lyrical writer."

She hailed from the same Boston Irish roots as Tip O'Neill. She found the love of her life in the written word. She made it to the top in a man's world of reporting and sharp-elbow politics. There are those who ply their journalistic trade with blunt instruments and short-lived prose, but there are a few who make their word march and sing. Mary McGrory was one of those few.

I first heard her name 38 years ago when I was a college intern in the Senate. I can recall Senator Paul Douglas' personal secretary telling the Senator Mary McGrory was waiting to see him. Thirty years later, elected to the Senate, my staff would tell me, Mary McGrory is waiting to see you.

One could not help but be drawn to Mary, her Irish wit, her boundless energy, even in the later years. Her blunt criticism of hypocrisy and venality were a joy to witness.

It was my good fortune to be a member of Mary McGrory's "fruitcake club." It was a loose conspiracy drawn together for dinner at Mary's home at least once a year to celebrate the much honored but seldom eaten fruitcake which Senator Max Cleland sent to Mary at Christmas. We would all arrive late after votes on the House and Senate floor-Max Cleland, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York, Phil and Melanne Verveer, longtime friends and a few new aspirants to the club. What followed were endless rounds of wine and a beef roast that always seemed to need a return trip to the oven.

After dinner, we would move to the living room surrounded by the mementos of Mary's storied career, reminders of her proud mention on Richard Nixon's enemy's list, rollcalls from the Watergate hearing and more. Over her desk, where she sat down to write at home, was a poem by her beloved W B. Yeats entitled "Adam's Curse."

I spotted it and started to read it one evening at the party, and Mary saw me. She walked over and recited from memory this part of the poem:

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.

Mary McGrory understood the burden of good writing. Yeats tells us in this poem that producing something beautiful is not easy, though it has the curse of looking easy. Mary McGrory did indeed make it look easy. Mary's poetry and beauty were shared in her word and in her life, and many of us were blessed to be a very small part of it.

Before she was cruelly silenced by a stroke last year, Mary would write and speak with the emotion of a poet's heart. I recall our last dinner when she turned and recited to me one of her favorite poems by William Butler Yeats. It is entitled "When You Are Old."

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

In the clear night sky over our Nation's Capital there will always be one bright star called Mary.

I yield the floor.