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worth repeating |
Max Cleland was on campus April 19 to present the first Max Cleland Alive Day Award. Some excerpts: “I would say to you that the original ‘Alive Day’ was a miracle—that I ever actually survived, had it not been for two or three people, who came and gave me first aid. Then the helicopter came, and I was given a shot of morphine, then an IV and put into the helicopter. I was aware through the whole thing, and wondering how in the world I was going to survive. I was helicoptered out about 50 miles east . . . to a surgical hospital, a M.A.S.H. unit, and that’s where, after about five hours and 42 pints of blood, my life was saved—only for the rest of my life to wonder why I was alive. . . . Politics for me became my way I could turn my pain into someone else’s gain. “One of my proud moments was, after a year and a half of being in the hospital, rehabilitation and therapy and so forth, I came on my artificial limbs and stood in Dick Russell’s office and was proud to say I was going home. Sen. Russell had expressed an interest in me from the time that I had been wounded. And so we had become friends. . . . “And so I went into Sen. Russell’s office, and I stood there. It took him about a minute and a half to walk across the thick carpet in his room. He was struggling with emphysema, and he could hardly get his breath. This was like 1969; two years later, Sen. Russell died. But he was one of my heroes in life. And he came across that carpet, and he said, ‘What are you going to do?’ And I said, ‘I may go home and go into public service.’ I remember he said that’s good. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘take your job seriously, but not yourself.’ I’ll never forget, the president pro tem of the Senate, our Dick Russell, saying that, as the essence of public service. Take your job seriously—but not yourself.” |
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—Beth
Roberts |
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