EKB News

WEST VIRGINIA....
Several hundred mourners for Sen. Robert C. Byrd were left waiting outside the Capitol complex Friday after the Secret Service closed entrances to the Capitol lawn prior to the start of the late senator's public memorial service. During the service, Byrd was remembered as a tireless advocate for West Virginia, a scholar, a fiddle player and the guardian of the U.S. Senate. The service drew current and former Presidents as well as average West Virginians who wanted to show their affection and loyalty toward the man who represented them in Washington for six decades. President Obama called Byrd a Senate icon, a party leader, an elder statesman and a very dear friend. He said Byrd possessed the capacity to change, the capacity to listen and the capacity to be more perfect. Vice President Joe Biden, who served with Byrd in the Senate for nearly 40 years, spoke of Byrd’s love for the institution, saying while he and his colleagues revered the Senate, Byrd elevated it. Former President Bill Clinton said Byrd wanted every Senator to be the best Senator he or she could be. Clinton spoke directly to Byrd’s controversial and brief membership in the KKK in the 1940’s saying, “Maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done and he spent the rest of his life trying to make it up.” Byrd’s casket, draped in a West Virginia flag and topped by an arrangement of red flowers, was brought down the steps from the Capitol Rotunda by a military guard and placed at the center of a landing on the steps near the speaker’s podium before being taken back to Washington, D.C. by late Friday. A funeral service is scheduled for Tuesday. Byrd will be buried in an Arlington, Virginia cemetery next to his late wife, Erma.