Here is the Full text of the President Obama Eulogy at The Memorial Funeral Service and Celebration of Life for Senator Robert Byrd Given on July 2nd 2010 at the State House In West Virginia.
“It’s a life that immeasurably improved the lives of West Virginians. Of course, Robert Byrd was a deeply religious man, a Christian. And so he understood that our lives are marked by sins as well as virtues, failures as well as success, weakness as well as strength.
We know there are things he said — and things he did — that he came to regret. I remember talking about that the first time I visited with him. He said, “There are things I regretted in my youth. You may know that.” And I said, “None of us are absent some regrets, Senator. That’s why we enjoy and seek the grace of God.”
And as I reflect on the full sweep of his 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent towards justice. Like the Constitution he tucked in his pocket, like our nation itself, Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality, and that is a capacity to change, a capacity to learn, a capacity to listen, a capacity to be made more perfect.
Over his nearly six decades in our Capitol, he came to be seen as the very embodiment of the Senate, chronicling its history in four volumes that he gave to me just as he gave to President Clinton. I, too, read it. I was scared he was going to quiz me. (Laughter.)
But as I soon discovered, his passion for the Senate’s past, his mastery of even its most arcane procedures, it wasn’t an obsession with the trivial or the obscure. It reflected a profoundly noble impulse, a recognition of a basic truth about this country that we are not a nation of men, we are a nation of laws. Our way of life rests on our democratic institutions. Precisely because we are fallible, it falls to each of us to safeguard these institutions, even when it’s inconvenient, and pass on our republic more perfect than before.
Considering the vast learning of this self-taught Senator — his speeches sprinkled with the likes of Cicero and Shakespeare and Jefferson — it seems fitting to close with one of his favorite passages in literature, a passage from Moby Dick:
“And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than any other bird upon the plain, even though they soar.”
Robert Byrd was a mountain eagle, and his lowest swoop was still higher than the other birds upon the plain. (Applause.)
May God bless Robert C. Byrd. May he be welcomed kindly by the righteous Judge. And may his spirit soar forever like a Catskill eagle, high above the Heavens. Thank you very much.”
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