RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

Rutland native worked his way up political ladder

Former U.S. Sen. Robert T. Stafford, an environmental champion and namesake of the nation's education loan and emergency aid programs, died Saturday in his hometown of Rutland.

Stafford, 93, died about 9:30 a.m. at the Genesis HealthCare Mountain View Center. He was surrounded by his wife, four daughters and other family members, according to Neal Houston, a top Stafford aide for 28 years.

Stafford had faced various health problems in the past five years, including a bout with pneumonia in 2002.

"In recent months he just wasn't his normal self, but he was a strong, determined individual," said Houston, who visited Stafford on Friday.

The family will gather for a private service sometime this week and hold a public memorial in January, according to the Tossing Funeral Home, which expected specifics to be announced after Christmas.

Stafford's death in his hometown brought his life full circle. Born Aug. 8, 1913, in Rutland, he figured he'd spend his life as a local lawyer after graduating from the city's high school in 1931, Middlebury College in 1935 and Boston University law school in 1938.

Instead, he immediately won election as Rutland City prosecutor and went on to a 50-year political career as Rutland County state's attorney, Vermont attorney general, lieutenant governor, governor, congressman and U.S. senator until 1989.

Originally a conservative politician, Stafford became a leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, recalls Travis Jacobs, a Middlebury College history pro-fessor who is writing a biography on the senator.

Stafford's political shift mirrored that of the state over the past half century.

"I think Vermonters appreciated that I could change with them," Stafford said upon leaving public service.

Retiring to Rutland, Stafford remained in the spotlight. Congress honored his support for federal education funding by naming its national guaranteed student loan program after him. The government issued 14 million Stafford loans this year alone.

Congress also recognized Stafford's environmental efforts — he championed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and Superfund for cleanup of polluted land — by naming its disaster and emergency assistance program after him.

In 2000, the lifelong Republican sparked headlines by calling for civility during the state's contentious debate over marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

"It occurs to me that even if a same-sex couple unites in love, what harm does that do anybody or any society?" Stafford, then 87, said at a press conference with Vermont's congressional delegation. "I believe that love is one of the great forces in our society and in the state of Vermont. And everyone in this country is better off living in a society based on love."

On May 23, 2001, Stafford received a call from former President Bush, who asked if he'd convince James Jeffords — a fellow Rutlander who grew up to be a U.S. senator — to stay in the Republican Party. Stafford, engaged in an interview with the New York Times, made no promises. Jeffords left the GOP the next day.

Family man

When Robert Theodore Stafford would tell his life story, he often started with how he met his wife, Helen, 72 years ago on a blind date. He was a college senior; she was an incoming freshman. Four years later, after he passed the bar exam in the fall of 1938, they married and hit the road for their honeymoon.

"We drove to the University of Michigan to go to a football game," Helen Stafford always says with a laugh.

Returning to Rutland, her husband won election to the $600-a-year post of city prosecutor.

"You were to furnish your own office and stenographic assistants," he recalled in a 1993 interview.

The Staffords started a family: daughter Lynn was born in 1941, Susan in 1945, and twins Barbara and Dinah in 1950. He also began to build a political career, winning election as Rutland County state's attorney in 1946, Vermont attorney general in 1954, lieutenant governor in 1956, governor in 1958 and congressman in 1960.

Stafford had a subtle, sly and sometimes self-deprecating sense of humor. He often recalled the time when, as attorney general, he unsuccessfully argued a case before Vermont Chief Justice Olin Jeffords (father of James Jeffords). Stafford complained that arguing his case was "like butting my head against a stone wall," to which the chief justice replied, "Mr. Attorney General, no one could do that with less fear of personal injury than you."

Laughter aside, Stafford climbed the political ladder fast. He often said he couldn't slow his ascent.

He enjoyed being attorney general, but the lieutenant governor's office opened up when Consuelo Bailey, the first woman in the nation to win the post, declined to run for re-election. He enjoyed being lieutenant governor, but the governor's office opened up when Joseph Johnson decided to retire. Stafford enjoyed being governor, but got into a feud with then Democratic Congressman William Meyer and soon ran against him.

"You have to go when the chance comes," Stafford said in 1993.

Stafford, considered a statesman today, was never one to win in a landslide. Some fellow Republicans thought him too liberal, while many of the state's Democrats often considered him too conservative.

His 1958 gubernatorial victory was so close (719 votes) that Vermont legislators recounted almost 125,000 ballots themselves before swearing him in. He won his last U.S. Senate race — a 1982 contest against James Guest, now president of Consumer Reports — with just 50.27 percent of the vote.

Stafford had served in the U.S. House for a decade before he won appointment to the U.S. Senate upon the death of Sen. Winston Prouty in 1971. On that day, Stafford voted as a congressman, then flew on an Air Force plane to Vermont, received his Senate oath of office and returned to the capital to cast a ballot in his new chamber — making him perhaps the only person to vote in both houses of Congress on the same day.

Senate champion

Stafford went on to sponsor legislation that requires public schools to teach disabled children in regular classrooms, as well as helps poorer students attend college. He also helped adopt or strengthen landmark environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and legislation to clean asbestos in schools and toxic waste in communities nationwide.

Stafford chaired the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when Republicans controlled the chamber from 1981 through 1986. But he often had to defend his work against attack from his own party. The senator, for example, helped lead a successful effort to override President Reagan's veto of a strengthened Clean Water Act.

"I didn't particularly enjoy finding myself at odds with the president, but it had to be done," Stafford told the New York Times upon his retirement in 1988. "I was not very popular at the White House."

George Mitchell of Maine, a former Democratic senator and fellow Environment committee member, said of Stafford in the same article: "Against that tide he was able to lead the Congress in adopting landmark legislation. He was a great senator and one of the nicest people I have met in or out of politics."

Stafford also was forward thinking. Just before leaving office, he unsuccessfully introduced legislation to address the newly reported phenomenon of global warming. (Two decades later, Jeffords just stepped down after trying to win passage of a similar bill.)

Stafford and his wife retired to a small house in Rutland Town before relocating to The Gables assisted-living community. He was hospitalized with pneumonia in 2002. A year later, Stafford told a reporter he was having trouble with his memory. But the retired senator retained his graciousness and, as Houston said Saturday, his sense of humor.

"Even in the biggest crisis or problem, he had a sense of humor," the Stafford aide said.

Stafford has continued to grow in stature and popularity. His name appears not only on several federal programs, but also on such places as the Robert T. Stafford White Rocks National Recreation Area in the Green Mountain National Forest and schools including Rutland's Stafford Technical Center.

Jacobs, the Middlebury College history professor, says his biggest challenge in writing a biography of Stafford is summarizing some 15 hours of taped interviews and 1,000 boxes of official papers on file at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

"It's such a long career," says Jacobs, who last visited Stafford on his 93rd birthday in August. "Robert Stafford had a distinguished record as a Vermont statesman, and his reputation will continue to gain well-deserved recognition."



Contact Kevin O'Connor at kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com.