West Virginians have always had five friends—God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, Carter's Little Liver Pills and Robert C. Byrd.
—Robert C. Byrd
Back in the hardscrabble coal country of the Mountain State, Robert Carlyle Byrd is al mighty, unbeatable and as reliable as Carter's famous little pills. Yet for many years some liberal opponents on Capitol Hill loathed him as much as any man in Washington. Defensive and insecure, driven and intense, he often said that the Senate was made up of "workhorses and show horses," a distinction clearly made in order of preference. Through sheer will and work, Byrd overcame poverty as well as charges that he was a racist and the Senate's Uriah Heep, the classic hypocrite in Dickens' David Copperfield. Now, after 25 years in Congress, Byrd is still not beloved by his colleagues, but he has their respect.
He has earned it. Says Byrd:
"I gave the Senate everything I have." A classic workaholic, Byrd rises at 6:30 every morning, then usually travels by chauffeur-driven limousine — one of his perks of leadership — from his modest suburban house in McLean, Va., to his office, where he is in business by 7:45. He then begins a breathless round of staff discussions, committee meetings, and appointments. The majority leader always eats lunch in his office, usually a bologna sandwich prepared by his wife Erma. Says he: "It saves time."
Besides, for Byrd, food is merely fuel, though he does confess an uncontrollable weakness for chocolate-covered cherries.
By 8 p.m. Byrd is on his way home, car rying a heavy briefcase.
He has few close friends in Washington and never takes a vacation. Says he: "I wouldn't enjoy going away and doing nothing." His scant leisure time is spent with his wife, watching TV news and interview programs. Erma, also an energetic worker, enjoys visiting their two married daughters in the Washington area and fussing over her six grandchildren.
On Sundays the couple often goes out for dinner, and after the meal Byrd may light up a cigar (a Montecristo or a La Corona).
The majority leader has never had many chances to get used to frills. Indeed, Robert C. Byrd did not even begin life as Robert C. Byrd. Born in North Wilkesboro, N.C., he was named after his father, Cornelius Calvin Sale, a furniture factory worker earning $5 a week; but his mother died during the flu pandemic of 1918, just before his first birthday. Her last wish: that Cornelius Jr., the youngest of five children, be raised by Sale's sister and her husband, the Byrds, who moved to Stotesbury, W. Va., when he was four. Renamed and unaware that he was adopted, Byrd met his real father for the first —and last—time when he was 15. His adoptive mother, wife of a coal miner, was a strict disciplinarian. "I never remember her kissing me," Byrd recalls, "except once." Young Byrd had misbehaved—he no longer recalls the transgression—but resourcefully came up with a ploy. Says he: "I asked her to kiss me. She did, and didn't whip me."