Cord Byrd: “today is the 134th birthday of the State which I have been so pleased and so proud and so privileged and so honored to…”

“today is the 134th birthday of the State which I have been so pleased and so proud and so privileged and so honored to represent in Congress since January 1953. Born of the turmoil of the Civil War, West Virginia has never had an easy time of it. Although blessed with great beauty and rich in natural resources, my State's rugged terrain and isolated geography have worked to make her people a breed apart. Their independent views--they are a mountain people; mountain people traditionally have independent views, whether they live in Switzerland or Afghanistan or in Scotland or in West Virginia--their independent views, their impoverishment, their fierce loyalty to their communities, to their State and to their country have made them fodder for bad jokes, degrading sitcoms and derogatory nicknames. Well, I am here to tell those who would perpetuate such hackneyed stereotypes that it is they--it is they--who are backward, because in West Virginia's hollows and on her mountains live some of the finest people in all of God's great creation. For the most part, West Virginians are religious. They don't have, as some would like to portray, rattlesnakes in their church services. They are traditional in their outlook, they are reverent about their tried- and-true customs and patriotic about their Nation.”