Cord Byrd: “somebody once asked Ralph Waldo Emerson the secret to success. And after a brief pause, Emerson replied, ``Make yourself…”

“somebody once asked Ralph Waldo Emerson the secret to success. And after a brief pause, Emerson replied, ``Make yourself necessary to somebody.'' I know that I speak for all of our colleagues in expressing to our friend and colleague, Senator Alan Simpson, from Wyoming, our most sincere sympathies on the death, on January 24, of his mother, Lorna Kooi Simpson. As we all know, Mr. President, God only gives us one mother. Plutarch tells us that Alexander the Great made his mother many magnificent presents, and Antipater once wrote a letter to Alexander, a long letter full of heavy complaints against her. And when he had read it, Alexander said, ``Antipater knows not that one tear of a mother can blot out 1,000 such complaints.'' A little less than two years ago, Senator Simpson lost his father, former United States Senator Milward L. Simpson. The loss of loved ones is always a blow to us, but to lose one's parents over such a brief span of time is doubly hard, and I want Senator Simpson and his family to know that we understand something of their grief in these days. But a degree of the sense of loss at the death of Mrs. Simpson is assuaged upon contemplating the life and accomplishments of this great lady. Throughout her life, Lorna Simpson was dedicated to ``making herself necessary'' to others, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson--to hundreds and hundreds of other people--in practically everything that she did.”