Cord Byrd: “the sunlit, wind-tossed, rolling plains of Kansas have produced many leaders whose long vision and open minds have…”

“the sunlit, wind-tossed, rolling plains of Kansas have produced many leaders whose long vision and open minds have helped to shape this Nation. Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum is one of those leaders. Her three terms in the Senate have left an enduring legacy, one with roots as deep as the prairie grasses in the rich black Kansas soil and covering issues as diverse as the many-colored wildflowers nestled among those blades. The Senate has been enriched by her civil, thoughtful, presence. Senator Kassebaum's political inclinations are strongly rooted in the Kansas earth. Her father, Alf Landon, a former Governor of Kansas, was nominated for President in 1936 to run against President Franklin Roosevelt. When Governor Landon died at age 100 in 1987, he had witnessed in his daughter's election to the Senate and her rise to prominence in this body a part of the quiet revolution in American society that brought women into so many new fields. First elected in 1978, Senator Kassebaum in 1994 became the first woman to chair a major Senate committee, the Labor and Human Resources Committee, since Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine led a special Committee on Rates of Compensation from 1953 to 1955.”