Max Cleland: “one of the first times I ever came to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, a location where I now have my Senate office…”

“one of the first times I ever came to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, a location where I now have my Senate office, was on December 12, 1969, some 20 months after my injury in Vietnam, when I was summoned to appear before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs about how the Veterans Administration was handling returning Vietnam war veterans. That meeting was chaired by a tall, lean Senator from California named Alan Cranston and it was the start of a three decade friendship. Thus, in 1974 after experiencing what hopefully will prove to be my only electoral defeat, in the Democratic Primary for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, one of the first people I turned to was Senator Cranston, who generously accepted my offer to come out to California to campaign for his successful re-election. Then, after the General Election, he came to my aid by serving as guest-of-honor at a fund-raising dinner to pay off my campaign debt. And to top it off, Senator Cranston helped me get a job as a special investigator for the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, which is where I was serving when President Carter selected me to head the VA, in no small part because of the strong recommendation of Alan Cranston. I hope this short discourse makes it clear the debt of gratitude that I personally owed to Senator Cranston, but more importantly, it is indicative of the kind of man Alan was: dynamic, thoughtful, compassionate.”