[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 8] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 10514-10515] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]TRIBUTE TO ELEANOR McGOVERN ______ HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN of massachusetts in the house of representatives Wednesday, May 18, 2005 Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, when George McGovern ran for president in 1972, his wife Eleanor inspired the slogan, ``Put another Eleanor in the White House.'' Eleanor McGovern, like Eleanor Roosevelt, has a deep love for this country and has dedicated much of her life to causes and campaigns that would make this country--and the world--a better place. I've known Eleanor for many years and have admired her intellect and compassion. She was an early advocate for early childhood education and, like her husband, has been a voice of peace and tolerance. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert into the Record a recent article about Eleanor McGovern which appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader on May 15th. I ask all my fellow colleagues to join me in paying tribute to this remarkable woman. [From the Sioux Falls Argos Leader, May 15, 2005] A Devoted Life (By Jill Callison) Mitchell.--Eleanor McGovern entered marriage hoping only that her husband, George, would return from war unscathed. If he did come back, she expected to be the wife of a history teacher. Instead, she found herself spending more than 50 years as a politician's wife. But she also carved out a place for herself, becoming more than ``the wife of.'' Indeed, George McGovern's career--which includes 12 years as a U.S. senator, Democratic presidential candidate and ambassador to United Nations agencies--may not have soared as high as it did without his wife's support, some say. ``He may not have had the political career he has had without her,'' says Judy Harrington of Hill City, who served as George McGovern's state representative from 1973 to 1980. ``I think her support, her insights, ideas and gentle corrections have helped him all along his path of public service.'' The senator himself describes his wife of 61 years as his most helpful critic and most trusted adviser. On June 23, ground will be broken for a new library and center for public service at Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell. The building will carry two names: George and Eleanor McGovern. ``Eleanor's done a lot of great things, and we're proud of her at Dakota Wesleyan,'' says Greg Christie, vice president for institutional advancement. But a public life can come at a cost. Eleanor McGovern, now 83 and growing frail, prefers to shun the spotlight that once shone on her family, sometimes with a scorching heat. ``George still travels a lot, but I don't go with him very often,'' she says, sitting in the living room of their Mitchell ranch-style house. ``Going from city to city and lecture to lecture isn't my idea of fun. I like to go to one place and stay for a while.'' Last week, the McGoverns took off on a three-day trip to reach their summer home in southwestern Montana, in the shadow of the Bitterroot Mountains. The trip takes three days, Eleanor McGovern says, to make it easier on the pets, an 8-year-old Newfoundland named Ursa and a 1-year-old tortoiseshell cat found on the highway. Its name, she admits with a trace of embarrassment, is Kittycat. Ursa, they say, is George's dog. But the nurturing Newfie proved her loyalty about three years ago. Eleanor McGovern had fallen, breaking her leg in two places. She dragged herself to her bedroom but was unable to reach the phone. Ursa curled herself around the prone woman for 24 hours, until help arrived. Yet, although she's often alone and sometimes lonely, Eleanor continues to support her husband's public service, no matter how often he must leave. ``She started off carrying that load when he was gone in the war after they were married,'' says Paul Jensen of Rapid City, a longtime friend. ``But today I am more aware of the juxtapositions of love and deprivation in my childhood, of freedom and responsibility in my youth, and of tenderness and chaos in my maturing years. Without those myriad strands it would have been more difficult, I know, to accept the different drives and natures of five children, to support a gentle, questing man as he moved from teaching to the ministry to politics, and to keep something in reserve for myself.'' From ``Uphill: A Personal Story'' by Eleanor McGovern with Mary Finch Hoyt. Eleanor McGovern began that uphill climb Nov. 25, 1921, when she arrived 30 minutes after the birth of her twin, Ila. Her parents, Earl and Marian Stegeberg, farmed near Woonsocket. It was a hard life, made even more difficult by the early death of her mother when the twins were 11 and their sister, Phyllis, was 4. Her father withdrew into a sadness that truly never broke until the birth of his first grandchild, the McGoverns' oldest daughter, Ann, in 1945. Eleanor and Ila became the family housekeepers. ``I have a memory of trying to bake a cake,'' Eleanor McGovern says. ``I had a recipe, but I came to an ingredient I didn't know--baking powder. So I left it out. That was a very flat cake.'' In high school, the twins stayed in Woonsocket, doing housekeeping in exchange for room and board. They took turns going home weekends. Living in town allowed them to take part in activities such as debate. That was how they first encountered a Mitchell teenager who already had made a name for himself. George McGovern and his partner debated the Stegeberg twins--and lost. ``Having high admiration for George, we adore the woman who beat him,'' says Harrington, McGovern's former state representative. But the two didn't really meet until they were freshman at DWU. In ``Uphill,'' Eleanor McGovern talks about how he asked her on a first date. Now she admits she had advance warning. Eleanor worked in the dean's office, Ila down the hall. Ila stuck her head in the door to tell her sister a request for a date was coming. ``And don't you dare refuse him,'' Ila hissed at her twin. ``It never occurred to me he would ask me for a date,'' Eleanor McGovern says. ``He was a big man on campus.'' ``I'd say within a year of that our first date I was pretty sure Eleanor was the one,'' George McGovern says. ``It was a dreamy spring. I had never known anything like it before. My only concern was that George might not care so much as I. Then on a beautiful clear afternoon he urged me to skip class with him and as we strolled slowly down the street south of campus, he reached down and took my hand. I had my answer. A clasping of hands meant everything then.'' Their campus life was short. Eleanor McGovern quit her business courses at DWU. Her sister left for Rochester, Minn., and nurse's training, and Eleanor gave financial support. The world had changed, too. After Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, George McGovern volunteered for service in the Army Air Corps. He was called up in 1943. The couple considered delaying marriage until after he returned from combat but decided not to wait. On Halloween Day 1943, they were married in the Methodist church in Woonsocket. ``My father liked George very much, but he didn't think we should get married, and he said he would not take part in the wedding,'' Eleanor McGovern says. ``But he came that day and gave me away.'' The newlyweds took a train to Muskogee, Okla., the next day, Eleanor sometimes sitting on their suitcase in the aisle. She lived alone in a rented bedroom while her husband returned to the base. They saw each other twice a week. She followed him to Kansas, Texas, Nebraska and Idaho, before returning home to await the birth of their first baby. ``I had really wanted to get pregnant,'' she says. ``George was going overseas, and I wanted to have a baby.'' He would not see Ann until she was 5 months old. After the war, he completed his degree at DWU. The son of a Wesleyan Methodist pastor thought he, too, would follow that path. As a student pastor's wife, Eleanor McGovern had her first taste of being in the public eye. ``A lot is expected of a minister's wife,'' she says. ``And with two children very small (daughter Susan had arrived a year after Ann), I wasn't ready.'' In any case, it didn't last long. George McGovern left seminary, earning a doctorate in history. He taught at DWU before leaving to help reinvigorate the South Dakota Democratic Party. Three more children, Teresa, Steven and Mary, arrived. And in 1955, Eleanor McGovern officially became a politician's wife when her husband ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. ``I was happy when George went into politics,'' she says. ``People in my family cared about what was happening in the country.'' The first campaign was the toughest, she says. Then, they fell into a similar rhythm. She began the last campaign, in 1980, with typical humor. As a temporary home in Mitchell, staffers rented the McGoverns an aging apartment, with linoleum floors, ancient cupboards and poor lighting. ``When George and Eleanor arrived for the first time to see it--looking ever so much like an apartment they had when they first married--Eleanor looked around, smiled and said, `Well, George, it looks like we're starting over,' `` Harrington says. ``They didn't seem to mind at all.'' While he served in Congress, she pursued her own interests, primarily children and families and the choices confronting women as the stay-at-home '50s transformed into the turbulent '60s. [[Page 10515]] Eleanor McGovern spoke out for adequate day care. ``She was ahead of her time in accepting that as appropriate,'' says Berniece Mayer of Sioux Falls, a former McGovern staffer. Until the demands of her husband's political career-- particularly his bid for the presidency in 1972--required her to travel, Eleanor McGovern served as, often, a single parent. ``I'm sure Eleanor's had periods where she wishes she'd never been married to a politician, somebody running for Congress, running for the Senate, running for the presidency, running, running, running,'' George McGovern acknowledges. ``There was one period when I was representing South Dakota in the House of Representatives when I came out here 25 weekends in a row, and that plays havoc with your wife and your kids,'' he says. ``I was determined to help with George's career, not only by taking responsibility for the family, but by contributing ideas. In fact, I never considered it `George's' career--it was `ours.''' Sometimes Eleanor McGovern did think ``Stop!,'' she says, but ``I never said it. It meant so much to him. He loved being a politician, and he accomplished a lot.'' But if she could change anything, she would not have moved the children so often. ``If I had to do it over again, I'd stay with them in South Dakota,'' she says. The McGoverns have 10 grandchildren and one great- grandchild. A second great-grandchild is on the way. Their children are scattered from Montana to England. There are only four now, since their middle child, Terry, died in 1994, after years struggling with alcoholism. The sadness from her daughter's death will never leave Eleanor McGovern. ``There are pictures of her in the bedroom,'' she says. ``When I go by, I always find myself softly reaching out and touching her picture.'' Her husband later wrote a book about their daughter, ``Terry.'' It was therapy for him, she says, but Eleanor McGovern has chosen to speak only rarely about her daughter's addictions. It's OK that they have differences of opinions, he says. ``We don't worry about the fact that sometimes there could be a little tension and differences of opinion and irritation,'' he says. ``We just take that as a part of life. You can't expect complete harmony in a marriage. You have to give the other person a little freedom, too, to move to the things that they're interested in.'' ``Even today I have fleeting pangs of anxiety when I leave where I am to go to someplace else. I can describe it only as a vague sense of loss of place.'' So he travels the country, and she generally stays home. ``She's had lots of opportunities in her lifetime to be in the public eye, and she goes out of her way to stay out,'' Christy says. ``Some time ago she decided to let George do that.'' The death of her sister, Ila, in 1996 also was a blow. ``It left quite a void in my life,'' Eleanor says. Books can't fill that gap, but they often fill her days. Her husband calls her the best-read woman he knows. Eight or 10 magazines come to the house every week; she reads them all. She loves birds, particularly meadowlarks. Mayer remembers taking Eleanor McGovern out in the prairie to hear their sweet sound. When time wouldn't permit, a local radio announcer would tape the bird calls for her. It would take her home, even in a Washington, D.C., suburb. ``Many times I ached for Woonsocket and Mitchell, for cottonwoods and elms, for schools, shops, markets, doctors' offices, more often than not sprinkled with dear friends or relatives, all within walking distance.'' ____________________