[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4] [Senate] [Pages 4595-4596] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]TRIBUTE TO FRANK AND BETHINE CHURCH Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, when I first came to the Senate, I had the great privilege of serving with Senator Frank Church of Idaho. Marcelle and I were also privileged to spend time with both Frank and his wonderful wife Bethine. The two of them were extraordinarily helpful to this 34-year-old Senator from Vermont. Frank Church was a Senator in the very best sense of the word. He thought of the Senate as a place where one should, first and foremost, stand for our country and make it a better place. Certainly his brilliance, conscience, and patriotism made his service here one that benefited not only the Senate, but the Nation. Last year, the Idaho Statesman published an article that so reflected Bethine Church that I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record so that those in the Senate who served with Senator Church and knew him and Bethine, as well as those who did not have the opportunity to know them, can have this glimpse into their lives. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the IdahoStatesman.com, Oct. 13, 2006] Bethine Church is the widow of four-term U.S. Sen. Frank Church. Get a narrated tour of her life and times as she describes collected photographs from the couple's public and private lives. See photos of Castro, Brando, Jackie Kennedy and more. In a game room in Boise's East End, the walls really do talk. Bethine Church, the widow of four-term U.S. Sen. Frank Church, has collected photographs from the couple's public and private [[Page 4596]] lives. Every image has a story--of world travel on behalf of the government, of encounters with celebrities, of heads of state and high political drama, of love and loss and family, of home in the Idaho mountains. Frank Church was the most influential Idaho politician ever. He served 24 years in the U.S. Senate, the lone Idaho Democrat to win more than one term. He chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1976 he was a serious candidate for president, looking briefly like the only man able to deny Jimmy Carter the Democratic nomination. He helped pass the Wilderness Act in 1964. He was an early critic of the Vietnam War, and investigated CIA and FBI abuses, forcing reforms that some now question in the post-9/ 11 era. I'd seen the pictures over the years, when Church hosted events for Democratic luminaries like Tipper Gore. The walls are chockablock with presidents (FDR, JFK and LBJ), prime ministers (Golda Meir of Israel), kings (Juan Carlos of Spain), dictators (Fidel Castro of Cuba and Deng Xiaoping of China) and celebrities (Jimmy Durante, Marlon Brando, John Wayne). There are family snaps of the Robinson Bar Ranch, the Middle Fork Salmon River and the grand home at 109 W. Idaho St., where Bethine lived when her father, Chase Clark, was governor in the 1940s. But I hadn't heard her inimitable narration. I finally got the chance when my editor asked me to gather string for an obituary on the grandame of Idaho politics. Church, 83, happily gave the E Ticket tour to me and photographer Darin Oswald. No waiting lines, but the ride took four hours. Several days later, she called, saying, ``I'd so like to see what you're up to. Do we really have to wait until I'm dead?'' My editors chewed on that, deciding she was right: There was no good reason to delay. Today, at IdahoStatesman.com, Church brings the pictures to life in an audio-visual presentation designed by Oswald's colleague, Chris Butler. We chose today because at 11:45 a.m., the U.S. Forest Service is holding a renaming ceremony at the Galena Overlook in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. The viewpoint is one of Idaho's great vistas. From today on, it will honor Bethine and Frank Church, both of whom had the vision to protect the Sawtooths. Driving to Robinson Bar over Galena Summit more than 30 years ago, the Churches looked down on a subdivision. ``This can't happen,'' said Sen. Church. Working with his Republican colleagues, Sen. Len Jordan and Reps. Jim McClure and Orval Hansen, Church got the bill creating the Sawtooth National Recreation Area through Congress in 1972. Had they failed, the Sawtooth valley would be dotted with vacation mansions. Frank Church has been out of office 25 years, dead 22. Bethine contemplated suicide while watching him die of cancer, but he told her she had responsibilities. He was right. She founded the Sawtooth Society, which has led private conservation efforts in the SNRA; her support of Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, has aided his push to expand SNRA wilderness into the Boulder and White Cloud mountains; she helped create the Frank Church Institute at BSU that supports a scholar and hosts a world-class annual conference. Church took a fall recently that put her in the hospital one night. But she still entertains, negotiating her kitchen in a cane and sitting on a step stool to cook. She lustily talks of a life devoted to making Idaho and the world better. Bethine grew up in Mackay and Idaho Falls, where her lawyer father represented copper mining companies and criminal defendants. From her parents she learned a novel way of speaking, including her mother's strongest curse, ``It just freezes my preserves,'' and her Pop's putdown, ``He's as worthless as teats on a boar.'' From there she went to the salons of Washington, D.C., and the far reaches of the globe. But they didn't take the Idaho out of Bethine. After a reception for French President Charles De Gaulle, the Churches gathered at the home of a Senate colleague, Joe Clark, with Adlai Stevenson, the U.N. Ambassador, a former governor and the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956. Stevenson's intellectual heft was legend; he was mocked by Richard Nixon as an ``egghead,'' and voters twice chose Dwight Eisenhower. But Bethine showed no reluctance to say what was on her champagne-sparkled mind: She discussed the relative preponderance of outhouses in Idaho and West Virginia. ``I guess I sounded like I sound now,'' she said, laughing. ``I said exactly what came into my head and somehow Frank survived it.'' Bethine Church was a true partner to her politician husband, not simply a prop. She has a knack for remembering names, something she learned from her dad. ``Pop taught me that everybody, from the waitress to the people working in the kitchen, is as important as the people sitting on the dais.'' She often prompted the senator's memory, and was his most valued confidant. Had Church won his last-minute race for president in 1976 in the wake of Watergate, Bethine would have been an involved First Lady. ``If there had been tapes,'' she crowed, ``I would have been on them!'' ____________________