The next Sunday, he lined them up like children-passing out dollar bills to each of them and insisting that they put something in the church till that day.

He never went out in public in less than his uniform-a dark suit, immaculately shined black shoes, a crisp white shirt and a conservative necktie.

He represented the poorest State in the Nation, and made it his business and the Nation's business to relieve some of that poverty. He succeeded arguably the State's most ardent segregationists in the late U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo and for a time argued for that position himself, but his change of heart on the issue came surely and confidently in the mid-1960's as did the country's and for the rest of his career he devoted himself to broadening peace and understanding between black and white Mississippians.

Neither age, infirmity or the life-threatening results of wounds he received in a 1973 robbery-shooting outside his Washington home kept him from logging work days that would have exhausted younger, stronger men. Mississippi State University never had a stronger, more loyal or more beloved alumnus than JOHN STENNIS. There, Congress established the John C. Stennis Center for Public Service. Private donors established the John C. Stennis Institute of Government, the John C. Stennis Chair in Political Science and the John C. Stennis Scholarship in Political Science.

The Stennis Scholars produced at MSU represent an eclectic group. Some are now political science professors. Some are lawyers. Some are bureaucrats. Some have entered public service and some have sought and won elective office.

Until infirmity forced the Senator into a retirement home, all those scholars had an opportunity to interact with JOHN STENNIS, to know him and to be influenced deeply by him.

And one of those former STENNIS Scholars-one grateful admirer who cherished the time he spent with JOHN STENNIS and who believes deeply in the example of public service he established in this State and Nation-is writing this column.

[From the New Albany Gazette, April 26, 1995]

MISSISSIPPI LOSES REVERED STATESMAN

(By Betty Jo Stewart)

JOHN CORNELIUS STENNIS is dead.

The 93-year-old Mississippian from DeKalb who served four decades in the United States Senate, rose to positions of national power and met personal crises with strength and courage died Sunday. He was at St. Dominic/ Jackson Memorial Hospital where he had been hospitalized since Thursday. STENNIS had pneumonia.

STENNIS had special ties to Union County. He had married a native daughter, Coy Nebraska Hines, from a family of 12 children. She died in August 1983 after a marriage of 54 years.

Graveside services for STENNIS will be held at 11 a.m. today at the Pinecrest Cemetery in DeKalb where he will be buried.

STENNIS' body lay in state Tuesday morning at the Old Capitol in Jackson and in the late afternoon at the DeKalb Presbyterian Church.

STENNIS was born August 3, 1901 near DeKalb in Kemper County, the son of Hampton Howell Stennis and Margaret Cornelia Adams Stennis. He received a bachelor of science degree in general science from the Mississippi A&M College in Starkville, now Mississippi State University, in 1923. He then attended the University of Virginia Law School where he received a law degree and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

He practiced law at DeKalb and served from 1928-1932 as a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives. On December 24, 1929 he married Coy Hines, who was a Kemper County home demonstration agent. He was a district prosecuting attorney from 1931-1937.

Their son, John Hampton Stennis, was born March 2, 1935 and their daughter Margaret Jane, November 20, 1937.

In 1947, STENNIS defeated five opponents to fill the Senate vacancy caused by the death of Theodore G. Bilbo. He had promised, “I will plow a straight furrow right down to the end of my row. This is my political religion."

When he retired from the Senate in 1988, he was the oldest member of the Senate. He had served with and had close association with eight U.S. Presidents. In January 1969 he was named chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and served as chairman through 1980. It was a powerful role for STENNIS.

In 1987 he was chosen by his colleagues as President Pro Tempore of the Senate, third in line of succession to the Presidency.

STENNIS' power allowed him to affect favorable legislation for Mississippi, the 234-mile Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway being one of many.

He courted death on several occasions. In 1973 he was shot twice in a robbery attempt outside his home in Washington, DC. In 1984 his left leg was amputated because of a cancerous tumor.

STENNIS had faced his first serious challenge for his seat in 1982 by Haley Barbour of Yazoo City, who now chairs the Republican Party.

In 1988 STENNIS retired. He was honored by President Reagan, members of Congress, military and business leaders, Governor Ray Mabus and other Mississippians at a Washington Hotel.

At that occasion, Reagan announced that a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier would be named for STENNIS. It was christened at Newport News, Virginia in November 1993 and is to be commissioned this year.

Also named for the Senator is NASA's National Space Technology Laboratory in Hancock County.

After his return to Mississippi, STENNIS moved to the campus of Mississippi State University. It is there that the John C. Stennis Institute of Government and the Stennis Center for Public Service, created by Congress, is located.

STENNIS is remembered fondly by his brother-in-law, Marvin Hines, 88, the only surviving member of the Hines family.

Hines said, "He's the best in the world, an all-around good man. I never found any fault with him in all my years."

At family reunions, Hines recalled, "He always made a speech."
Hines visited DeKalb as long as the Stennis family was there.

Hines was unable to attend the funeral services due to his wife's illness and his declining health; however other family members and friends did go.

[From the Indiannapolis News, April 27, 1995]

JOHN STENNIS

(Editorial)

In the more than 40 years that he served in the U.S. Senate, few men received more respect than Mississippi's JOHN STENNIS.

A courtly Southerner from the old school, he was called the conscience of the Senate because of his religious convictions and his commitment to upholding ethical standards for public officials.

He was unfailingly civil with those who disagreed with him and maintained friendships that transcended ideological and party ties.

He was a good man.

But a good man often can serve a bad cause. STENNIS certainly did. He was one of the roadblocks on the journey to end institutionalized racial discrimination in this country. For nearly a quarter century, STENNIS opposed every civil rights measure or activity that came before the country. He condemned the 1954 Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ended school segregation. He resisted attempts to pass anti-lynching bills and measures that would end the discriminatory poll tax and literacy tests for black voters. He voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. When it came to race, he was wrong, wrong, wrong.

This is one of the abiding ironies of history.

Lyndon Johnson came to the U.S. Senate about the same time that STENNIS did. Johnson, on a personal level, was not nearly as admirable or decent as STENNIS was. Johnson could be cruel, vindictive and mean-spirited. He bent or broke the rules repeatedly. He was not a good man.

But he did serve a good cause. Even though STENNIS was a better man, in presiding over the end of legalized segregation, Johnson did more to advance the greater good.

To his credit, STENNIS eventually saw the light. In 1983, near the end of his long career, he voted to extend the Voting Rights Act.

It was a moment that not only ultimately ennobled his years of public service, but illustrated the ways in which the path of virtue ultimately will be illuminated for men of good will.

And JOHN STENNIS certainly was a man of good will.

STENNIS died earlier this week. He was 93.

He will be remembered as a man of conscience and grace. He was a champion in many of America's great struggles, and he will be mourned as a man who always sought to find the best in others and ultimately found it in himself as well.

[From the Commercial Appeal (Memphis), April 27, 1995]

STENNIS MEMORIALIZED AS “A GREAT MAN," LAST RESPECTS PAID TO

STATESMAN

(By Ron Harrist)

JOHN CORNELIUS STENNIS, a simple country lawyer who became one of the nation's most powerful men, was buried Wednesday on a knoll in the red clay of his beloved hometown.

Gathered in a loose circle around the gravesite at the Pinecrest Cemetery, colleagues, relatives and friends shared favorite anecdotes about the man who once headed the U.S. Senate Armed Services and Appropriations committees and as Senate President Pro Tempore was third in line to the Presidency.

STENNIS died Sunday of pneumonia in a Jackson hospital at age 93. He was buried among family members and next to his wife, Coy, who died in 1983.

"We live in a cynical, violent and self-centered world, but we know we can step out of this madness by following the footsteps and example of JOHN STENNIS," Reverend Jerry McBride of St. James Episcopal Church in Jackson said during the eulogy.

“He was a Christian gentleman, a great man, a good man,” said Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), the first person off two chartered buses that carried a delegation from Washington.

"If I could express the feelings of many of us, he taught a lot of us how to be a senator," said Byrd, who served 30 years with STENNIS in the U.S. Senate.

STENNIS, a graduate of Mississippi State University and the University of Virginia Law School, was elected to the Senate in 1947 and kept close ties to the people of DeKalb, a poor farming community, and surrounding Kemper County. They first elected him to public office in 1928 as a member of the Mississippi Legislature. He later served as a district attorney and circuit judge.

"He set some standards for this state, some standards for public service that will always stand," said former governor William Winter.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), who led the Washington delegation, said STENNIS was "a very rare person" who "had much respect from both the Republican side and the Democratic side. He was viewed as a statesman."

Mack McLarty, former chief of staff to President Clinton and now a top Clinton adviser, represented the White House.

STENNIS retired from the Senate in 1988 after being slowed by medical problems complicated by losing a leg to cancer and suffering a gunshot wound during an attack outside his Washington residence.

In the nation's capital, STENNIS gained a reputation for finesse that earned him top committee assignments and the confidence of eight Presidents.

In the 1950s and 1960s, STENNIS was known for his segregationist rhetoric, but he supported extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1983 and won the support of black voters when he ran his last campaign in 1982.

Jeannie Howard, at 81 the oldest member of the Stennis family and the late Senator's only niece, said it was only fitting that the ceremony was held in the April sunshine just a few blocks from where STENNIS once served sodas at his brother's drug store.

"He loved his family and he loved these people," said Mrs. Howard, of Waco, Texas.

More than 300 people attending the ceremony silently watched over the dark wood casket, draped with red roses, as a single trumpeter played "America the Beautiful." The sound echoed across nearby hillsides.

John Hampton Stennis of Jackson recalled his father's love for the land in a eulogy, saying, "My sister and I think my father had a pact with God to guide his plow and keep his furrow straight."

When the crowd began to overflow the small cemetery, residents in this town of 1,073 stood on street corners to watch the service.

One local resident drove near the cemetery "just to let the Senator know I care," but was politely turned away by police.

[From the Clarion-Ledger, April 27, 1995]

FIVE HUNDRED BID STENNIS FAREWELL

FORMER SENATOR REMEMBERED AS PATRIOT, FRIEND

(By Emily Wagster)

DeKALB-A long trumpeter played America the Beautiful Wednesday as 500 gathered in the rolling red-clay hills of east Mississippi to remember former U.S. Senator JOHN C. STENNIS.

A political stalwart once third in line to the Presidency, STENNIS died of pneumonia Sunday in Jackson at age 93. He was buried in his hometown next to his wife, Coy, who died in 1983.

Family, friends and local folks mingled with STENNIS' former Washington colleagues for a humble, half-hour graveside service at Pinecrest Cemetery. "Senator STENNIS was a true hero," said U.S. Senator John Glenn (DOH).

STENNIS served 41 years in the Senate, retiring in 1988. He was Armed Services chairman during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War. In 1987, he became chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and was chosen by his colleagues as President Pro Tempore, putting him third in line in Presidential succession.

The late Senator's son, John Hampton Stennis of Jackson, remembered his father as a devoted public servant and patriot. During World War II, when the elder STENNIS was district attorney and circuit judge in Kemper County, he made sure his children understood their responsibilities as Americans.

"Daddy taught us patriotic things and poetry," John Hampton Stennis said as his sister, Margaret Womble sat nearby. "In teaching us the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, he made sure we understood the meaning.”

About 20 Senators and Congressmen, including Mississippi's U.S. Senators Thad Cochran and Trent Lott and 3d District U.S. Representative Sonny Montgomery, flew in from Washington. White House senior adviser Mack McLarty attended on behalf of President Clinton.

Military leaders, congressional staff members and spouses brought the Washington delegation to about 100.

"The fact that there were so many people here shows exactly the high regard they have for their former colleague," said former Mississippi Governor William Winter, who started his political as a STENNIS legislative assistant. Governor Kirk Fordice, Lt. Governor Eddie Briggs, Secretary of State Dick Molpus, Auditor Steve Patterson and other State officials traveled from Jackson. Legislators came from around Mississippi.

After the funeral, U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), recalled that a promise STENNIS made helped him win a Senate seat in 1972. After Nunn won the Democratic primary for the Senate seat in Georgia, he visited Washington with his great uncle, a former House Armed Services Committee chairman. They called on STENNIS—and the Mississippi Democrat pledged he'd get Nunn a seat on Armed Services.