Word: rayburnisms
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...broke through the wintry sky as the funeral cortege made its way to Willow Wild Cemetery, where, in the family plot, Sam Rayburn was laid to rest beside the grave of his favorite sister, Lucinda...
After the funeral, the mourners silently went their separate ways. They had known for weeks that Sam Rayburn was dying-but he had somehow seemed indestructible, and few could believe that the end would really come. In fact, the fatal cancer that eventually consumed Rayburn was at work during the spring of 1961, when lines of pain began etching his face and he complained of an aching back. Twice during last June and July he lost consciousness while sitting in the Speaker's chair, only to recover within moments and carry on as though nothing had happened. "They...
...October, after a month in his Bonham home, Rayburn went to Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas for extensive medical tests. Surgical examination showed cancer of the lymphatic system-inoperable, incurable and spreading through his body. When he recovered consciousness, Mister Sam asked his doctors for the truth and got it. "This," Rayburn told a great-nephew, Robert Bartley Jr., "is the damnedest thing that ever got ahold...
...nation's great hastened to his hospital door. First on the scene was Lyndon Johnson, whom Rayburn had helped raise from a political neophyte to the vice-presidency. Then came President Kennedy, making a 3,000-mile round trip to visit at the bedside of the stern-faced Speaker he had first known when he was a freshman Congressman from Massachusetts. "They don't make them like that any more," said Kennedy. "He has the courage of ten men." Finally came Harry Truman, who on that April day in 1945 was in Rayburn's Capitol hideaway...
Already all but settled is the question of Sam Rayburn's successor as Speaker. Democrats are ready to elect Massachusetts' Representative John McCormack, 69, when they caucus in January. McCormack was Democratic majority leader during all the years of Rayburn's speakership. He acted as temporary Speaker when Rayburn went home last summer, and by House tradition, broken only once in the past half a century, the majority leader succeeds as Speaker-and one thing Mister Sam left, beyond doubt, was a legacy of respect for tradition. McCormack already has commitments from all potential rivals except Missouri...