Michael J. Mansfield

Even as the leader of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate, Michael Joseph Mansfield was always his own man, following his own conscience. He had enlisted in the Navy at age 14 to fight in World War I, and had been an early supporter of the Vietnam War, yet he became one of that war's most persistent critics when he learned that he had been deceived by early reports.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson told him he expected more support from his majority leader, the senator replied, "Mr. President, I'm not your majority leader. I'm the Senate's majority leader."

The senator from Montana died Oct. 5, 2001 at the age of 98. The longest-serving majority leader in U.S. history, his leadership spanned the presidencies of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He served two more presidents, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, as the highly respected ambassador to Japan. An eighth-grade dropout, his first experiences in Asia were as part of a military career that included service in the Navy, the Army and the Marines.

Senator Mansfield's life did not begin grandly. He was born in New York City, the son of poor Irish immigrants. His mother died when he was three; his father, a hotel porter, sent him and his siblings to live with relatives in Great Falls, Montana. After his time in the service, Senator Mansfield returned to Montana as a working man, shoveling copper ore in the mines. When he met a Butte college student, Maureen Hayes, she persuaded him to resume his studies. He earned a high school degree through correspondence school, and then entered what would become the University of Montana-where eventually he would become a professor, teaching Asian and Latin American history.

And he would remain married to Maureen for the 68 years until his death.

Politics and statesmanship were not far behind, as the U.S. entered World War II. The university granted Senator Mansfield a leave of absence when he was elected to Congress in 1942. A decade later he found a more lasting home in the Senate. Despite the power he attained as majority leader, he always made time for his adopted state, sometimes keeping cabinet heads waiting in outer offices while he talked politics and Montana over coffee with a constituent.

As a senator, Mansfield sought to do what was right, rather than was expedient or popular. Many in his party were alienated by his early support of the Civil Rights movement, and later criticism of the war in Vietnam. He held the Senate together in crisis, first with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, then of Martin Luther King. He pushed for the Senate to investigate the Watergate burglary and its aftermath, and then oversaw the transition of power from Nixon to Ford.

In a speech late in his life, Senator Mansfield downplayed his own accomplishments. "In the end, it is not the senators as individuals who are of fundamental importance... It is the Senate itself as one of the foundations of the Constitution. It is the Senate as one of the rocks of the Republic."