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Nov 29, 2007 7:04 pm US/Central
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Longtime Congressman Henry Hyde Dies At 83
DuPage County Lawmaker Was Key Figure In Clinton Impeachment Hearings
WOOD DALE, Ill. (CBS) ―
The people of Illinois and lawmakers in Washington, D.C., are mourning the passing of recently-retired U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, who died Thursday at the age of 83.
As CBS 2's Rafael Romo reports, Hyde was a fixture in Illinois and national politics for four decades. He began his political career in Springfield in the late 1960s and just retired from Congress back in January.
Many people in west suburban Wood Dale knew the 32-year Republican congressman personally from the many projects he worked on in the area, as well as numerous public appearances and parades. Many people are deeply saddened by his death.
"Many of us knew Mr. Hyde for many years, and some of the staff, as you could see when you came in, were actually crying," said Wood Dale city manager Fred Williams. "We got the news this morning, and we're having our flags lowered right now.
The death of the Illinois Republican was announced by House Minority Leader John Boehner's office on Capitol Hill.
Mary Ann Schultz, a spokeswoman for Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said Hyde died Thursday at 3 a.m. CST at that hospital. There was no immediate word on the cause of his death, although Hyde underwent open-heart surgery in July.
Hyde retired from Congress at the end of the last session. Earlier this month, President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The White House praised Hyde, a leading foe of abortion, as a "powerful defender of life" and an advocate for a strong national defense.
"He was a gallant champion of the weak and forgotten, and a fearless defender of life in all its seasons," Bush said of Hyde that day.
Hyde wasn't well enough to travel to Washington to accept the medal because he was recuperating from the surgery. But he sent his son on his behalf and planned to enjoy the medallion.
"I may slip it around my neck and parade in front of a mirror every, every 24 hours," Hyde said at the time.
Peter Roskam took over Hyde's seat when he retired early this year.
"He was the type of person that others would want to find out, 'what's Henry Hyde going to do on this bill?' before they made up their own mind," Roskam said.
"This was a man who was sought out by presidents and prime ministers, audiences with popes and so forth but who was very comfortable talking with precinct committeemen," Roskam added.
Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement Thursday: "What often struck me most about Henry was his keen sense of our nation's history and of the gifts bestowed on our Republic by the Founding Fathers, whose actions and deeds were never far from his mind. In his respect for the institutional integrity of the House of Representatives, Henry took second place to no one. He was a forceful advocate for maintaining the dignity of the House and for recognizing the sacrifices and struggles members make while in its service. Indeed, when Henry spoke in Committee or on the House floor, Members on both sides of aisle listened intently and they learned."
Said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, who heads the conservative Republican Study Committee: "Chairman Hyde was a pioneer in the effort to protect human life, and because of his tireless efforts, there are thousands of people living around the world today who remember his service to mankind."
The white-maned, physically imposing Hyde was a throwback to a different era, a man who was genuinely liked by his opponents for his wit, charm and fairness. But he could also infuriate them with his positions on some of the more controversial issues of the day.
He made a name for himself in 1976, just two years after his first election from the district that includes O'Hare Airport, by attaching an amendment to a spending bill banning the use of federal funds to carry out abortions.
What came to be known as the "Hyde Amendment" has since become a fixture in the annual debate over federal spending, and has served as an important marker for abortion foes seeking to discourage women from terminating pregnancies.
Hyde was also a leader in passing the ban on so-called partial birth abortions, the first federal restriction on a specific abortion procedure. "The people we pretend to defend, the powerless, those who cannot escape, who cannot rise up in the streets, these are the ones that ought to be protected by the law," he said during the 2003 debate. "The law exists to protect the weak from the strong."
Abortion was an issue that the Irish-Catholic Hyde pursued as a matter of conscience. Clinton's impeachment, by contrast, was a matter thrust upon him.
As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in 1998 he led House efforts to impeach Clinton for allegedly lying about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and then in 1999 was the chief House manager in the unsuccessful bid to win a Senate conviction.
A reluctant warrior, Hyde saw his own reputation tarnished during the process when an online magazine revealed that he'd had his own affair with a married woman some 30 years before. Hyde, in his early 40s at the time of the affair, brushed it off as a "youthful indiscretion."
Hyde also had a potentially more serious brush with scandal. He was among 12 former directors and officers of the Clyde Federal Savings and
Loan who were sued for gross negligence by federal regulators after the 1990 failure of the North Riverside, Ill.-based institution. That failure cost taxpayers an estimated $68 million.
Hyde, who left the S&L in 1984, insisted he engaged in no wrongdoing and was the only director who refused to contribute to an $850,000 settlement that led to the lawsuit's dismissal in 1997.
Hyde soldiered on despite the certainty that the Senate would reject the impeachment charges. "All a congressman ever gets to take with him when he leaves is the esteem of his colleagues and constituents," Hyde said in his closing argument. "And we have risked that for a principle, for our duty as we have seen it."
Hyde was born in Chicago on April 18, 1924, where he was an all-city basketball center. After serving in the Navy from 1944 to 1946, seeing combat in the Philippines, he graduated from Georgetown University in 1947 and returned to Chicago to earn a law degree from Loyola in 1949.
Raised a Democrat, he switched parties to vote for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. He worked as a Chicago trial lawyer before winning a seat in the Illinois House in 1966 and then in the U.S. House in 1974.
A conservative when the Republican Party was still dominated by moderates, Hyde gained elder statesman status when young conservatives propelled the GOP into control of the House in 1994.
But he has also on occasion parted ways with his conservative colleagues: he strongly opposed a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on members of Congress, and supported the Family and Medical Leave Act. He has also voted to ban certain types of assault weapons.
In the 1990s he joined the Clinton administration in opposing the 1973 War Powers Resolution, an act restricting the president's authority to engage troops overseas that some GOP lawmakers sought to invoke to protest military operations in Haiti, Somalia and Bosnia.
In 2001, subject to term limits that House Republicans imposed on their own committee chairmen, Hyde stepped down as chairman of the highly partisan Judiciary Committee he had led since 1995 to take over the far less contentious International Relations Committee.
In addition to helping shape U.S. policy in the war on terrorism, Hyde in 2003 oversaw passage of a $15 billion bill to fight the international AIDS epidemic. "Left unchecked, this plague will further rip the fabric of developing societies, pushing fragile governments and economies to the point of collapse," he said. "So to those who suggest that the United States has no stake in this pandemic, let me observe that the specter of failed states across the world certainly is our business."
People who knew Hyde personally said in spite of his high profile in Congress, he was a very approachable individual.
"He was very open-minded with people, he listened to people's concerns, and continued to do that, even when he was not in office," said Wood Dale alderman Eugene Wesley. "He was a wonderful man. He's been out on almost every parade in our city, and he represented quite well of his district."
Hyde is survived by four children and four grandchildren. His wife of 45 years, Jeanne Simpson Hyde, died in 1992. He later remarried Judy Wolverton of Illinois, state Republican officials said.
CBS 2's Rafael Romo and the Associated Press contributed to this report.cbs2chicago.com's Most Popular Pages 
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