At the May 1 memorial service for Walter Mondale, Minnesota’s U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith made the following statements of praise about him.[1]
Senator Klobuchar’s Statement
“It was not easy for Walter Mondale to run against Ronald Reagan, knowing that most people were predicting that Reagan would win.”
“It was not easy for Walter Mondale to come out of retirement and run for the Senate after we lost Paul Wellstone.”
“It was not easy for Walter Mondale to continue his work while caring for his beloved wife, Joan, and their daughter, Eleanor, through heartbreaking illnesses.”
“None of it was easy. But when saddled with enormous setbacks, Fritz didn’t stand down; he stood up. Fritz didn’t crawl under his desk or hide from public view; he simply found a different way to serve.”
“He went from being driven around with tons of Secret Service and meeting with world leaders and negotiating international treaties to going into Lunds, grocery shopping on his own and happily ending his visit with a long, engaged talk about Mideast peace with the high school kid at the checkout counter. That happened.”
“You see, being humble meant that it was much easier to be resilient.”
“Being grounded meant that no matter how high he had risen, there was always a place to come home.”
“That place was here. That place was us.”
Senator Smith’s Statement
“This week, I have been reading a lot of tributes to Mr. Mondale’s life and his legacy,” including those from Presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama.
As I’ve been reading all these notes, I’ve been reading some sent by people who worked for Walter Mondale when he ran for president and never really left his orbit. One is from a former staffer, Gina Glantz, who told the story of how, when her mom got sick, and the Mayo Clinic seemed like really the only option for treatment, she worked up the nerve to ask Mr. Mondale for help. Well, Vice President Mondale called a retired nurse friend, and within weeks, Gina’s mother was at the Mayo, with the person behind the check-in desk at Mayo saying, ‘And how do you know our Fritz?’”
“So many Americans were called to action by that 1984 campaign, a campaign rooted in truth and decency and hope. And four decades later, many of them, many of you, are still involved in politics, still working to uphold the values that defined Walter Mondale’s remarkable life — and even though many of us have yet to find a boss who, really, we had such a personal connection to.”
==============================
[1] Excerpts from speeches and letters read at Walter Mondale’s memorial, StarTribune (May 1, 2022).News Release, Klobuchar Delivers Remarks at Memorial Service for Former Vice President Walter Mondale (May 1, 2022).