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Introduction

Dr. Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., introducing Governor Charles S. Robb

Rotunda, the University of Virginia, July 19, 2001

Thank you, Professor Sabato, for the kind comments, and for giving me the privilege of saying these few words tonight to introduce Governor Robb. My company, Commonwealth Public Broadcasting, and our Charlottesville station WHTJ, which are also generously supported by the General Assembly, consider this collaboration in the annual production of the documentary series "No Higher Honor" to be among the most important of our commitments to public affairs programming for audiences throughout Virginia and beyond. Virginia's former Governors are living historical treasures, and we are delighted to collaborate in these symposia to create a permanent television record of their time in office and a profile of their place in Virginia history.

Introducing Governor Robb carries an additional obligation I know he would want me to discharge at the outset--mention of our colleagues who have passed away. We should, perhaps, have had symbolically empty chairs in the sessions today, and here tonight, for George Stoddart, for Jordan Goldman, for Joe Fisher and David Battaglia, for Joyce Wilson and Elizabeth Davis, and now for Ruth Anne "Booty" Brooks whose memorial service just last week drew a standing room crowd at The Library of Virginia. They shared fully in the experiences we are gathered to recall. They must not be forgotten, because they earned their place--an honored place--in the collective memory of the Robb Administration in Virginia history.

There is also one other very special personal acknowledgement I want to make.The honor of working for Governor Robb and the years of friendship we've shared, would not have happened without my older association and friendship with David McCloud, which began when we had classes together in college 37 years ago. David first introduced me to Chuck Robb in February 1980, enlisted me as an early recruit in one of the most exciting political adventures in modern Virginia history, and then convinced Governor-elect Robb to offer me a post in his administration. That experience also enabled me to observe and work with a David McCloud I consider one of the ablest, most effective and dedicated men ever to serve in State government, or in any gubernatorial administration in modern Virginia.

The Chuck Robb I met in 1980 was Lieutenant-Governor, and already a well-known national figure. Born in Arizona, educated at Cornell and at the University of Wisconsin, and perhaps most significantly, at the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, he had served his country and the Marine Corps with honor, with distinction as a leader of men exercising field command, and with conspicuous courage in combat and under fire in South Vietnam. In 1967, he had married Lynda Bird Johnson, the elder daughter of President and Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson, of Johnson City, Texas, and Washington, D.C. He and Mrs. Robb lived here in Charlottesville during the years he completed studies in law at the University of Virginia. They have made their home in McClean since before his election as Lieutenant-Governor in 1977. The Governor and Mrs. Robb are the proud parents of three grown daughters, Lucinda, who recruits exceptional teachers to do distance learning instruction on videotape; Cathy, a graduate of the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin and an associate in a firm specializing in First Amendment issues; and Jennifer, their youngest, a graduate of Duke University who is now a Math teacher and soccer coach at Langley High School in Fairfax.

On Tuesday, November 3, 1981, after an intense, superbly crafted election campaign involving a number of people here tonight, the voters of Virginia, in an electrifying and landmark decision, chose Charles S. Robb as our Governor. From the night of that event, which I still recall as if only a few evenings ago, my life and the lives of all those Chuck Robb asked to work with him in his Administration would never be the same again. To introduce Chuck Robb in this Forum tonight, I would like to recall very briefly three important things I remember about him as Governor. This is to acknowledge what I believe will be part of the legacy he will leave to me, to my children and grandchildren, and to future generations of Virginians.

First, the Governor encouraged, inspired and applauded a sense of history, and a respect for the history of Virginia and the traditions of public service in Virginia among all of us in the Administration. Those of us lucky enough to be chosen to work on the Third Floor realized that we were highly privileged to toil and study-and learn-in one of the most important and prestigious of the original laboratories dedicated to the science of freedom. We grew quickly to understand that we were not the heirs to some remote antiquity, nor the beneficiaries of any mythic political legacy. Neither did we think that we were the chosen apostles of an ordained ideological revelation, or revolution, undertaken as a messianic charge on behalf of the allegedly oppressed masses of the Commonwealth. We understood, rather, that we worked as the ordinary, everyday stewards and servants of a continuing and unbroken tradition, of a system and a civic liturgy that antedated the origins of the nation and the Constitution, and that had helped to inspire the creation and the shape of the Great Republic. The examples and icons we studied and cited included not only Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, but also Henry Carter Stuart and E. Lee Trinkle, James Hubert Price and George Campbell Peery, J. Lindsay Almond and Albertis S. Harrison, Mills E. Godwin and A. Linwood Holton, and the great Colgate Darden. All of you know that the State Capitol is Virginia's equivalent of a National Gallery in its wealth of historical paintings and statues. Among the portraits that surrounded us, adorning the walls of corridors and offices to gaze down on us while we worked, the most important painting that still stands out in my memory, as a symbol and as a daily reminder of the standards of government in Virginia we were there to serve, is the portrait of Carter Lowance that David McCloud selected to hang above the desk in his office. We sought to understand and appreciate the problems of the past, and to respect and build upon the achievements of all those who preceded us. We disparaged no aspect of Virginia's history, nor did we demean any of those who had shaped it. We sought rather, prompted by the Governor's vision, to do our part to build a future that would be worthy of that past.

Second, the Governor set a tone I admired, respected, and was inspired to follow, not only by virtue of his sense of the office and the way he carried himself in it, but also because he had the political courage, as a public figure and as an elected leader, to rise as an orator to a command of eloquence when the occasion summoned him to do so. Make no mistake about my perspective here. I was no major figure in the Administration, nor even a secondary player. The speechwriter was only a craftsman: just a marble cutter and stone carver. I carried no portfolio to influence policy or to affect the operation of State government. And I was only one among a more experienced group of skilled political craftsmen working in the essential governmental trade of public communication. But I knew enough from experience and study in history and in languages to understand why German and Russian were the vernaculars of tyranny and oppression, and what had made English into the mother tongue of freedom and human progress.

This Governor was at least a chapter ahead of me in that reading of the history, and grasped the correlation between elevated public oratory and compelling public policy. He sought to speak in cadences that would inspire and convince, accepted nothing less than thoughtful and polished composition as material to consider, and compiled a record that I believe will wear as well with time as the most hardened marble or the most expertly tempered bronze. As Governor, Chuck Robb had plenty to say, and he said it well. It's all there in the written record, and its time is coming in re-discovery.

And third, the tone the Governor set opened the Administration to vistas of access, and established a working climate of respect and collaboration with the most diverse, interesting, accomplished and successful men and women from widely varying political persuasions, and from all walks of life. These were people of substance and achievement the Governor cultivated, and with whom he encouraged our association in collegiality. This process began in relations with the unsung and under-appreciated--and more recently maligned-career civil servants in the agencies of State government. Given the grueling regimen of staff work we all dealt with in the Governor's office and the Cabinet, survival without their assistance would have been impossible. With a career civil servant as the Governor's Chief-of-Staff, and with a solicitous attitude of appreciation for their work extended from the Third Floor, the response from key figures in the government agencies created working relationships that remain, after all these years, among the most stimulating, enjoyable and rewarding I've ever had. Among the best and brightest of the government professionals-Al Coates, Dan Bartges, Bobby Bray, Oscar Mabry, Jack Davis, Don Gering, West Smithers, Walter MacFarlane, Bill Broaddus, Don Finley, Andy Fogarty, Paul Timmreck--and the legendary Bill Rowland--all made numerous and important contributions to the work of the Robb Administration, and became valued colleagues and friends.

The Governor's friends and advisers also presented an even more interesting and often ironic portrait of how Virginia was governed in a spirit of real diversity, reflecting a full spectrum of political inclusion in that time. Open the door to the Cabinet Room and there the Governor sat with his economic wise men-Roy Smith, Jim Wheat, Walter Craigie and Justin Moore-even by the standards of contemporary Virginia today, hardly a dangerous quartet of liberal plotters, or left wing desperadoes. Conversely, no one even in one of the smaller, shallow political tributaries of the mainstream at that time would have considered those men a group of conservative traitors who had sold out in a Faustian bargain with the Democratic devil on the Third Floor. They-like we-served the same Governor, and they, like we, were citizens of the same Commonwealth.

The Governor's tone also informed the standards of respect, and the all-important relationships the Administration and individual staffers developed with members of the General Assembly. In the Robb Administration, the prospect or likelihood that any member of the Governor's staff would publicly criticize or personally humiliate any member of the General Assembly, for any reason, was not merely impermissible--it was unthinkable. Disagreement and retribution were not considered natural cause and effect relationships appropriate to governing the Commonwealth, and Boards and Commissions were prized assignments for talented and distinguished Virginians to serve in the tradition of civic assistance. These appointments were not regarded as political rumpus rooms where disruptive, agenda driven ideologues were rewarded with recognition, and let loose to inflict damage on the agencies of government, or to tinker with the institutions of higher education, or to create pedagogical orthodoxies for the curricula of the public schools.

As Governor, Chuck Robb never resorted by design or slipped by accident into committing what in the Virginia tradition of public life, I consider an unpardonable transgression. He kept faith in office, from his swearing in to his farewell, from the first day until the last, with what I would rank as the First Commandment of successful public service. Chuck Robb understood that in the practice of statecraft and the leadership of government nothing is ever gained, much can be lost, and no public interest is ever served by the confusion or the substitution of ideology for wisdom. Working in the government of Virginia, in the office of Governor Charles S. Robb was the greatest experience of my life. Those years were made so memorable and remain so unforgettable because of two things; the honor of association with Chuck Robb, his beliefs, his character and integrity as a man and a leader, and his qualities, objectives and vision as Governor; and, second, by the privilege of working with the brightest, most energetic, dedicated and distinguished group of colleagues any gubernatorial administration has ever been so fortunate to attract and to deploy into the service of the people of Virginia. If you doubt me on this point, that superlative is easily verified by even a cursory examination of the astonishing record of individual and collective service, achievement and success these men and women have accumulated since 1986. At the center of all this stands the man who brought us all together, to do what we could, in the time we had, to move the Commonwealth forward, and with whose name and term as Governor we remain proudly associated.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome to the podium the 64th Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Honorable Charles S. Robb.

Read Charles S. Robb's Keynote Address