Reply #21: I'll never forget that just weeks before his death,

[myrna minx]

Senator Wellstone and his wife Shelia attended a small gathering with supporters in an upper duplex in Uptown Minneapolis. Senator Wellstone was in a highly contentious re-election campaign against Norm Coleman, who was bound at the hip with George Bush. The Senator had been involved an an especially heated Foreign Relations Committee hearing earlier that day, but when he arrived at the gathering, and despite the pain he experienced ascending the long staircase (as a result of his back problems) to the apartment, he was fired up and ready to inspire us. We were hanging on his every word, when he told us that he had an important announcement to make.

He announced that after weighing all of the evidence and lack there of, and after much soul searching, he had decided to vote *no* on the Iraq War Resolution. Well the room full of 25 supporters erupted in cheers. The most remarkable thing about this experience is that he decided to make this historic announcement to a small room full of John and Jane Q. Minnesotans and not to the press. He did make the announcement to the press thereafter, but that he sharedthe news with us first, a small group of people, in such an intimate setting made me truly understand what it was to know an honorable man. He knew that his decision may very well sink his campaign, but that he could only vote his conscience. He had to leave our gathering early, because he and Shelia had to attend a military funeral in northern Minnesota, but not before wholly expressing his gratitude for the passionate support he received from his volunteers. That was the last time I was face to face with the Senator, for he and and his plane full of loved ones perished in a crash several weeks later. The Senator put Country and what was right, before any political aspirations and ambitions. Remarkably, after his IWR vote, he did rise in the polls, because people respected him and his conscience.