IN MEMORIAM: SEN. ORRIN HATCH.

• Author: Lee, Mike

Mr./Madam President,

Orrin G. Hatch will be remembered for many things. His forty-two years of service in this body are marked by successes, historic legislation, and statesmanship. He served longer as a U.S. Senator than any other in the history of the State of Utah or the Republican Party. At his retirement, he had passed more bills into law than any other legislator alive, an astounding seven-hundred-and-fifty. While the record of his service is remarkable and memorable, I invite the Senate and the nation to remember Senator Orrin Hatch by the things that he remembered, every day, here in the Senate and in his private life.

Every day upon entering his Senate Office, Orrin Hatch would look upon a prominently hung painting depicting his Utah pioneer grandfather and great-grandfather fording a stream on horseback. This image, like so much else in his life was a reminder of his pioneer legacy, ancestry, and destiny. In Utah, there is almost no more honorable title than that of pioneer. In the particular parlance of our state, a pioneer is not merely someone who goes where others haven't before. A pioneer looks toward the future without forgetting who he or she is. A pioneer, like those who settled the Salt Lake Valley and much of the Western United States, does so, not out of conquest or in search of glory, a pioneer goes and works out of duty, responsibility, and faith.

Orrin Hatch always remembered his roots. Raised the son of a mechanical laborer, he grew up in a family of little means. Orrin was one of nine children raised in a cramped depression-era home without indoor plumbing. Two of Orrin's siblings died young. Another--his older brother Jesse--made the ultimate sacrifice as a turret gunner flying over Austria mere months before the allied victory in Europe.

Orrin always remembered this example of work and sacrifice from his parents and brother. The sense of duty to God, family, and nation was the primary driver throughout his life. He served a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ohio. He became the first in his family to graduate from college, attending Brigham Young University. He met Elaine Hansen, and the couple married in 1957. They later returned to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Orrin completed law school at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law while living in what used to be a chicken coop in his parents' backyard. He worked as a metalworker and a janitor to provide for his family...