Tuesday, January 6, 2009

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement on Griffin Bell
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Mr. President, I rise for a few moments to address two subjects, the first will be about Israel and the second about the passing of Griffin Bell.

The second subject is, for me, a very sad subject but also a subject that brings a lot of joy to my heart. There is a great American by the name of Griffin Bell, known to many people in this room. I know you, Mr. President, being a former Attorney General in the State of Colorado, are familiar with Griffin Bell's record and jurisprudence in the United States for the last 75 years.

Griffin Bell first rose to prominence in America when Jimmy Carter brought him from Georgia to become the Attorney General of the United States of America. He brought him in at a critical time in our country's history because Griffin Bell had done unbelievable things as a lawyer during difficult times in the South.

Griffin Bell was the man whom Andy Young and the civil rights leadership of Atlanta and Ivan Allen, the mayor of Atlanta, turned to to write the plan for the desegregation of the Atlanta public schools. It was Griffin Bell who, as a lawyer but more so as a human being, worked through the difficult stress of those times of integration and the enforcement of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, to see to it that separate but equal ended and equal access to education prevailed for all.

He did it in a way where Atlanta was one of the few major cities in America that had no violence, no conflict, and no academic loss because of the imposition of the desegregation guidelines that were imposed by the courts.

Griffin Bell did something no one thought could be done. It was because of his ability to do that and find common ground and find understanding that Jimmy Carter brought him to Washington, DC, and appointed him Attorney General.

When Griffin left and went back to his law firm of King & Spalding in Atlanta, there was not a single thing that happened in our major capital city and our State for four decades that Griffin Bell was not a major player and a major part of.

During Olympics, when they came to Atlanta in 1996 and there were difficulties, to whom did the Olympic committee go to weed through the minefield of Washington to get the security assistance necessary for the Olympics and Atlanta? It was Griffin Bell.

When there was a company that was in need of a forensic audit by a legal man who would come in and clean up a problem in their company, such as E.F. Hutton did, whom did they call? They called Griffin Bell. For the better part of the last six decades, Griffin Bell has been the most prominent lawyer in the State of Georgia and I would suggest one of the most prominent lawyers in the United States of America. His mark has been left on countless hundreds of thousands of lives in our country. Sadly, at 9:45 a.m. yesterday morning in Piedmont Hospital, Griffin Bell passed away. I know where he is now. He is in heaven and he is looking down. He would be the last person to want anybody in the Senate or the House or anywhere else bragging about him. But I sing his praise for the greatness he did for our State and the greatness he did for his country.

To his children and to his wife, I pass on my sincere condolences and my thanks for the support they gave to a great father and a great Georgian, Griffin Bell.