The recent death of Senator Paul Wellstone brought grief to all who treasure the environment, who fight for equal rights for women and minorities, who truly strive for peace before resorting to war, and who defend free speech and the many other causes that all of us hold dear. In the final days of October, we humanists, if not the nation, lost a great ally and good, hard working friend - an ordinary man turned extraordinary who, despite 12 years in the United States Senate, retained the common touch. Because of his death, my Minnesota, from its blue lakes and russet- rimmed iron mines of the north to its southern fields of corn, has donned a pall of gray.

I never knew Paul Wellstone, but despite his homely, almost battered appearance, his unpolished ways, his often strident voice and his devotion to the rickety old school bus from which he ran his Senate campaigns against a moneyed opponent who outspent him 7 to 1, I voted for him twice, for I believed in the message of hope and empowerment that he offered to all who'd listen.

Wellstone, the son of Jewish immigrants who had no money for school, literally wrestled his way to a college education and a doctorate in political science. Always an outsider, he shocked his Carleton College colleagues in 1982 by having the audacity to run for state auditor. When his critics managed to have him fired for his unconventional teaching methods, his politics, his public support of union workers, or for being too different, his inspired students rose in his defense. With 1500 of the college's 1600 students backing Wellstone, the administrators changed their minds. A year later, future Senator Paul Wellstone became the youngest tenured professor – at age 28 – in the history of Carleton college.

With Paul gone, only memories remain - memories of how he was arrested during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, then arrested a decade or so later at a protest in support of bankrupt farmers; how disappointed he was to have been released without trial because he had prepared a statement that would have put the banks on trial; how he helped set up an advocacy group that lobbied, pressured and sued government agencies in behalf of the poor; how he repeatedly told his campaigners, "Tell the truth and good things will happen"; how he often made himself the butt of jokes, winning over striking packing plant workers by telling them “My mother, Minche Danishevsy, is up there in heaven, smiling down at us saying, ‘Paul, good Jewish boy that you are – what are you doing with all these pork producers?’”;  how, following his successful 1990 Senate campaign, he arrived in D.C. in a suit so worn that his colleagues were moved to buy him a proper set of clothes.

I remember how he stood his ground in an era during which the needs of average Americans were largely ignored while power and money became even more concentrated in already wealthy, powerful hands; how he fought for economic justice, for universal health care, for a higher minimum wage and prescription drug benefits under Medicare; how he always had time to listen; how he challenged us, asking in The Conscience of a Liberal,  ”How can we live in the richest, most privileged country in the world and still hear from Republicans, and too many Democrats, that we cannot afford to provide a good education for every child, that we cannot afford to provide health security for all our citizens?”;  how he expressed concern for the safety of Muslim Americans after the 9-11 attacks; how he set aside an hour a week to talk with his interns to stay in touch with their lives; how he relied on and frequently sought the advice of his # 1 campaigner, his wife Sheila, who died with him; how he chose to run again despite the onset of multiple sclerosis, relying on his bubbling spirit to pick up the slack while the money poured in from out of state conservatives who were determined to bring him down; and how he was winning despite the efforts of corporations like the big pharmaceuticals that blessed his opponent with $200,000 while giving Wellstone $900 and change. Paul Wellstone was outspent time and again, but he was a winner because he played no favorites and was never outworked. Senator Tom Harken, Paul’s best friend and comrade through many Senate battles, fought back tears to say it best: “Paul was hampered by a bad back, but he had a backbone made of steel!”

Finally, I’ll remember the Wellstone campaign offices. Statewide beehives of frenetic optimism before the crash, they quickly became quiet, respectful, elaborate shrines. I’ll remember the flood of pro-Wellstone letters in our Twin Cities’ papers – one from a proud new American who regretted that he’d be unable to cast his first vote for "this man of justice whose passion was to safeguard the rights of the marginalized." I’ll remember Paul’s Senate colleagues, some of them nearly incoherent with grief as they wiped away tears and searched for words that might somehow describe their love for Paul and their loss.  I’ll remember the huge outpouring of mourners shielding their flickering candles from the cold drizzle falling on the state capitol grounds, two days later their numbers surpassed by the twenty thousand  - twenty thousand - faithful who jammed his University of Minnesota memorial service, leaving another thousand standing for hours outside, hunched over, fists jammed into pockets, stocking caps pulled low to ward of the late October cold as they listened to a message that Paul would have loved: "Cry today, cry today, but organize tomorrow!"

It would probably not have occurred to Paul that during his years in the Senate he had become the political counterpart of John Steinbeck, the author who, with books like the Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, assailed the greedy while defending the powerless, the working poor, the homeless and the dispossessed. Like Tom Joad, Steinbeck’s hero in The Grapes of Wrath, Paul Wellstone will "be ever’wher – wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there…. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build - why, I’ll be there."

"Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives, lessening human suffering, advancing the causes of peace and justice in our country and the world… Politics is what we create out of what we do, what we hope for, what we dare to imagine."

Senator Paul Wellstone 1944-2002