Senator Jon Corzine had just won election for Governor of NJ, probably 1000 Democrats from around the state were collected at a nice hotel in New Brunswick NJ. By 12:40 the crowd was thinning out and I got a chance to approach Senator Lautenberg, and asked him if I could take a picture of him. After taking the picture I asked the Senator if it was him who had thought up the Chickenhawk.....
Back then Senator Lautenberg had made some headlines because he set up an easel on the floor of the Senate, propped up a graphic of a cartoon drawing of a chicken dressed up in Faux military garb, and proceeded to lambaste Dick Cheney....
In a scathing 2004 Senate speech, Lautenberg – who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II — called Cheney the “lead chicken hawk” among Republicans questioning the military credentials of Democratic presidential candidate and Vietnam War veteran John Kerry.
“We know who the chicken hawks are,” Lautenberg said. “They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others. When it was their turn to serve, where were they? AWOL, that’s where they were.”
http://www.northjersey.com/...
I got the chance to interact with Senator Lautenberg and his staff during the 2006 & 2008 campaigns, I was working for Tom Wyka who ran twice for Congress in NJ-11. Senator Lautenberg had a spark in his eye and an intellectual vigor lacking in many people half his age. One time, in his Newark NJ Office I saw a picture of his Army unit just before the Normandy invasion. The man I had meet a few times, had that fire in the belly, and if he was physically capable would have hit the beach in Normandy with his carbine all over again, if it was required of him.
Frank Lautenberg wasn't in the first wave at Normandy, IIRC he landed on the beach a week or two later. He was part of that "Greatest Generation", like my Dad, who would be operating his radar unit on an Escort Carrier in the Pacific a few months later.
I asked the Senator who thought up the idea of the Chickenhawk.....
That was my idea, I thought of it, I get so incensed when people who've never served....
Was what he fired back at me. Frank Lautenberg was one of our generations finest liberal voices in the Senate, and from personal experience.. he took no crap from Dick Cheney or any other Republican.
Frank Lautenberg was born in Paterson NJ, a working class town. Congressman Pascrell commenting on the Senators passing:
"He was not born with a silver spoon, and Paterson is not a place of silver spoons," said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a fellow Democrat from the Silk City. "Paterson is a place for tough, rough, dirty faces - you pick yourself up and do what you have to do. Frank Lautenberg did."
Frank Lautenberg missed many votes earlier this year, as complications and pneumonia weakened him, but returned to the Senate floor to cast votes on the gun control measures, April 17th, 2013, an issue that he had championed during his years in the Senate. He will be missed.