
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 9, 1994                   TAG: 9411160046
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHANGING LIVES

AMONG THOSE leaving office at the end of this Congress is a man who lived and worked among senators for the past 14 years - but never played the power ``game.'' He didn't have many of the perks of senators. He drove himself to work in an unspectacular older car. His office was smaller than all the others and, like the man who occupied it, lacked pretension. And yet, according to some who know him best, he has been the most powerful man in Washington.

Richard Christian Halverson, a native of North Dakota, a former chauffeur who went to Hollywood as a young man to become an actor, is retiring as chaplain of the U.S. Senate. A rare man in Washington, he has been beloved by Democrats and Republicans, from Ted Kennedy to Jesse Helms. His job description required nothing more of him than to open the Senate each day with prayer, as the Senate has every session since Benjamin Franklin offered the first prayer at the dawn of the new nation. Some of Halverson's prayers were so meaningful and relevant that portions of a few of them made the evening network newscasts.

Halverson's prayers were mini-sermons, imploring not only God's blessing on the Senate and its members, but imparting words of wisdom that could facilitate reasoned debate and enlightened legislative decision-making.

A prayer he delivered on June 23, 1993, was typical: ``God of our fathers, during the presidential campaign last year, Jesse Jackson reminded us that what is morally wrong cannot be politically right. If we separate morality from politics, we imperil our nation and threaten self-destruction. Imperial Rome was not defeated by an enemy from without; it was destroyed by moral decay from within. Mighty God, over and over again you warned your people, Israel, that righteousness is essential to national health.''

A frequent visitor to the Senate press gallery, Halverson prayed this prayer on Feb. 26, 1992: ``Gracious Father, investigative reporting seems epidemic in an election year - its primary objective to defame political candidates. Seeking their own reputation, they destroy another's as they search relentlessly, microscopically for some ancient skeleton in a person's life. Eternal God, help these self-appointed `vacuum-cleaner journalists' to discover how unproductive and divisive their efforts are.''

From the mundane to the profound, Richard Halverson could speak (and pray) about things in meaningful and effective ways. For several decades he has written a bi-weekly devotional letter called ``Perspective'' that has affected the thousands who have received it. I once met a man in a coffee shop in Amarillo, Texas, who told me he had never met Halverson but had read ``Perspective'' for years, ``and it changed my life.'' That is real power, the power to change the life of a person you have never met.

Dick Halverson has not been a closet chaplain, sitting in his office in the Hart Senate Office Building, waiting for senators to come to him. He has roamed the halls and knows the names of waitresses and custodians as well as those of senators. The countenances of the small and the great (a distinction lost on Halverson) light up in his presence.

Like his famous predecessor, Chaplain Peter Marshall, Richard Halverson has been a true servant of God in a place where his influence is sorely needed. Of Peter Marshall, the late Sen. Arthur Vandenburg wrote his widow Catherine, on hearing of Marshall's death, ``To me he was the embodiment of `Onward Christian Soldiers.' To me he was the personification of purposeful religion. His prayers were eloquent and real. He lived his faith.''

The same could be said of Dick Halverson, whose power came not from the electorate, or status, or position, but from God. The new Senate will fill no office of greater or more profound importance.

Los Angeles Times Syndicate

by CNB