The Last Word: Man of the People

Arkansas lost a giant April 20 with the death of David Pryor. The former governor and U.S. senator, who was 89, was remembered at media outlets throughout the United States, a testament to his stature in the broader spectrum of public service during his lifetime.

Here at home, Pryor’s passing brought out a who’s who of political and business leaders from all points on the political spectrum, each of whom weighed in on the impact he had on his home state throughout a long and distinguished career. The tributes rang differently than those found in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine and elsewhere, being more personal, as one might expect.

Former President Bill Clinton, who spoke at Pryor’s funeral and whose own political career was shaped greatly by Pryor’s mentorship, said of him in a statement:

“David made politics personal — from his famed retail campaigning to his ability to calmly and confidently explain tough votes to his constituents. He was honest, compassionate and full of common sense. He really loved the people he represented, and they loved him back.”

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose inauguration Pryor attended, posted on X, “While the Senator and I came up in different political parties, I, like all Arkansans, deeply appreciated his diligent stewardship of Arkansas and our interests during his time in public life.”

In fact, Pryor was one of ours and of us all, a true son of the Natural State and arguably the last of a select classification of Arkansas statesmen that put him in the company of such giants as John J. McClellan, Joe T. Robinson, J. William Fulbright, Dale Bumpers, Winthrop Rockefeller and a few others. Such leaders brought the state into the modern era, helping to untangle such thorny issues as race, quality of life, economic development, education, conservation, health care, transportation and human dignity across all demographics. The fact that we still struggle with such issues today does not diminish what those leaders accomplished but merely underscores the enormity of the task.

Each member of that select class affected change in his own way, and for Pryor, that way was through warmth, genuine compassion and a Heaven-sent gift for communicating. Among his most famous crusades were taxpayer rights and health care reform, for the latter of which, he even went undercover while a member of the U.S. House of Representatives to investigate conditions in nursing homes. The experience affected him profoundly, as he wrote in his 2008 autobiography, A Pryor Commitment, about the loneliness, neglect and boredom he witnessed.

Politics, even the “good old days” variety, is not for the faint of heart. As the Associated Press noted, Pryor was so stung over losing a runoff in the 1972 Democratic primary for Senate to McClellan that he abandoned politics altogether for a spell. When he did return, however, he never lost again, and while it is easy to over-romanticize people after their deaths, there were undoubtedly times Pryor had to brush off his nice-guy persona in the name of policymaking. What set him apart, however, was the ability to fight hard in the trenches and emerge without having inflicted the collateral damage of divisive rancor, personal attacks, character assassination and political expediency so common among politicians today.

Pryor understood his job and his responsibility was to the people of Arkansas, regardless of if they voted red or blue. That is clear not only from his service in elected office but from the time and energy he devoted to roles in his life following politics. Among them was serving as the inaugural dean of the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock and helping create the David and Barbara Pryor Center of Arkansas Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The center documents the cultural heritage of the Natural State.

I was only once in the same room with Pryor, seated in the gallery at an awards banquet where he was honored for his conservation efforts, along with several other individuals. By then his health problems were well known, and even seeing him for the first time, the effects of a stroke were noticeable. When time came for Pryor to be recognized, however, that shell of frailty fell away, and his remarks were captivating — succinct, inspiring and sparked by his trademark sincerity. When the topic was Arkansas, no one elucidated with more conviction than the soft-spoken former newspaper man from Camden.

At his funeral service April 27, Pryor was again lauded by those who knew him best, the most poignant of which was his son, Mark, himself a former U.S. senator.

“People have sometimes asked me over the years, they’ll say, you know, ‘What was your dad really like in private?’” Mark Pryor said. “He was almost exactly the same in private, except he was better.”