WASHINGTON — “Uncle Ted” Stevens, an old-style Senate giant and the chamber’s longest- serving Republican, delivered his swan-song address and yielded the floor for the final time Thursday. He was saluted by his colleagues as a staunch friend and teacher.
“My mission in life is not completed,” Stevens said in his farewell speech on the Senate floor, as perhaps a quarter of the chamber’s 100 members gathered to hear him and the gallery filled with his friends and family.
Stevens, 85, made only a passing reference to his felony convictions and the loss this week of his bid for a seventh Senate term.
“I look only forward and I still see the day when I can remove the cloud that currently surrounds me.”
Family members and aides wept as Stevens recounted his six Senate terms that began not even a decade after his home state, Alaska, achieved statehood.
“Forty years!” he declared at one point. “I have a really difficult time today articulating my feelings and I hope if I puddle up, as an old friend used to say, I’ll be excused.”
He had no trouble recounting the struggles that came with advocating for such a wild and faraway place — nor his victories, his many chairmanships and friendships.
When Stevens finished, the assembled crowd gave him a standing ovation, a violation of Senate custom. No one objected.
