Good morning.  I have eagerly anticipated this special occasion honoring a free-thinking, plain-speaking man who has done so much over so many years to improve the quality of life in our state and nation.

It is great to see so many of Dick Riley’s friends and family members in the audience, some of whom have traveled thousands of miles to be here on this special occasion. 

Many people who wanted to be here could not attend because of unavoidable conflicts.  Several of them sent eloquent written tributes. 

Their doing so reminded me of one of Mark Twain's best lines.  In referring to a deceased acquaintance, he explained that "I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it." 

This event, of course, is not a funeral but a commemoration of a lifetime of public service and personal integrity.  Dick has taught us the meaning of service; he preaches what he practices. 

He has dutifully followed his calling as a statesman, but he has always had a pastor’s heart.  We learn as much from his character as we benefit from his leadership.

There are many in the audience who should be up here instead of me.  You grew up with Dick, you are part of his wonderful family, you campaigned for him, served with him, worked with him, laughed with him, grieved with him, and celebrated with him.

I envy your life-long membership in his beloved community of friends and supporters.  Since becoming president of Furman University 16 years ago, I have had the good fortune of working closely with Dick in his role as a Furman trustee, and I have taken special delight in the creation almost ten years ago of the Richard Riley Institute at Furman, an Institute that in just a few years has created an array of programs across the state and in the process developed a national reputation in the educational and public policy arenas.

Dick is much older than he looks and acts.  Richard Wilson Riley was born in Greenville on January 2, 1933, amid the depths of the Great Depression.  

He grew up on Grove Road with his brother Pat in a middle-class neighborhood.  Young Dick was an eager and earnest Cub Scout, and his vivacious mother, Martha, a Furman graduate, was the den mother of his troop as well as the volunteer mother in his classroom at Augusta Circle School. 

His father Ted, a Barnwell native, attended Furman on a football scholarship and then earned a law degree from Furman’s short-lived law school.

During World War II the Riley family moved to Miami, where Dick’s patriotic father, at the ripe age 42, convinced the Navy to let him serve as a military lawyer.  

After the war the family returned to Greenville and became immersed in the city’s civic and religious life.  The elder Ted Riley became one of Greenville’s finest trial lawyers and most active Democrats. 

Dick Riley credits his father with implanting with him what has become a lifelong involvement with public service and a bedrock commitment to treating all people--rich and poor, black and white, old and young—fairly and with dignity.

Like many people in the Upstate, the Rileys spent more time at church than at home.  They were said to be more than Christians; they were United Methodists. 

Like the rest of his family, Dick was actively involved in the church, heading up his Sunday School class and serving as a delegate to the state Methodist convention.

At Greenville High School, Dick was elected president of the senior class and enrolled in the Naval Reserve at age 17.  He was also a star tailback and captained the Red Raider football team.  He was also named the wittiest member of his class. 

But he is especially proud of a tribute paid him by Joanne Woodward, the famous actress who married Paul Newman.   She was a high school friend of Dick’s, and she later recollected that he was the best dancer in Greenville.  

At Furman Dick was active in student government and in his senior year was voted the best leader and most friendly person in the class.  He graduated with honors in 1954, was commissioned as an officer in the Navy, and then served aboard several Navy ships. 

While overseas, Lieutenant Riley contracted a rare degenerative spinal disease called rheumatoid spondylitis.  Within two years, he could not lift anything or bend over.  A Navy medical specialist predicted he would spend his life in a wheel chair. 

But he did not know the strength or perseverance of Dick Riley. 

Much like Franklin Roosevelt’s battle with polio, Dick refused to allow his inflammatory disease to disable or dishearten him.  Over the next fifteen years, as the disease ran its course, the already lean Dick lost fifty pounds and wrestled daily with excruciating pain and lost mobility.  But he never complained about or even discussed his courageous battle. 

Eventually, once the disease had run its course and the arthritis had taken its toll, Dick was left permanently stooped.  Yet he never slowed down.   In fact, the disease bequeathed him with a fused spine that keeps him always leaning forward—which is exactly the spirit of progressive leadership he has embodied.

Dick entered law school at the University of South Carolina in the fall of 1956.  While there he courted and married Ann Osteen Yarborough, affectionately known as Tunky.  They were married over fifty years until her death in 2008.  

Tunky was Dick’s beautiful morning star—a radiant source of hope and courage.  She displayed the remarkable ability to make people want to polish their own hearts.  Dick once said that Tunky’s “companionship and counsel and love and devotion” were the stabilizing force in his life.  

[Some of you may have heard the story about Tunky participating in a debate with the spouses of the three other candidates running for governor.  When asked about the derivation of her name, she replied that it was an old Indian word meaning “Governor’s wife.”—the next day his support in the polls doubled!)

After receiving his law degree in 1959, Dick worked in Washington for a year as legal counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Then he returned to Greenville and joined his father and brother’s law practice. 

In 1963 he was elected to the South Carolina House of representatives.  The two other newly elected representatives from Greenville that year were Nick Theodore and Harry Chapman.  They served two terms together in the House and then all were elected to the Senate, where Dick served until 1977.   

He emerged as a leader among the so-called Young Turks in the House and Senate who were eager to reform the “good-old-boy” tradition, streamline legislative processes, and “reapportion” power and authority to local communities and to local courts.

In 1978 Dick surprised everyone by winning the Democratic primary and the Governor’s race.  With his reelection in 1982, he became the first two-term governor in the 20^th century. 

As governor, Dick Riley emerged as a nationally recognized leader in the areas of public education reform, nuclear waste disposal, and preventative health care. 

His administration promoted conservative fiscal management and made remarkable progress in job development, educational quality, protection of the environment and improved health care for all people. 

“My whole campaign,” Dick later recalled, was intended “to involve people.”  He wanted “to be a people’s governor.”  And he was.  He appointed more women and minorities to government posts than any previous governor. 

Governor Riley also initiated several landmark pieces of legislation.  

In his first inaugural address he had declared that “Excellence in public education is our first duty to each other,” and he followed his words with action.  The Education Improvement Act was perhaps the most audacious legislative proposal in our state’s modern history. 

To enable its uphill passage, Dick mobilized a bi-partisan coalition of business executives, community leaders, chambers of commerce, and even the state's conservative voters. 

As the bill moved toward a vote, Dick worked tirelessly for its passage.  In one three-week stretch, gave more than 100 speeches across the state about the proposed legislation.

In those speeches, Riley shared distressing statistics with South Carolinians: one-third of the state’s students couldn't pass the basic skills test; South Carolina ranked 49th out of the 50 states in spending per pupil; most South Carolina prisoners and unemployed were illiterate.

"When you're dead and gone, what do you want to leave your children?'  Governor Riley asked at the end of one of his speeches. “I say to you, as far as Dick Riley is concerned, I'd rather leave my children and their children the possibility of a quality education than the biggest house in South Carolina.”

In 1984, the state legislature approved a penny increase in the sales tax to fund a $213 million overhaul of the underperforming public school system. 

The EIA focused on improving elementary schools.  It provided cash bonuses to schools that showed the most improvement and set up a probation system for substandard schools whereby the governor can intervene, with full powers to fire personnel.

A RAND Corporation study deemed the EIA most comprehensive educational reform measure in the country.  Soon, Dick was being appropriately called the “education governor

Other legislation that he initiated was equally remarkable.  The Medically Indigent Assistance Act was the first statewide program in the nation providing medical care to the indigent. 

The Employment Revitalization Act sought to bring more effective coordination of occupational training statewide. 

The Omnibus Crime Bill strengthened sentences for violent crimes and addressed prison overcrowding.  The Public Service Commission Merit Selection bill sought to appoint commission members based on their merits rather than cronyism. 

Dick was also a champion of the arts.  He helped establish the first statewide Governor’s School, the School for the Arts and Humanities, in Greenville. 

He also played a key role in the creation of the State Museum in Columbia.

During his governorship, the Legislature appropriated money to build a new State Museum across the Broad River from downtown. 

Dick vetoed the project because he wanted it to be closer to the energy and activities downtown.  So he convinced the owners of the historic Columbia Textile Mill, built along the river in 1893 and by then long vacant, to donate it to the state for the new museum.  The result was a much better location at a much lower expense to the taxpayers.  The State Museum has become one of the state’s cultural jewels. 

It did not take Governor Riley long to gain national stature.  President Carter asked him to chair a group appointed to create a national policy dealing with nuclear waste. 

While doing so, Governor Riley learned that Pennsylvania was shipping truckloads of nuclear waste to South Carolina after the reactor accident at Three Mile Island. 

Dick ordered a phalanx of state troopers to the North Carolina border to stop the truck and turn them back. 

A few months later the commission he headed fashioned the Radioactive Waste Management Act of 1980, the nation's first legislation dealing with the disposal of low-level nuclear waste. 

Dick also chaired a national commission focused on expanding Medicaid to cover poor infants and pregnant women.

In November 1992, newly elected president Bill Clinton asked Dick to helped head up his transition team. 

Then he asked Dick to serve as the nation’s chief education officer.   Secretary Riley did such a good job that 18 months later Clinton said he wanted to nominate him for the Supreme Court. 

Senator Joe Biden, who was then chairing the Judiciary Committee, assured Dick that he would be confirmed by the Senate in a week.  Strom Thurmond urged Dick to accept, but after wrestling with the offer for two days, he respectfully declined.  He said he did not look good in a robe.

He also knew that he was better at leading people than he was a reading legal briefs.

When Dick took over the Department of Education in 1993, he found himself at the helm of an embattled agency that some members of Congress and Republican presidential candidates had threatened to abolish.

Dick immediately launched an ambitious agenda.  He initiated higher national education standards, improved instruction for disadvantaged students, and made higher education more accessible for needy and middle-income families. 

He also created the Partnership for Family Involvement in Education, which included more than 8,000 groups.  Dick also focused national attention on the need for people of all ages to learn more than one language and pursue international education.

By the time Dick retired from the executive branch in early 2001, The Christian Science Monitor said that many Americans had come to regard Dick Riley as “one of the great statesmen of education in this (20^th) century.” 

David Broder, the award-winning political columnist for the Washington Post, called Dick one of the “most decent and honorable people in public life.” 

Last year, TIME Magazine named him one of America's “Top 10 Best Cabinet Members in History.” 

Since returning from Washington to South Carolina, Dick has rejoined the law firm of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough.  Dick also serves on numerous national and regional boards.    

Wherever Dick Riley goes, in whatever capacity he continues to serve, he wins universal respect for his integrity and principled leadership, his steadfast commitment to children and his passion for high-quality education.  He prefers forging partnerships to indulging in partisanship.

Running like a bright thread through the fabric of Dick Riley’s majestic career is a dominant theme:  his fervent belief in democracy.   He remains convinced that nurturing grassroots involvement and democratic processes is the only way to ensure that the rewards of a free society will be shared with everyone, and not just elites. 

When I think of Dick Riley and his courageous and tenacious efforts to serve and uplift ALL South Carolinians, I recall the story of the fellow who turns the corner in a city neighborhood and sees a brawl in the middle of the block.   He runs right for it, shouting: Is this a private fight, or can anyone get in it?  Dick sees democracy as everyone’s fight. 

Good causes are rarely easy to advance.   But for all of the roadblocks and cynicism he has encountered, Dick has never lost his conviction that a better world is possible if we fight hard enough. 

Moral courage is less common than bravery in battle.  Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to improve a still imperfect world.

However deserved this Induction into the Hall of Fame is for Dick Riley, I suspect that he wants to be remembered most simply as a good and decent man, a natural leader and a tireless fighter who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw inequities and tried to remove them, saw ignorance and tried to educate it.

This state proudly bears the stamp of Dick’s exceptional accomplishments and his sterling character. 

He has been a learned, inspiring leader who has helped elevate our sense of what South Carolina can become.  Like an ultimatum, Dick Riley remains a formidable example, urging us to strive, to improve, to build, and never to yield to indifference or complacency. 

He has inspired generations with his example, showing us what it means to be loving in the face of hate, hopeful in times of despair, and generous to those in need.

That is a great tribute to him, to his wonderful wife, Tunky, to his four children and to his thirteen grandchildren, whose love he has so depended on and whose love he has returned in full measure.

Now, Dick’s enshrinement in the Hall of Fame will forever bear witness to the ethic of public service he embodies.  

His service on our behalf, inspired by idealism and sustained by faith, has been wrapped in a muscular gentleness and an abiding affection for the entire community. 

In sum, Dick Riley represents a magnificent affirmation of our shared humanity.  For this, and for so much more, we honor and thank him—and will forever love him.

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By David E. Shi

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