As the nation mourns the loss of a U.S. Senator, some at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are also mourning the loss of a friend.
Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), his wife Sheila, his daughter Marcia and five others on board were killed Friday morning when their plane crashed in northern Minnesota.
During the 1960s, Wellstone studied political science as both an undergraduate and graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where many faculty members remembered the senator fondly.
Former UNC professor Joel Schwartz met Wellstone in 1965 and remembered the two shared much common. Schwartz began teaching at the university the same year Wellstone began his graduate career. Both had wives who worked in the school's library, sons named David and similar academic interests.
"It was not so much a faculty-student relationship as it was a merging of families," Schwartz said. "I will remember him as my oldest and best friend."
Wellstone often returned to the Triangle to give lectures and visit friends. Last year, he came back both to attend Schwartz' retirement party and to give the first William P. Murphy Lecture in the UNC School of Law rotunda.
One of the people he saw on his return visits was UNC political science Professor Thad Beyle, who served on Wellstone's dissertation committee. Beyle remembered Wellstone as an intense, liberal individual.
"He had an important role as someone who openly and avowedly talked about things from the liberal side of the spectrum," Beyle said. "He was a very forthright and strong person who articulated his views even if they were not always popular."
During his days as a Tar Heel, Wellstone held his liberal convictions. His doctoral dissertation, "Black Militants in the Ghetto: Why They Believe in Violence," focused on racial conflict in Durham.
In addition to graduating Phi Beta Kappa and becoming an ACC wrestling champion during his undergraduate years at Chapel Hill, Wellstone found his liberal voice in Chapel Hill, as the campus erupted over issues such as a state Communist speaker ban, anti-war protests and the civil rights movement.
"Those were special years because there were all kinds of issues," Schwartz said. "There was change activity and protest activity and he was at the head of it."
At the same time, Wellstone was raising his family. He and his wife Sheila married and raised their first son in the Triangle. Their daughter, Marcia Wellstone Markuson, who also died Friday, was born in 1969--the year Wellstone earned his doctorate and joined the faculty at Carleton College in Minnesota, where he served for 20 years as a political science professor.
Mirroring his experience with Schwartz, Wellstone met Duke law professor Laura Underkuffler that year--in his first course as a teacher and her first course as an undergraduate.
"It was tumultuous political times and it seemed to me that nothing was going on at Carleton that was relevant to the world," Underkuffler said. "He was the one person I met who seemed to understand. We became fast friends."
They worked together to help welfare mothers and food stamp users, from which Wellstone later wrote a book, "How the Rural Poor Got Power." Wellstone and Underkuffler often discussed where they could accomplish more: the streets or the suites.
"There was frustration in the long haul that we could not do anything to change government policies," Underkuffler said.
That frustration drove Wellstone into entering public service. He ran for state auditor in the 1980s, not even knowing what the position entailed, out of a simple hope to make an impact.
Then Underkuffler got a call at Yale University Law School.
"He said I'm thinking about running for Senate, and I thought, 'Oh, you've got to be kidding,'" said Underkuffler, one of three people Wellstone consulted before announcing his candidacy. "The last time I'd seen him, he was arguing in the commissioners' office, yelling about welfare mothers and food stamps."
She received yet another call in 1991-after she had been teaching at the Duke School of Law for three months-asking her to work with him in Washington, D.C., which she did for a year.
She said that with conscientious votes against the Iraq invasions and oil drilling in Alaska, Wellstone maintained his original loyalty to the underdogs until the end.
"He showed people it was possible to be a person of integrity and a politician as well," Underkuffler said.
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