What would Weicker do?

Monday’s funeral of former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., featured a variety of tributes that highlighted some of the memorable events of his political career. Speakers were spoiled for choice as they prepared their remarks.

The former Greenwich Republican-turned-A Connecticut Party leader was hailed for his willingness to take on issues others ducked or ignored. Weicker’s independence included his taste for taking a poke at fellow Republicans when he was in the Senate–and after. (It was a surprise to hear references to a house on fire and “the big bear who loves to get out of the cave and roar.“)

The tributes prompted a thought about an urgent contemporary issue. What would Lowell Weicker have done when he was governor if more than a thousand nursing students, nearly all of them women of color, had been locked out of their school? The Lowell Weicker who was eulogized Monday would not have allowed them to languish in a frustrating and expensive limbo for five months–so far.

Lowell Weicker would not have been indifferent to his administration’s failure to find meaningful solutions for dispossessed students trying to improve their career prospects in Connecticut. He would not have given those students a long, silent shrug.

Eulogies mark an end but they can also point the way forward.

Published July 11, 2023.