Remembering Sen. Littell

The death of Senator Robert E. Littell shook me hard. The observations in the N.J. Herarld were all from Republicans, but there was more to the senator than partisanship. The senator had the ability to reach across the aisle, and make compromises or even side against a Republican governor named Whitman on the issues of the pension system. Littell knew how to horsetrade, a phrase I read from our current surrogate.

I have long used the term statesman for someone that could see past the next election, and push something that would benefit the next generation, but there is more to such a definition. As the art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence. That indeed is the definition that I would give to our late senator.

Before I ever met Senator Littell, I knew of him and his father from my uncle, one of the first fire chiefs in Hardyston, and briefly a Republican councilman in Hardyston from the Stockholm section. Littell was a marine, and my uncle a paratrooper during World War II. My uncle liked the senator, and I assume the senator liked him. He talked about him often.

After a brutal housefire, the senator and I assume former Freeholder Durina interceded to help us get back on our heels and on our feet. He actually was my reference for coming to Sussex and Warren County to head our local offices here for 12 years, and prior to that he put me on planes to compete against North Carolina with allies from Michigan, Missouri, and Massachusetts for grants. Indeed, I was out of the state with the then commissioner's blessing with the help of the Senator and his daughter. We lost that grant, but we had a fine proposal for the benchmarking of skills of workers at corporate sites, and I used it in Atlantic City, and at local Sussex County companies and corporations like Ocean Spray, Mars, and Nabisco.

The senator somehow knew we had need of a computer lab in our Franklin facility, and the local Workforce Investment Board that was to preach our cause let us down. The senator brought a commissioner of labor to Franklin, and we had a top shelf computer lab in our possession, outperforming Newark, and our tri-county area offices for GED, computer skills, and other ancilliary skills. The senator woulld come over and joke with staff many times, and would often ask me to find him a job. One of my last conversations with the senator was at a celebration of our local National Guard activities, which for two straight years made Franklin the number one recruiting center in the state, and again he asked me for a job. That was a melancholy occasion.

In the final primary election for Senator Littell, Guy Gregg was going to attack the senator's health. I went into a number of papers, including this one, to ask Republican voters to vote for Senator Littell. He would not finish that election, but I would see him time to time. It was often in Wal-Mart or even McDonald's where I met his son, Luke.

Littell was the quintessential politician. I can take a chapter to discuss him. I spent time with him in the now-closed Franklin Diner with his friends Joe and Mr. Carroll, the owner of the diner. They were great freinds and told great stories. Littell was a statesman. One source says statemanship is harder than politics. Politics is the art of getting along with people, whereas statesmanship is the art of getting along with politicians (Source: Fletcher Knebel). Littell had that keen ability to get along with politicians, but also the low income, and the high powered. He was my friend, and I miss him. He was special. He like Marg Roukema were defined as Rockerfeller Republicans and they are both missed. God Bless, you, too.

Bill Weightman
Hardyston