Hell's Pells

Claiborne Pell, the effete out of touch senator whose namesake college grant now doesn’t even cover the cost of a semester’s worth of beer, has died at the age of 90. The Rhode Island senator was one of the odder inhabitants of Capitol Hill. An avid jogger, he wore a tweed jacket while logging his miles. He called for Congressional hearings on ESP and UFOs. A member of one of the richest families in the country, he was unfamiliar with the ways of the working class he championed. During a rainstorm, an aide provided him with footwear. He asked: “To whom am I indebted for these fine rubbers?” The aide told him he got them at Thom McAn, to which he replied “Well, do tell Mr. McAn that I am much obliged to him.” When a campaign opponent derided his blue blood and branded him “a cream puff,” Pell responded by promptly obtaining the endorsement of a bakers’ union. Pell wrote the legislation that created the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant (aka Pell) program. Because the grant award was not tied to any logical measure, it is currently funded to $4,050 annually, which when the law was written, covered about 60% of the cost of tuition at a public four-year university. In 2007, the average cost to attend a private 4-year institution was $23,712. He was also strongly tied to international relations, serving as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1987-1995, and among his fruitless or ill-conceived positions were initially supporting President Johnson’s expansion of war in Vietnam, normalizing relations with Cuba, challenging President Reagan’s support of Nicaraguan guerillas, advocating for the role of the United Nations and supporting a treaty to keep nuclear weapons off the sea floor. The six-term Democrat is regarded as being the most powerful politician in the history of Rhode Island, somewhat akin to being the longest-lived drummer for Spinal Tap. Descended from a family that derived its wealth from an 18th-century royal charter of land from King George III of England and whose ancestors were the original lords of the manor in Pelham Manor, N.Y., Pell lived among the old-money families in Newport and was one of 6 members of his family to serve in Congress or the Senate, plus James K. Polk’s vice-president George Dallas.