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R-98-27 A RESOLUTION HONORING THE HON. WILLIAM B. SPONG, JR. WHEREAS, William B. Spong, Jr., a Portsmouth native, a former United States Senator from Virginia, and a public figure of rare stature for more than forty years, died on October 8, 1997; and WHEREAS, he graduated from Hampden-Sydney College, earned his law degree at the University of Virginia, studied for a year in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh, and then returned to Virginia to teach at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary; and WHEREAS, he became involved in politics when he ran successfully for the House of Delegates in 1953 and joined the "Young Turks," a group of moderate Democrats that forced the state to spend more on public education; and WHEREAS, he won election to the Senate of Virginia in 1955 and served until he accomplished his biggest political upset in 1966, defeating 20-year incumbent A. Willis Robertson in the Democratic primary for the U. S. Senate; and WHEREAS, he served honorably in the Senate for one term, where he was appointed to the prestigious Senate Foreign Relations Committee and served alongside such legendary figures as J. William Fulbright, John Sparkman, Mike Mansfield, Frank Church, Stuart Symington, Claiborne Pell, Edmund Muskie, Jacob Javits, and Hugh Scott, and he performed with such distinction that he came to be spoken of as a potential United States Secretary of State; and WHEREAS, his political career spanned a time of great change in Virginia, from the dominance of the Byrd organization, through the rise of moderate Democrats, to the new-found power of the Republican Party; and WHEREAS, following his service in the Senate, he remained active and influential in Virginia's public affairs, particularly in the field of higher education; and WHEREAS, from 1976 until 1985, he was dean of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary and is widely credited with reviving and rebuilding the law school's flagging fortunes; and WHEREAS, he also served as interim president of Old Dominion University, where he won praise for boosting the institution's morale and elevating its profile in Richmond; and WHEREAS, he served on a wide range of commissions and councils, including a term on the State Council of Higher Education and serving as chairman of the Commission on Public Education, which recommended major changes in public education in Virginia, and a commission that examined Virginia's needs into the next century; and WHEREAS, throughout his long career of public service, he was admired and respected, by ally