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Wednesday, November 29, 2000

Henry B. of S.A. is dead
He fought battles 37 years in D.C.
By Michelle Koidin
Associated Press

Associated Press

Gonzalez

SAN ANTONIO - Former U.S. Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, a maverick legislator whose 37 years on Capitol Hill were marked by a passionate defense of the common man and sometimes quixotic battles, died Tuesday in a San Antonio hospital. He was 84.
   Family members took him to Baptist Medical Center Tuesday morning as a precaution after he awoke not feeling well, said Adrian Saenz, spokesman for Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, the elder Gonzalez's son. Saenz said the congressman died at 4:30 p.m.
   Gonzalez, known widely as "Henry B.", served as chairman of the powerful House Banking Committee and as dean of the Texas congressional delegation from 1961 to 1998.
   The Democrat charted a determinedly iconoclastic course in Congress.
   Possessed of intense pride, the sometimes irascible and always unpredictable Gonzalez was often derided in Washington for his unwillingness to work within the system. In his hometown of San Antonio, however, he was celebrated as a hero, a defender of the downtrodden.
   Unafraid of crossing swords with top Republicans - he sought to impeach Presidents Reagan and Bush - the ornery Texan didn't shy away from tangling with his own party.
   Even after decades in Congress, Gonzalez felt he remained an outsider.
   "I stand before you today, accepted, but seen by some as an inconvenient and unwelcome obstacle," he told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats in 1996, beating back yet another challenge to his leadership.
   Banking and housing
   He was credited with crafting tough savings-and-loan bailout legislation and helping expose the industry's 1980s excesses. He also pushed an overhaul of banks' deposit insurance system. But the unabashed populist's love was in ensuring affordable housing for the poor.
   During his stint as Banking chairman, Gonzalez opened investigations that led to the resignation of the government's chief thrift regulator and the conviction of S&L owner Charles Keating. Those hearings proved uncomfortable for Democrats, spotlighting four Democratic senators' ties to Keating.
   Gonzalez also investigated the Reagan and Bush administrations' friendly dealings with Iraq before the Gulf War. He unearthed evidence that U.S. agricultural credits and illegal loans were used to help Saddam Hussein build his war machine before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
   Loses his steam
   After Republicans gained control of the House in 1994, Gonzalez lost his chairman's gavel. The usually combative lawmaker also lost his footing, demonstrating little appetite for new crusades.
   In 1963, the former college boxer slugged a Republican congressman from Texas who called him a "pinko." And 23 years later, in a San Antonio restaurant, the septuagenarian decked a man who called him a communist. "I can still hit," he told the newspapers.
   Before C-SPAN made after-hours floor speeches ubiquitous, Gonzalez trooped religiously to the House well to deliver speeches on all manner of topics. The first Hispanic elected to the Texas Senate, he became famous for a 22-hour filibuster against segregation bills. He served from 1956 to 1961.
   Fiercely proud
   Slowed by illness, Gonzalez spent more than a year at home before returning to work in July 1998. After his father decided not to seek re-election, Charlie Gonzalez pushed past six other candidates for the Democratic nomination for his father's seat and then won the election in November 1998.
   Although fiercely proud of his Hispanic heritage, Gonzalez refused to be pigeonholed by ethnicity. "I am a Democrat without prefix, suffix, apology or any other kind of modification," he said in 1996.
   He earned the 1994 Profile in Courage award from the John F. Kennedy Library for his investigations of the S&L industry and the Iraq scandal. The award was a special honor for Gonzalez, whose office was dotted with photos of President Kennedy.
   "I was a genuine friend of John Kennedy," Gonzalez said.
   In 1977, Gonzalez briefly chaired the House panel that investigated the assassinations of Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He resigned three months into the committee's existence, saying it could never uncover the truth.
   A man of modest habits, Gonzalez flew home nearly every weekend to San Antonio, where his wife, Bertha, and eight children lived.
   Born in San Antonio in 1916 to recent arrivals from Mexico, the young Gonzalez knew poverty and discrimination.
   Possessor of a law degree, he sidestepped a career as a lawyer to help his father, the managing editor of a Spanish-language newspaper, run a translation service. During World War II, he worked as a military censor.

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