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286 Eight❒ LifeAfter favorite stories Pellkeptaprominentprofileandanactivebutnotoverburdenedschedule in his first year out of office. He spent time in his new office at Salve Regina University ’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, in Newport, which had been established with a $3-million U.S. Department of Education grant the previous fall. In January, he dressed in black tie and joined Nuala at the first annual Pell Awards for Excellence in the Arts, a fundraiser honoring actor Jason Robards that raised more than $100,000 for Providence’s Trinity Repertory Company. A month later, educators honored him at a Brown University symposium that drew more than 600 people. “Asyoucanimagine,I’mquiteoverwhelmed,”hesaidinatwo-minutespeech, one of the last he would give. “Thank you for an evening I will never forget.” The spring and summer found Pell at several fundraisers, including a ball benefiting a children’s cause and the Ben & Jerry’s Octopus Garden Party, a benefit for Save the Bay that he and Nuala hosted at Pelican Ledge. By autumn, his legacy preoccupied him. He had arranged for the University of Rhode Island to house his personal, ancestral, and Senate archives, and he spent time there with the collection. He began to work with a new writer on the biography he wanted toseetopublication—butthateffort,likeearlierones,wouldnotreachfruition. In the election year of 1998, Pell appeared—but did not speak—at political fundraisers featuring appearances by Vice President Al Gore and First Lady Hillary Clinton. He greeted, from afar, the Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act that nearly doubled the maximum Pell Grant from $3,000 annually to $5,800 annually (an increase phased in over four years). And he turned eighty. Pell had not celebrated his birthday since Kennedy was killed on that day, and Pell had additional reasons not to observe this one: he did not like turning eighty,hesaid,andhisParkinson’slefthimlessthanfestive.ButNualapersuaded him to have a dinner party. Daughter Dallas came with her young teenage son, Eames Yates. The Pells’ other daughter, Julie, came with her partner, Julie Smith. Toby and Janet were there with their children, Tripler, a teaching assistant at Harvard, and Nick, an undergraduate student at Duke. Son Bertie, who was in Arizona being treated for the cancer that was now in its final stages, could not come, nor could his l i f e a f t e r ❒ 287 wife—but one of their children, Christina, a student at Rhode Island School of Design, Bertie’s alma mater, was there (brother Clay, Claiborne’s namesake, was spending his high school junior year abroad in Spain). Sister M. Therese Antone , president of Salve Regina, and a small group of close friends rounded out the group. The party ended a period of well-wishing that began on his birthday morning with telephone congratulations from Jesse Helms, of all people. In an op-ed piece, former governor Sundlun recounted the party, to which no press had been invited: the evening was, he said, one of toasts and reminiscing . Asked his favorite of the eight men who had been president while he was in Washington, Pell told Sundlun: “I put Kennedy at the top because he had the greatest vision.” Carter, Pell said, had been the most difficult. And he described the late Javits as his best Senate friend. “As the party drew to a close,” Sundlun wrote, “Senator Pell walked himself to the fireplace and made a short speech. He thanked everyone for being present, and in particular he thanked Nuala as his wife for 54 years. He said that she was in his dreams practically every night. He acknowledged the love and support she had given him throughout their lives together, and he thanked her for being the most important influence in his life. Everybody present realized the emotion with which the senator made his short speech. After the speech, grandson Eames went off to bed, but before he left he said: “‘Grandpa, can we take a long walk tomorrow morning?’” ❒ ❒ ❒ The memories Pell’s grandchildren would keep would be of an eccentric Grandpa who could be affectionate but was rarely emotional. They would remember a man of stature who possessed an odd tender side: calling seaweed “sea plants,” never seaweed, for example. They would remember a man who was obsessive about his ancestry and was insistent, to the point of annoyance, that all of his progeny do their part to further the family legacy. Their later memories would be of an elderly man who did not...

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