The good pol

Human Race: Friends remember Henry Hyde as a conservative leader willing to take unpopular stands | Lynn Vincent

Hyde in 2002

Gentleman. Statesman . . . Zealot? Even as funeral arrangements for former Rep. Henry Hyde (see The Buzz, Dec. 8) were being set for last Friday at St. John Neumann Church in St. Charles, Ill., pro-abortion activists fumed online about the Illinois Republican's greatest legacy, the Hyde Amendment. Passed in 1976, the amendment slashed federally funded abortions from about 300,000 a year to a relative few. In a Dec. 3 Huffington Post op-ed, Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood, called Hyde "a zealot" who "hoist[ed] himself on the petard of his own extremism."

Those who knew him say Feldt's purple locution would likely have given Hyde a chuckle. The silver-haired, cigar-wielding former House majority leader enjoyed a good joke. "He was a man of great intelligence and tremendous learning, but he was very unpretentious, not puffed up with himself," said National Right to Life Committee legislative director Douglas Johnson.