WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is scheduled to give his final U.S. Senate speech on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon.
Thirty years after first being elected to represent West Virginia in the U.S. Senate, Rockefeller will take time on the Senate floor to reflect on his 50 total years of service to the Mountain State.
It’s one in a series of farewell events for Rockefeller whose final term ends this month. He did not seek reelection in November. U.S. Senator-Elect Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) will take his seat in January.
Rockefeller was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984.
By the time he leaves office, he will have spent half a century working for West Virginia, a place he has called his “forever home.”
It was 1964 when a 27-year old Rockefeller first came to West Virginia as a VISTA volunteer assigned to Emmons in southern West Virginia.
He said, in many ways, he has never left that small community since then. “Every single day since my days in Emmons, I’ve never changed. I’ve always fought for the same things,” he said during a Democrat Party event last year.
Rockefeller’s political career started in the state House of Delegates in 1966 and took him through roles as Secretary of State, president of West Virginia Wesleyan and governor of West Virginia before he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Most recently on Capitol Hill, Rockefeller has served as chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and has been a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.