Funeral services today for U-S Senator Dave Durenberger

Visitation (830am) and a funeral Mass are this morning (10am) at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville for the late U-S Senator Dave Durenberger, who died January 31st at the age of 88.  Accolades came from both sides of the aisle as the Minnesota Senate remembered Durenberger Monday.  Saint Paul Democrat Sandy Pappas:

“Senator Durenberger worked on women’s rights, then voting rights for people with disabilities in 1985, and was asked to co-author the Americans with Disabilities Act by Senator Edward Kennedy.”

Anoka Republican Jim Abeler says Durenberger was “a fierce advocate for the rights of people with disabilities”:

“As a chief of staff to Governor Harold Levander he traveled to Cambridge State Hospital and recalled, ‘I saw a whole bunch of young men, most of them naked, some of them hopping around like animals, just warehoused there — and I never forgot it.'”

Durenberger, a Collegeville native, was first elected to U-S Senate in 1978 to fill the seat of Hubert Humphrey after he died.  The progressive Republican was re-elected in 1982 and 1988.