Political Leader Mcgovern Looks Back With Regret Former Senator Didn’t Know How Alcohol Invaded Family

George McGovern may have been the most powerful Democrat in the country at the time, but he didn’t know what was happening under his own roof.

“I didn’t know until later that my children were drinking when they were teenagers,” the former South Dakota senator and presidential candidate told an audience at the College of Southern Idaho Friday night. “And that’s only because they told me.

Two years ago, McGovern’s daughter, Terry, 45, staggered out of a Wisconsin bar, passed out in an alley and froze to death.

“It was a pretty relaxed attitude in our home when our children were growing up,” said McGovern, who wrote a book about his daughter’s alcoholism, titled “Terry.”

“If I had it to do over again, I’d have done anything to keep my children away from alcohol and I would have started when they were in junior high school.”

McGovern, the 1972 Democratic nominee for president, spoke to about 400 people gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Walker Center, a Gooding-based group of alcohol- and drug-treatment centers.

“If I look back on my 18 years in the United States Senate, I can’t think of a single speech that I gave about alcoholism,” he said. “I was much more interested in ending the destructive war in Vietnam, which cost the lives of 58,000 young Americans.

“And yet we lose twice that many people to alcohol in a single year.

“Every day, another 300 Terry McGoverns die. They’re not as famous as Terry was, but they’re no less precious,” he said.

McGovern, now 74, was defeated for re-election to a fourth term in the Senate 16 years ago and spends his time lecturing, mostly on alcoholism. He’s critical of what he sees as the federal government’s neglect of funds for substance-abuse treatment.

“Alcohol costs this country about $100 billion a year,” McGovern said.

The former senator received less than one-third of the Idaho vote in 1972, but he and the Gem State go way back. McGovern spent the spring and summer of 1944 at Mountain Home Air Force Base, learning to fly B-24 bombers. He later earned the Distinguished Flying Cross in Europe.

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