This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Sen. Orrin Hatch has often referred to himself as "a lion in the Senate," but now he has become a lion in winter. Some insensitive souls have called for him to retire and urge him to come back to the state he has represented for so long. However, he seems to be resisting.
Brought up in the humid environs of Pittsburgh, Hatch is not a creature of the West, with its dry air and harsh sun, although he gamely tries. His greatest fear appears to be that he might be expected to actually live in Utah, a place he visits only on quick jaunts designed to protect him from both high-altitude UV and his constituents.
As a humane gesture, let's not sentence poor Orrin to the arid wastes of Utah. Let him remain where he is most comfortable, the humid East, surrounded by attendants, in the finest senior-care facility in the world, the United States Senate. Maybe then his song-writing career will pick up again.
John Middleton
Salt Lake City