Editorial - November 2002

Political legend Strom Thurmond returns home

November 29, 2002 - In 1996 most of the voters in South Carolina were well aware they were sending a geezer back to Washington. U.S. Sen. Strom was very, very old —  a man who would turn 100 if he completed his term.

But they did it anyway.

They have been doing that for nearly 50 years. Why stop now?

Thurmond, who turns 100 on Thursday, was a state senator, judge, governor and states rights candidate for president even before he came to serve in Washington. He went on to become the oldest, and the longest serving member of Congress in history — finishing 48 years.

My last interview with Thurmond was about six years ago in Spartanburg, S.C. at the Beacon Drive-in, a favorite campaign stop for politicians because they knew a big crowd of voters would be eating burgers there at lunch time.

At the time he was campaigning against textile executive Elliott Close. I asked him about the then furious debate going on over removing the Confederate Flag from the South Carolina Capitol. Surely ol’e Strom, a champion of Southern causes if there ever was one, would object. But he didn’t.

 “I think we should take it down and put it in a place of respect.” he said.

Thurmond changed with the times.

But some things never changed.

When I first met him in the late 1960s he was at the Greenville’s (S.C.) Poinsett Hotel where the beauty queens had just arrived for the Miss South Carolina Pageant. He tapped me on the shoulder as I was interviewing one of the contestants.

“How d’ya do. I’m Strom Thurmond,” he said. The handshake was one of those that’s hard to get away from. He just kept clinging to your hand.

I was surprised to see our senior senator at a beauty pageant, but dismissed it at the time as plain old politics. The pageant was a big deal back then and the Greenville, S.C. Jaycees put on a first class production at Greenville’s Memorial Auditorium. Many of the state’s political leaders would attend the pageant.

Later I would learn that ol’e Strom just loved to be around women. And as I look back on that meeting, it could very well have been the time and place he grew to know Nancy Moore, the 1966 Miss South Carolina he later wed. The two later had four children, all of whom Strom fathered after age 63. (His first wife, Jean Griffin, was Miss South Carolina of 1947. She died in 1961.)

As Thurmond finally retires from his post and turns his seat over to newly elected Republican Lindsey Graham, it’s difficult for political writers to pin him down in a biographical reflection.

The historical footnote will probably spotlight his bid for president in 1958 as a Dixiecrat States Rights candidate. He carried South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. In 1964 he left the Democratic Party and became Republican, a path later followed by many Southern politicians.

Thurmond was a die-hard segregationist early in his career and still holds the filibuster record for a 24-hour, 18 minute speech against the 1957 Civil Rights bill.

But his views on civil rights moderated during the 1970s. By the early 1980s, he was hiring hire black staffers in his Washington office.

He is widely recognized in North Carolina, where the new $100 million facility at Pope Air Force Base for deploying paratroopers was officially named the Maj. Gen. Strom Thurmond Strategic Deployment Facility.

Thurmond is well recognized in military circles for his military role as a reserve officer and his service on various congressional panels. He was a combatant, who crash-landed in a glider in Normandy with the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II. The crash wounded Thurmond, ripped apart the glider and destroyed a Jeep the glider was carrying.

He was also known as a vigorous exerciser, still lifting weights and doing push-ups in his late 80s.

But when you talk to South Carolinians who have known Thurmond’s reputation over his entire career, their respect comes not from his military or legislative service, but his constituent services.

 When people called his office with some problem, no matter how trivial, he took it seriously. He couldn’t always remedy the problem, but many, stories float around the state about how he DID break through the federal government’s bureaucracy in behalf of a constituent.

Everybody knew he was going downhill in the late 1990s. His hearing was bad, he often needed help to walk around and he ultimately set up living quarters in Walter Reed Hospital.

Plans are now under way to move him into a wing of the 40-bed Edgefield County hospital when he returns to his home town  in January.

Ol’e Strom can look out over his old home place from that hospital window, and he won’t be far from his 93-year-old sister.

And, he will be among friends — thousands and thousands of them.

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Al Dozier is managing editor of the Lincoln Times-News

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

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