Strom Thurmond, Senate legend, dies

Strom Thurmond, the oldest and longest-serving senator in history, died last night at age 100.

Mr. Thurmond died at 9:45 p.m., his son Strom Thurmond Jr. said. He had been living in a newly renovated wing of a hospital in his hometown of Edgefield, S.C., since retiring after 48 years in the Senate earlier this year.

“Surrounded by family, my father was resting comfortably, without pain, and in total peace,” the younger Mr. Thurmond said in a statement released by the hospital.

The Senate, which was working on an overhaul of Medicare when it received news of Mr. Thurmond’s death, stopped work for a moment of silence and for several tributes to a man who fought as a World War II paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division and ran for president as a “Dixiecrat” in 1948.

“A giant oak in the forest of public service has fallen,” said Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, South Carolina Democrat, who served as junior senator with Mr. Thurmond for 36 years.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Mr. Thurmond’s 100-year life was “a life really unmatched in public service.”

“He was in many respects, a legend,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat. “He was a governor, a presidential candidate, a soldier, a father, a citizen.”

Mr. Thurmond relished a reputation as an old-timer from the last bastion of courtly Southern gentlemen, an antique in the contemporary world. He lived through 18 presidencies and witnessed great inventions from the airplane and the television to the personal computer and the Internet.

His style, marked by a thick drawl comprehensible only to the trained or native ear, largely withstood the old order’s changing during his 48 years in the Senate, where he rose to prominence during the 1950s fighting efforts to repeal the Jim Crow laws that segregated the South.

But his image as a staunch segregationist Dixiecrat outlasted his views on race relations that evolved over time, taming the kind of convictions he held in 1957 when he waged a record 24-hour, 18-minute filibuster over the Civil Rights Act, an accomplishment, nonetheless, he heralded for decades.

Mr. Thurmond was succeeded in the Senate by Republican Lindsey Graham, who last night praised the man for “a rich life” and because he “changed with the times.”

“He was the go-to guy. If you had a problem with your family or your business … get on the phone and call Sen. Thurmond. You would get a call back and he would go to bat for you,” Mr. Graham said last night.

In 1971, he became the first Southern senator to hire a black staff member. He later supported legislation making Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday. In a March 1996 interview with the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, the senator said of integration: “I think it’s for the better.”

In 1995, he was given an award by the Greater Washington Urban League during a dinner ceremony entitled “Black and White and Great Together: The Unity Continues.”

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