Strom Thurmond

Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the longest-serving senator in US history, has died. He was 100. The one-time Democratic segregationist who helped fuel the rise of the modern conservative Republican Party in the South died on Thursday. Thurmond, whose physical and political endurance were legendary, retired on January 5, 2003, after more than 48 years in office. He had been living in a newly renovated wing of a hospital in his hometown of Edgefield since he returned to the state from Washington earlier this year. Age took its inevitable toll on Thurmond as he neared retirement and he was guided through the Capitol in a wheelchair. Yet he wielded political power virtually to the end, prevailing upon President George W. Bush to appoint his 29-year-old son, Strom Jr., as US attorney in South Carolina in 2001. In a political career that spanned seven decades, Thurmond won his first election in 1928, to local office, and his last in 1996, to his eighth Senate term. His voting record was pro-defence, anti-communist and staunchly conservative. He was a lifelong physical fitness buff, who shunned tobacco and alcohol and was known for his vigorous handshake. He had a storied reputation as a ladies' man. Thurmond unsuccessfully ran for president in 1948 against President Harry Truman's support for civil rights. His presidential campaign sparked controversy more than a half-century later. Then-Majority Leader Trent Lott declared at Thurmond's 100th birthday party that voters of Mississippi were proud to have supported the South Carolinian when he ran for the White House. "If the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either," added Lott, who was forced to step down as the Senate's Republican leader in the ensuing uproar. Thurmond's racial politics changed over the years as blacks began voting in large numbers. He became the first Southern senator to hire a black aide, supported the appointment of a black Southern federal judge and voted to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday. Born December 5, 1902, in Edgefield, South Carolina, James Strom Thurmond - Strom was his mother's maiden name - was elected county school superintendent, state senator and circuit judge before enlisting in the army in World War II. He landed in Normandy as part of the 82nd Airborne Division assault on D-Day, and won five battle stars and numerous other awards. The war over, he returned home to resume his political career and won election as governor in 1946. He lost a race in South Carolina for the only time in his career four years later, when he challenged incumbent Senater Olin Johnston for renomination. In defeat, he returned home to practice law. But in 1954, Senator Burnet Maybank died unexpectedly. When party officials tapped a state lawmaker to run for the post, Thurmond challenged as a write-in candidate, saying the voters, not the party's leaders, should decide who got the nomination. To underscore his credentials as an insurgent, he pledged to resign his seat before seeking re-election in 1956. He won, the only person in history to capture a seat in Congress by write-in. Two years later, he kept his pledge to resign before running for the four years remaining in the term. Thurmond's first wife, Jean Crouch, was 23 years his junior. The couple married in 1947, and she died of a brain tumour in 1960. His second wife, former beauty queen Nancy Moore, was 44 years younger than Thurmond when they were married in 1968. Thurmond was 68 when their first child, Nancy, was born. The couple had three other children before separating in 1991: Strom Jr., Juliana and Paul. Nancy died in 1993 after being struck by a car.