EDGEFIELD--Strom Thurmond, one of the greatest political figures in South Carolina history, an ardent segregationist who eventually championed black colleges and civil rights laws, died Thursday. He was 100.

Thurmond died at 9:45 p.m. in a newly renovated wing of a hospital in his hometown of Edgefield, surrounded by his two sons, his daughter, Julie, and his wife, Nancy.

MIC SMITH/STAFF Ken Hatcher lights a candle in front of the hospital where Strom Thurmond died Thursday night as his wife, Theresa, and son J.P., 12, look on. They came after hearing the news on television. Ken Hatcher said he was surprised he was the only one who'd come out to light a candle.

"My father was resting comfortably without pain and in total peace," his son, Strom Thurmond Jr. said.

No history of South Carolina, or this nation, can be written without a number of chapters devoted to Thurmond, a man of firm convictions who also showed an amazing capacity to compromise and ride changing political tides.

As word of his death spread, the condolences and recollections began, such was his place in American politics.

Sen. Fritz Hollings asked the Senate to adjourn out of respect for his colleague. "A giant oak in the forest of public service has fallen," he said late Thursday.

President Bush's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said Thurmond "served the people of South Carolina with distinction for decades. He earned the respect of Democrats and Republicans alike, and he will be missed."

Gov. Mark Sanford said, "In South Carolina there are leaders and then there was Strom. ... The pages of history this statesman-hero has written far exceed the pages that most of us live." He said Thurmond was "a Colossus in life, a man whose impact on this state and this country will continue to be seen and felt far beyond the decades of service he gave us."

Thurmond lived in a special two-room suite at the hospital since he retired from the U.S. Senate in January after a 48-year senate career. Edgefield, not far from Aiken and the Georgia state line, is his hometown. It was once known as the unofficial seat of power in the state because it produced 10 South Carolina governors.

Although he completed all of his final term in the Senate, Thurmond's last year was marked by increasingly poor health. He moved from his private home outside Washington to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was monitored around the clock.

As news spread earlier in the day that Thurmond was listed in guarded condition, friends and family began gathering at the Edgefield County Hospital.

The news was announced on a humid night under the lights of a dozen television crews in front of the hospital, where the flag was lowered to half staff just before 11 p.m.

Thurmond's body was taken to Aiken late Thursday, and the funeral home there will move the body to Columbia, where he will lie in state at the capitol, Bob McKie, mayor of Edgefield, said late Thursday.

"He then will be taken to First Baptist Church in Columbia, then back to Edgefield. He will be taken in a horse-drawn casket to Willowbrook Cemetery, where his mother, father and daughter are all buried, McKie said.

"The family was there at the end," said State Sen. John Courson, a close friend of Thurmond. "It was a loving time."

A LIFE OF PUBLIC SERVICE

The remarkable life of James Strom Thurmond began Dec. 5, 1902, in the rural town of Edgefield, just 37 years after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, ending the Civil War.

LOU KRASKY/AP Strom Thurmond

The middle son of Judge John W. Thurmond and Eleanor Gertrude Strom Thurmond, the young Thurmond was raised in a two-story home with wide wrap-around porches just outside Edgefield's historic downtown. As a young man, he attended Clemson College, at the time a military school, and graduated in 1923. A year later he was commissioned in the U.S. Army.

Thurmond's father wrote a letter to his son shortly after he left Clemson outlining nine points of advice that would stick with the senator throughout his life.

Among the tenets: "Remember your God, take good care of your body and tax your nervous system as little as possible, obey the laws of the land, be strictly honest, associate only with the best people, morally and intellectually, be prompt on your job to the minute, read at every spare chance and think over and try to remember what you have read."

Thurmond incorporated much of the advice into his lifetime of public service, eating in healthy fashion, exercising regularly and often outworking even his youngest staffers. Over the years, reporters hounded the senator about his strict diet and exercise regimen, prompting his staff to finally put the routine on paper.

Thurmond's more than seven-decade career in public service began in the sweltering summer of 1929 when the 26-year-old was elected superintendent of the Edgefield County school district, becoming the state's youngest county superintendent.

Thurmond, who previously served as a teacher and coach, initiated a program to bring dentists and health officials into the schools to check on and treat local children. Outside of the district, Thurmond launched the ambitious "Write Your Name" program aimed at helping the estimated 3,200 illiterate black adults in Edgefield County learn to read and write. The town's weekly newspaper, the Edgefield Advertiser, reported in 1930 that the program's efforts led to a one-quarter reduction in the adult illiteracy rate in the county.

During the period he worked in the school district, Thurmond, who studied law under his father's tutelage, was admitted to the South Carolina Bar. He then practiced law in Edgefield, helping his father and serving as both the city and county attorney.

In 1932, at age 29, Thurmond was elected to the South Carolina Senate, serving until 1938 when voters made him a circuit court judge. As a judge, Thurmond traveled the state presiding over cases, four of which resulted in death sentences for crimes of rape and murder.

While Thurmond battled criminals in South Carolina, another war raged on the opposite shore of the Atlantic. Drawn by a sense of patriotism, Thurmond took a leave of absence from his judgeship in 1942 and went on active duty with the U.S. Army.

On D-Day, he landed behind enemy lines in a glider at Normandy. The then-41-year-old, who had to get an age waiver to serve, lacerated his hands and left knee that day but continued fighting.

"When you volunteer for a mission like that," Thurmond later said, "I don't think fear is in you."

Less than a year after D-Day, Thurmond became one of the first Americans to advance on the newly liberated Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, a haunting experience that stayed with him.

"Men were stacked up like cordwood, 10 or 12 feet high," Thurmond recalled in a 1996 interview. "You couldn't tell whether they were living or dead."

For his service, Thurmond was awarded five battle stars and 18 decorations, medals and awards, including the Purple Heart, Legion of Merit with cluster, the Bronze Star, French Croix de Guerre and the Belgian Order of the Crown.

Beyond the borders of South Carolina, he is still known for his unsuccessful run for president against Harry Truman as a third-party Dixiecrat in 1948, garnering 38 electoral votes and carrying four Southern states. He later gave the longest filibuster in history, speaking for more than 24 hours against the Civil Rights Act in 1957. And he was one of the first Southern Democrats to jump to the Republican Party, a move that would drastically change South Carolina politics.

But over the years Thurmond's political beliefs evolved alongside those of his followers. Once an outspoken supporter of segregation, he became an advocate for black colleges in South Carolina and a champion of a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr.

As Thurmond grew and changed, so did America. During his lifetime, Thurmond knew the work of comedians ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Jay Leno. He lived through the Great Depression and Prohibition and later watched the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall rise and fall. Born before the airplane, he lived to see an American tourist rocket into orbit on a Russian spacecraft.

Outside the pristine halls of the Senate, he was a husband, father and, to many, a hero. Stories shadowed the senator, from his historic write-in victory in 1954 for the Senate to tales about his well-publicized affection for beautiful women.

In his farewell speech to the Senate in the fall of 2002, Thurmond, with his dyed hair and feeble gait, reminded everyone of his charisma.

"The U.S. Senate is a special place," he declared, his long, thin fingers clutching the podium. "I love all of you, and especially your wives."

CHANGING WITH THE TIMES

Thurmond was a practical politician. As blacks began voting in large numbers, he became the first Southern senator to hire a black aide. He supported the appointment of a black Southern federal judge and voted to make the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

Showing how much his world had changed, in 1977 Thurmond and his wife, Nancy, escorted daughter Nancy, 6, to her first day in the first grade of a Columbia elementary school that was 50 percent black. The girl's teacher was also black.

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, said he hoped Thurmond would be remembered for the great strides he made for equality long after his segregationist past. He specifically mentioned Thurmond's hiring in the early 1970s of Tom Moss, a black man, making him the first Southern senator to hire a black staff member.

"I like to think he had a new birth," Clyburn said.

"What we have just experienced is the passing of a real icon in the world of politics. I don't know that there is anyone in the state's history who's had such an impact upon political life," he said. "He and I have rarely agreed on issues, but we were always very cordial to each other and very respectful of each other."

Former S.C. Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian became close to Thurmond when the senator's daughter, Nancy Moore, was killed by a drunken driver in Columbia in 1993.

"I got to know Strom Thurmond during the year I spent with him and his family preparing the prosecution of the woman who killed his daughter," Harpootlian said. "Politically, we were miles apart, but I saw him as a grieving father and a decent human being, and I know our state will miss him," he said.

Harpootlian didn't know if history would be kind to Thurmond, considering that his final birthday was marred by Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott's comments on his Dixiecrat run for president. "One of the drawbacks of living so long is that virtually every white politician of the '40s and '50s" was a segregationist," Harpootlian said.

While many members of the media, including nine TV trucks, descended on Edgefield late Thursday, word trickled out slowly in this town of 4,500. Many people said they knew he was coming home to spend his final days and that his failing health was no surprise.

"I think the world thinks he is more of a legend than his hometown," said David Fitts, a Columbia resident who was in town visiting his girlfriend. "People here know him, and they are used to seeing him."

Praise for Thurmond came from across the state and nation.

"He pioneered the development of South Carolina's Republican Party from effective non-existence in the 1960s to majority status by the end of the century," said U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-Lexington. "He has been a role model of service to South Carolina's young people, and our family has had three generations on his staff. My wife's two uncles were staff attorneys, my wife and I were interns, and our three oldest sons were pages."

Edgefield Mayor Bob McKie, who knew Thurmond all his life, said he would go out for rides each week or two with Thurmond, who enjoyed being back in his hometown. "We're really saddened by this. He did a lot for the town. He did a lot for the county, and he did a lot for the nation. We're going to sorely miss him."

Ken and Theresa Hatcher and their son, J.P., were watching the evening news when they saw that Thurmond had died. They jumped in their car, drove to the hospital and lit a candle out front. The longtime Edgefield residents said it was the passing of a great man and the town's native son.

"He's an icon," Ken Hatcher said. "Above all that, a fellow citizen has passed away."

"One of the great men of all ages has passed away," said long-time family friend Bettis Rainsford of Edgefield. Rainsford last spoke to Thurmond early Thursday morning and described him as alert but weakening. "He was alert and he knew who I was," he said. "He had become increasingly weak in the last couple days and sometimes he was not as communicative as he historically had been."

"We're all very sad to lose Sen. Thurmond. He has been a major part of my life all of my life," an emotion-choked Rainsford said late Thursday. "Not many of us can say we have the impact on the world that he did. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to know him."

After his retirement from the Senate and return to Edgefield, Rainsford said Thurmond found it very easy to accept his life was coming to a close. "As time went along he was prepared to go as well," he said. State Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell said, "He's going to be sorely missed. When I set out to keep the Hunley in South Carolina, that was the door I knocked on."

House Speaker David Wilkins said, "For as long as most of us can remember, Strom Thurmond has been a part of our lives: a patriot, hero, statesman and friend."

The deep affection was at least partly because of Thurmond's renowned attention to constituent service, stepping in when people were having trouble getting things such as passports or Social Security checks.

"Everybody in South Carolina is crazy about him," Norman Dorn of Edgefield said at the time.

Asked once what he wanted for his epitaph, Thurmond replied, "How about, 'He loved the people, and the people loved him?' "