In 1986 at a political rally in Strom Thurmond's hometown of Edgefield, gubernatorial candidate Carroll Campbell stood and began naming folks in the audience who had once worked for the senator.

He paused.

"I think it would just be easier if everyone would please stand and anyone who has not worked for the senator just take a seat," Campbell joked.

The funny thing was, he wasn't far from the truth.

And I would have been one of the ones left standing.

I'm one of the several hundred South Carolinians who was on Thurmond's federal payroll during his 48 years in Washington, including former Republican Party head honcho Lee Atwater and Nixon staffer Harry Dent.

For more than a quarter-century, Thurmond had employed more interns on Capitol Hill than any other senator. Some senators didn't have any interns at all. Most summers, Thurmond could have fielded a softball team with all the college students he had around opening mail and running errands. Not only had I worked for him during the summer of 1970 when I was in high school, but 25 years later both of my kids worked as interns for Thurmond. And my sister, Helena Mell, worked on his Washington staff for nearly two decades.

We weren't a Republican family, but you soon learned that with the senator, that didn't "make no never mind." What mattered was, you were a registered S.C. voter.

Here's some observations of the senator gleaned from the past three decades:

• My intern job that summer was to get to the office before the rest of the staff and deliver personal mail to the senator's desk by 8 a.m. One morning I knocked and he told me to come in. He had his shirt off and he was lying on a coffee table. I was shocked at what I'd walked into until I saw him pick up a set of barbells and start pumping. "Boy, one day you'll grow old like me. But these chunks of iron will help slow down the process." He was in his 70s then and the media was already questioning him about his age, and if he'd be able to finish his term.

After he'd gotten married and was living on DuPont Circle, he and Nancy would sometimes invite the staff to ride bikes with them on Sunday afternoons in Georgetown. He'd treat us to homemade ice cream and, at the end of the bike ride, it was the college interns whose tongues were dragging.

• I delivered releases to the Capitol Hill press office and was sometimes asked to drive a staff car to National Airport to pick up the senator. One day I was told to go to the airport and meet a newspaper photographer from the old Washington Star. We were to walk onto the plane to where the senator was seated. In those presecurity days, you could still do so. We walked down the aisle and you could hear his distinctive cackle but not see his head behind the shoulder rests; he was talking with a pair of flight attendants. On either side of him were two huge watermelons strapped in with seat belts. On top of each melon was a straw S.C. Highway Patrolman's hat.

"Get in heah, boy, and get my picture so I can get to the Hill for a vote," he roared.

The senator had just returned from the Pageland Watermelon Festival and he said to the photographer: "After you run the photo in your paper, you make sure this boy gets the photo -- now what's your name, boy?" he said turning to me. "And he'll see that the photo gets back to the South Carolina papers."

And he rose, tipped his own patrolman's hat to the ladies and exited -- with me and the photographer struggling to carry the melons.

• During Campbell's re-election campaign in 1990, an out-of-state reporter asked if Campbell was considering running for Thurmond's Senate seat in 1996, assuming that Thurmond was too old to seek re-election. Campbell grinned: "I don't know if you noticed that cemetery on the hill when you drove in this morning from the airport. But there's a special section there reserved for all the politicians who have staked their political futures on Senator Thurmond's demise."

The governor would not speculate further on anything to do with Thurmond's seat, and the reporter got the message. A rising, national Republican stalwart, Campbell never ran for Thurmond's U.S. Senate seat.

• I was covering an election in the late 1980s and somehow ended up at a small airport in the lower part of the state, waiting to meet a candidate as he did a whistle stop tour. A twin prop plane landed and a lone man got out and the plane departed. I walked across the tarmac and realized it was the senator. I had a clipboard in my hand and he mistook me for one of his aides before I could explain who I was.

Even at this stage, he was rarely left unprotected by an aide who would normally shield him from pesky reporters. He also still wielded considerable power on Capitol Hill as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and, as such, was third in line in the presidential order of succession. I couldn't believe he was left alone with me as a fledgling reporter.

"My daddy used to work these fields in cotton back in the twenties," he drawled, gesturing out through some nearby pine barrens. You could see heat shimmering up from the runway. He was obviously disoriented, possibly from the heat, and he reached out to grab my arm to steady himself. He asked me who we were going to meet that afternoon. Before I could answer, the real aide showed up and quickly ushered the senator away to a black Crown Victoria. I could hardly wait to call my editor to tell him what I'd witnessed. I knew I had an exclusive front page story. The editor patiently listened and then said, "Let's forget about Thurmond's mental state for the moment, and let's focus on the story I sent you down there for. If you still feel that strongly after you see Thurmond speak tonight, you can talk about that other story tomorrow."

That night at a dirt and gravel fairground, Thurmond came out onto the stage, zinging one-liners about beauty queens and "them old Demycrats up there in Washington, D.C." He gave a spirited introduction to the candidate and then literally started swinging the microphone on a chord like a geriatric Mick Jagger. Thurmond threw the microphone to the startled candidate, who caught it. Thurmond exited the stage like a Roman gladiator, the crowd stomping their feet and shouting "WE WANT STROM, WE WANT STROM."

I learned a crucial lesson that night on the campaign trail -- never underestimate a successful politician's ability to rise to the occasion.

They probably had a section reserved in that cemetery for reporters, too.

Dan Huntley