Strom Thurmond died at 9:45 p.m. Thursday. A little after 11 p.m., the Senate fell silent for a moment in memory of Thurmond. At daybreak Friday morning, CNN was broadcasting reaction to the centenarian's death.

Across the land, people talked about many of Thurmond's stands on the issues: staunch segregationist in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s. He was a man who reinvented himself as times dictated, embracing African-Americans after the 1965 Civil Rights Act was passed and as a large number began to register as voters.

Someone said that Thurmond was a "small 'p' " politician, but a man who believed in personal relationships and constituent service with a capital "C and S." His staff was a master of detail when a constituent wrote a letter, called or later, sent requests via e-mail. No request was too small or large, whether it was walking a passport application through the halls of government, assisting a military person to get home for a family funeral, sending high school graduates a letter of congratulation or a condolence upon the death of a family member.

Jack Bass, Thurmond biographer, College of Charleston professor, and brother to Lucille Lipsitz of Beaufort, said Friday on CNN that if every member of Congress was as good as Thurmond on constituent service, the Congress of the United States would have a much higher rating.

He was always accessible, accommodating and politicking.

I first met Sen.Thurmond the Monday after Thanksgiving 1969. I was a newly discharged U.S. Army linguist working as a photographer for The Chester Reporter, my hometown newspaper. The senator and his beauty queen wife, Nancy, whom he had married the year before, were in the back seat of a large Oldsmobile in the Chester Christmas Parade. He opened the door, grabbed my arm and summoned me into the car. He wanted to know who I was, where I worked, it was a lot of small talk but it was still flattering to a green-behind-the-ears newspaper photographer/reporter. He wanted me to meet his wife, take a picture.

Thurmond gladhanded everywhere he went, from the Chester, Rock Hill and Lancaster Christmas parades to the Beaufort Water Festival Parade. In his 80s and 90s, he would ride his white horse in the parade. In later years, he would ride in a convertible.

Of course, Thurmond had other ties to Beaufort. He was instrumental in funneling money to the area for the waterfront park, Beaufort-Jasper Water and Sewer Authority, the military bases and a number of other needs.

He also inscribed his name into the wall at the Secession House on Craven Street, where soldiers wrote their names and messages during the Civil War.

Assuming some were 20 years old when the Civil War ended, many of those veterans could have been only 57 when Thurmond was born Dec. 5, 1902. Former City Council member and S.C. House member Edie Rodgers Martin, a former owner of the Secession House, said Thurmond inscribed his name during a Beaufort reception following the Water Festival parade in 1992 or 1993 in what is the Republican corner of the wall. " 'Daddy George' Bush," as Martin calls the former president, also inscribed his name, very legibly for posterity, she said, along with former S.C. Gov. Carroll Campbell.

Martin said, "Thurmond's legacy may be the value of public service. Public service can be honorable service, and he had a genuine love for serving."

Holidays were a time for Thurmond to call people and wish them well. He had a secretary who worked on Christmas Eve calling newspaper editors and other people to wish them a Merry Christmas. "Jim, Strom Thurmond here," as if one didn't recognize that distinctive voice. "I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas." It wasn't a long conversation, but it was a moment a cynical newspaper editor would record in his memory book.

Thurmond will be remembered for many things, but Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who will deliver a eulogy at the senator's funeral Tuesday, gave a glimpse Friday during a speech from the Senate floor (televised on CSPAN-2).

Biden was elected to counter segregationists from the deep South like Thurmond. Biden and Richard Nixon also were two of four people to deliver speeches at Thurmond's 90th birthday bash in Washington.

The New York Times, Biden said, published an editorial in 1946 or 1947, calling Thurmond the "Hope of the South." That was before he was defeated by a sitting senator for being weak on race, said Biden, who was more than 40 years Thurmond's junior. It seems that when he was a presiding judge, before he was a governor and a senator, Thurmond advocated for better books and schools for blacks and even tutored black students.

"I do not believe Strom Thurmond at his core was a racist," Biden said. "He came from an environment that was so different. É He looked for the good in you and not just the part that was adversarial. I believe he changed because the times changed. É I watched him as he appointed blacks to his staff."

Thurmond transformed the South into a two-part region. Herman Talmadge, a former Georgia governor, wrote in the Clayton News/Daily in 1989: "If Southerners needed a signal that it was all right to become Republicans, they got it in 1964 when my cousin Strom Thurmond ... switched his registration so he could campaign for Barry Goldwater ..."

Indeed, Thurmond transformed Southern politics. He was one of a kind.