In 1955, after winning the U.S. Senate seat he would hold for 48 years, Thurmond wrote a four-page memo to his Senate staff instructing them about how to handle visiting constituents.

“Let Senator know when any South Carolinians come into office,” it read in part. Also, the memo said, “Give every adult South Carolinian a large picture of the Senator and every South Carolina child a small picture.”

Attention to personal networks, including constituents, played a vital role in Thurmond’s climb from state senator to judge to governor to U.S. senator.

Constituents were the most visible of the many networks Thurmond cultivated over the years. Others were less visible to the public.

All Thurmond’s networks, public and private, had two goals — electing him and keeping him in office.

However, newly discovered records show that, when it came to his networks, Thurmond was far more secretive and methodical than has been known. Those records also show Thurmond kept tabs on those he helped so he could target their assistance at election time.

The invisible networks included a secret army of “colonels,” Clemson grads, intellectuals, former jurors in courts where Thurmond had been a judge, barbers, politicians, staffers, family members and ordinary citizens.

“He always thought in those terms — organizations and networks and contacts,” said Neal Thigpen, a longtime Thurmond watcher and Francis Marion University political science professor.

In Clemson University’s Special Collections unit, about 4 million of an estimated 8 million Thurmond’s papers — mostly letters to and from the senator — are available to the public. The State this year reviewed thousands of his letters from 1920-2002, Thurmond’s last full year in office. He died in 2003 at the age of 100.

Thurmond’s networks are among his most significant achievements.

Although he served 48 years in the U.S. Senate, Thurmond was not known for passing major legislation — unless you count a law he sponsored concerning wine labels. Neither did he succeed in blocking civil rights legislation — his major goal for 15 years.

Instead, the one area in which Thurmond excelled was networking, including constituent services.

From his earliest days in public life, Thurmond connected with thousands of people, stroking their egos, doing them favors, helping them get scholarships and jobs.

In the Clemson letters, Thurmond flatters, praises, remembers birthdays, promises football tickets, sends gifts, name-drops, and offers sympathy for deaths and congratulations for achievements.

His networks proved so strong that in 1996, Thurmond, slowed by age, won re-election again to the U.S. Senate at age 93. No well-known candidate challenged him, largely because he had shaped the careers of virtually every top Republican in South Carolina and done favors for many Democrats.

In that last race, Thurmond continued to tap old networks, calling politicians and friends — or their sons and daughters.

“He knew money and media had become the dominant part of campaigns, but he still enjoyed doing the things that had gotten him where he was,” said Tony Denny, Thurmond’s 1996 campaign manager.

BRED FOR POWER

Thurmond was bred for power from boyhood.

His father, lawyer Will Thurmond of Edgefield, was close to U.S. Sen. Ben Tillman, the state’s most powerful politician from 1890 until his death in 1918.

Will Thurmond introduced young Strom to Tillman and took his son to trials, political debates and the Legislature. He sent Strom to Clemson and taught him to be a lawyer.

One of Thurmond’s first known networking efforts came in 1930.

Only 27 and a first-year lawyer, Thurmond was asked to manage the campaign of a S.C. Supreme Court associate justice for the chief justice’s job. In judicial races, candidates lobby members of the Legislature, seeking their “pledges” of support. Rounding up pledges requires gamesmanship and an ability to size people up.

Newly discovered letters between Thurmond and Eugene Blease, the candidate for chief justice, show Thurmond played an active role in getting Blease elected.

Thurmond visited lawmakers in their home counties and helped Blease keep tabs on how many solid pledges he had.

Blease won, 134-32.

“You certainly ... contributed greatly to the victory,” Blease wrote Thurmond.

STATE SENATE

In 1932, Thurmond won election to the S.C. Senate.

There, Thurmond cultivated officials above and below him.

In November 1934, for example, he wrote then-Gov. I.C. Blackwood. “I noticed in the paper that Wednesday, Nov. 21st, was your birthday, and I am writing to extend congratulations. ... I hope that you will have many more birthdays. ... Just as a little reminder of my friendship for you, I am sending you under separate cover a box of cigars.”

That letter was a sign of things to come. Over the next 68 years, Thurmond would write thousands of letters congratulating people — from the high and the mighty to the low and obscure — on their birthdays and other special occasions.

Thurmond also sought to establish himself as a mentor to less senior senators.

“I know that you will make a splendid Senator and I shall anticipate with pleasure serving in the Senate with you,” Thurmond wrote on Sept. 10, 1934, to M.A. Shuler of Kingstree. At the time, Thurmond had been a senator only two years.

While serving as a state senator, Thurmond also was named to the board of trustees of Winthrop College, a state-supported women’s college in York County.

Winthrop students began to turn to Thurmond for help with jobs and scholarships. In scores of cases, he wrote letters to assist them.

FROM JUDGE TO GOVERNOR

Even after he was elected a judge by the Legislature in 1938, Thurmond continued to nourish his ties with Winthrop.

In a Feb. 28, 1939, letter to Winthrop president Shelton Phelps, for example, Thurmond mentioned he had read recently where Bernard Baruch, a noted financier, had donated $10,000 to S.C. colleges for scholarships.

“I have been thinking recently of establishing 10 $100 loan scholarships for Juniors and Seniors in the Home Economics Department at Winthrop,” Thurmond wrote.

Thurmond’s offer was accepted.

In 1946, Thurmond — still a judge — decided to run for governor. Keeping his decision secret, he began to tap old networks.

Thurmond, a Clemson grad, contacted a friend at the Clemson alumni association, asking for alumni names and addresses.

On Feb. 27, 1946, Clemson alumni officer Jake Woodward forwarded roughly 4,000 names to Thurmond. “Of course it is needless for me to caution you about this list, as we at the College are not supposed to take a hand in politics,” Woodward wrote.

Thurmond replied, “Any information that you think to pass on to me any time, will be kept confidential.”

Thurmond also wrote officials with state and civic groups, asking for membership lists. In this way, he tapped into the state’s 800-plus “white” barbers. He also got the names of most state doctors, lawyers, Lions Club members, Winthrop graduates, magistrates and county officers.

As the campaign went on, Thurmond resigned his judgeship and began contacting jurors, to whom he had made speeches as a judge.

On May 30, 1946, he wrote R. O. Ward, Williamsburg County’s clerk of courts, saying, “I would like to have a list of the petit jurors and grand jurors who served at the different terms of court over which I presided since January 1938, the date I went on the bench.”

Ward sent the names, telling Thurmond there was “no charge.” Other clerks obliged, as well.

Thurmond also began to assemble a brain trust.

On March 6, 1946, he wrote an old friend, B.O. Williams, head of the University of Georgia’s sociology department, asking him to forward talking points for him to run on.

It was a process Thurmond would use repeatedly in coming years — quietly assembling counselors to advise him on policy.

Over the years, those counselors would include Robert Figg, an active segregationist lawyer and later dean of the University of South Carolina law school, and Walter Brown, a Spartanburg County broadcaster.

SECRET ‘COLONELS’

After being sworn in as governor in early 1947, Thurmond began to bestow the title of “colonel” to hundreds of friends and political allies. Thurmond would summon the honoree to his office, pronounce him a colonel and hand him a certificate.

“It was sort of a political reward,” recalled former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bruce Littlejohn, 91, one of the last surviving colonels.

Some colonels’ titles were bestowed for achievements, similar to the Order of the Palmetto award that S.C. governors hand out today. But many of Thurmond’s colonels were foot soldiers in his personal political army, expected to work in his campaigns.

Thurmond wanted to keep their names secret. “We do not desire to give the appointments to the newspapers if it can be avoided,” Thurmond wrote in a 1947 letter to Littlejohn, then speaker of the S.C. House.

In 1948, as Thurmond readied for a bid for the U.S. presidency, he used his colonels to influence the state Democratic convention.

“I should like to see as many as possible of my Colonels’ elected delegates to the State Convention,” Thurmond wrote on April 20, 1948, to Fred Pearman, an Anderson businessman who recruited other colonels.

In 1949, two state representatives publicly pressed Thurmond to say who his colonels were. If Thurmond was using taxpayer money to “engrave the fancy certificates,” the citizens had a right to know who the colonels were, argued state Rep. John Bolt Culbertson of Greenville.

Thurmond refused, saying the lawmakers were “sticking their noses into something that does not concern them.”

Today, the names of more than 800 Thurmond colonels are at Clemson, along with letters spelling out the political roles some were to play.

‘LEARN THE SENATOR’S SIGNATURE’

After his election to the U.S. Senate in 1954, Thurmond left little to chance in dealing with his ultimate network — voters.

Over the years, Thurmond sent thousands of letters on every conceivable subject to S.C. residents.

In a January 1959 memo to top aide Harry Dent, Thurmond instructed his staff to review S.C. newspapers and clip “congratulatory matters such as persons who have been married for 25, 50 years, etc.,” and “articles that will give us an index as to what is occurring in the particular community where the newspaper is published and the viewpoint of the people there on any particular subject.”

Thurmond would write anyone for anything.

“Dear Principal,” began a form letter he sent out on Feb. 25, 1971. “Would you please forward to my Washington Office as soon as possible a list of your graduating seniors. ... It will be my pleasure to furnish each graduate with a certificate for having achieved this milestone in his or her education.”

Thurmond didn’t have time to sign the hundreds of letters going out each week under his name. So some staffers signed his signature, a common Senate practice.

Even that solution wasn’t enough.

A July 22, 1977, a Thurmond office memo says that because “of the undue strain put on those few girls who are authorized to sign the Senator’s correspondence, it has been decided that each secretary should learn the Senator’s signature. ... Please try to have the Senator’s signature mastered by next Friday, July 29.”

‘STROM THURMOND ALUMNI ASSOCIATION’

Over the years, tens of thousands of people wrote Thurmond for help with everything from Social Security to passport problems. Each got a prompt signed reply, saying the senator or his staff would do what they could.

Documents at Clemson make it clear Thurmond kept tabs on those he helped, expecting their support in return.

For example, while gearing up for his 1972 re-election bid, Thurmond sent political operative Sterling Anderson into S.C. counties. Anderson contacted movers and shakers, making notes on their businesses and their families that he forwarded to Thurmond.

In one case, Anderson wrote he had contacted Edward Khoury, treasurer of Morrison Textile Machinery Co. in Fort Lawn. Anderson noted Thurmond had helped the company win a contract with a South Vietnamese firm. “They are very happy about the Senator’s effectiveness,” Anderson wrote, adding, “They want to help the Senator in his campaign.”

As a senator, Thurmond also hired hundreds for his Senate or political staffs over the years. Many went on to higher offices. There, among other things, they helped Thurmond stay in office.

Thurmond’s Washington staff alums include Attorney General Henry McMaster, former Gov. David Beasley, the late political operative Lee Atwater, former U.S. Rep. John Napier, S.C. Court of Appeals Judge Sam Stillwell, and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Billy Wilkins, brother of S.C. House Speaker David Wilkins.

These former staffers — along with hundreds less prominent — formed what was informally known as the “Strom Thurmond Alumni Association.”

Its members were located across South Carolina. “They provided a pretty good base for the campaign,” Denny said.

‘A LEGEND IN YOUR OWN TIME’

After 1970, when new federal laws allowed blacks to vote in significant numbers, Thurmond began to tap into black networks.

In early 1971, Thurmond hired one of the state’s foremost black activists, the late Tom Moss of the NAACP.

Moss began giving Thurmond intelligence reports on blacks. In 1973, for example, Moss attended a meeting of S.C. black mayors and wrote Thurmond a memo.

On July 10, 1973, Thurmond replied to Moss, “I have written to each of the Mayors listed in your report and offered to assist with their problems.”

A sample Thurmond follow-up letter went to Mayor Charles Ross of Lincolnville, in Charleston County. Thurmond wrote, “I just wanted you to know that I stand ready to help you with your housing and water problems.”

Thurmond also made grand gestures to blacks. In September 1983, Thurmond — the one-time — invited a black South Carolinian to dine with the president.

“It was a pleasure to have you as my special guest at the dinner with President Reagan in Columbia,” Thurmond wrote Luns C. Richardson, president of Morris College in Sumter.

Thurmond impressed Richardson, who wrote that being with Reagan and Thurmond “was one of the high points” of his life. “You are indeed a legend in your own time — a man of rare and unusual foresight ... courage, commitment and patriotism.”

In an interview last week, Richardson — still president at Morris — said the meeting with Reagan remains a high point.

Thurmond was a longtime Morris friend, channeling at least $5 million in federal grants and loans to the college, Richardson said.

“I never had a problem voting for him because he didn’t have a problem doing things for us,” he said.

On occasion, Thurmond also could get tough with supporters.

In November 1972, a longtime political backer, Jim Howey of Lancaster, wrote Thurmond seeking reimbursement of $2,000 that Howey said he had spent to help Thurmond win re-election that fall. “I went all over the county for you and worked hard,” Howey wrote.

Thurmond refused, telling Howey no one had promised to pay him.

“ ... you will remember that I have had your sons up here as Senate Pages and that I chose Bill over many others for the appointment to the Naval Academy which is equivalent to a $50,000 education,” Thurmond wrote on Dec. 14, 1972. “Recently, I recommended Robert to the Vice President for consideration for an appointment to the academy also.”

NETWORKS DO HOMAGE

Thurmond’s networks not only voted for him — they paid tribute.

Over the years, his supporters named buildings, streets and schools after him. In 1999, supporters — led by state Sen. John Courson, R-Richland — erected a larger-than-life statue of Thurmond on the State House grounds.

Thurmond also secured a living monument to his family’s political heritage — a next generation.

Will Thurmond died in 1934, having helped launch his son’s career. Similarly, Strom Thurmond in 2002, his last year in office, used his power to get his son, Strom Jr., named U.S. attorney for South Carolina.

Strom Jr., 29, didn’t have much experience for the prestigious post, which paid $118,400 a year.

But he got the job. Even Democrats said Strom Jr. has acquitted himself well in the job, which he will resign in January to practice law in Aiken.

Thurmond’s network had come full circle.

Eileen Waddell also contributed to this story. Reach Monk at (803) 771-8344 or jmonk@thestate.com.