EDGEFIELD, S.C. (AP) - South Carolinians were thankful for the life of former U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and contemplated the legacy of their favorite son who had died at age 100.

Thurmond, who had been living at the Edgefield County Hospital since retiring in Janaury after 48 years in the Senate, had been in poor health in recent weeks. He died Thursday night.

"To me, it's not sad because he lived a long life, longer than most people. He did what many people would love to do," said Candice Best, 21, a waitress at the Edgefield Huddle House.

Kent Bacon, 39, said he heard about Thurmond's death as he was leaving his job on the second shift at Tranter Radiator. He said he expected the town to begin mourning Friday.

"He's done a lot for the city and the state of South Carolina. I think he's going to be missed," Bacon said.

Ken Hatcher, 48, and his family went to the hospital to light a candle in Thurmond's honor.

"It just felt like the right thing to do. It's our way of saying, 'Thanks for everything,' said Hatcher, who met the senator in 1983. "I think everyone knows the name Strom Thurmond.

"I think he treated everyone special."

It was Thurmond's ability to reach out to everyone regardless of status, age or race that won him eight elections to the U.S. Senate - including the only successful write-in campaign for the office.

"Constituent service became his middle name - whatever you wanted, whatever you needed, Sen. Thurmond made it happen," said U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C.

Throughout South Carolina, Thurmond's name adorns high schools, federal courthouses and even a lake on the western edge of the state.

"Strom Thurmond was a well-respected man. He will be remembered for a long time, said Cortez Oliver, 24, student at Benedict College in Columbia. "I just know he has a lot of buildings. He must be doing something right."

But not all of Thurmond's career sat well with all South Carolinians.

Among his feats in the Senate is the body's longest filibuster - 24 hours and 18 minutes - and it came in against a 1957 civil rights bill.

"For me personally, I have anger toward him," said Wal-Mart worker Robert Mann, 23, of Prosperity. "Just for what he represents."

At a monument to Thurmond on the Statehouse grounds in Columbia, someone had left a dozen white carnations. Flags flew at half-staff on the Statehouse dome after midnight.

"The sheer volume and weight of Strom Thurmond's accomplishments will stand far beyond his decades of service as a living memorial," South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said, describing former governor Thurmond as a "Colossus in life."

But Thurmond, once a staunch segregationist who led a third-party bid for president to protest Democrats' integration platform, later 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.

His change to the Republican Party in the 1960s portended the South's swing to the GOP in the past 20 years.

"Sen. Thurmond was symbolic of the Old South, but his willingness to change over time set an example for many South Carolinians," said U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat and the state's only black U.S. Rep..