It was 1967. The war in Vietnam raged on, and The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album was the summer's anthem. We worried about friends and relatives fighting the fight, and we sang along with Ringo as he pleaded for a little help from his friends.

It was the golden summer before my first year of college. A summer that was filled with angst, joy, longing, music and anticipation.

MIC SMITH/STAFF Keith Goretzka, minister of First Baptist Church in Edgefield, walks Friday by the Willowbrook Cemetery plot where Sen. Strom Thurmond will be buried Tuesday. Goretzka just wanted to make sure the plot was mowed and looked good for the upcoming burial.

I spent several weeks that summer with my grandmother on her farm in Stoneboro, a little crossroads that linked Liberty Hill and Heath Springs. Named for a granite quarry, it's as close to the middle of nowhere that you will ever find.

But the heat sweltered, and The Beatles played as the summer came to an end.

Life was sweet and frightening as I headed off to Winthrop that fall.

Only a few months into my freshman year, I received a call that my grandmother was ill and in the hospital. By the time I arrived back home, she had passed away. It was Oct. 13. A Friday.

We were devastated. But we were together, except for my oldest cousin, Tracy. He was my grandmother's oldest grandson. Grandmomma had doted on Tracy, and everyone happily accepted that he was her favorite.

But Tracy was a world away in Vietnam. Getting him home seemed like an impossibility.

I don't know who decided that calling Strom Thurmond was a good idea. Maybe it was just general knowledge that he could, and would, do that sort of thing. Even back then, everyone knew someone good old Strom had helped.

A member of our family made the call to his Washington, D.C., office.

"Can he help? We need him home," Uncle Carl asked the contact.

The person said the effort would be made, but no promises could be. It was a long trip. Finding Tracy and getting him out of 'Nam would not be easy. Arranging transportation all the way back to South Carolina in time for the funeral would be just about as difficult.

We grieved and wished Tracy would make it as my grandmother lay in her coffin in her living room. Personally, I didn't think it was likely. But just before the funeral, as they were about to move the casket, Tracy arrived. He was in uniform. He went into the house to spend a few moments alone with our grandmother. The day, and that moment, is planted in my brain.

I didn't know anything about political parties and precious little about the war other than the fact a lot of people weren't coming home. My consciousness had not yet been raised to the lofty collegiate level of understanding political agendas or even caring about them.

All I knew that day when I was 17 years old was that Tracy had come home, my wonderful grandmother was gone and Strom had set in motion the wheels that had brought an important member of our family into the fold.

You hear people talk. When they say that almost everyone in the state was touched by Thurmond (all jokes aside), it is probably as true a statement as can be made about any political figure.

Whether his politics were right or wrong, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, it's hard to argue with the fact that he never rested on his laurels and he served the people of this state.

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Judy Watts is a feature writer and can be reached at (843) 937-5743 or jwatts@postandcourier.com