Jeff Bingaman: “Three score and 10 years ago our colleague, Strom Thurmond, first won elective office when he was chosen to serve in the…”

“Three score and 10 years ago our colleague, Strom Thurmond, first won elective office when he was chosen to serve in the South Carolina House of Representatives. He has been a figure of influence in--and on behalf of--his home State ever since. The longest-serving Senator in the history of this body, he will be retiring at the end of this Congress, and today we have the opportunity to recount our own experiences with this American legend. Senator Thurmond had been in the Senate 26 years when I arrived in 1983, a brand-new member of the Armed Services Committee. He never treated me as the neophyte, just-learning-the-ropes newcomer that I was. From the start, I was his colleague, and he was mine. His long history of work on national defense is based on his love of this country, and his own experiences on the battlefield. Somebody thought he was too old to be a paratrooper for the Normandy Landing. It is part of his extraordinary resume that he got an age exemption, and parachuted in on D-Day. There is no one quite like him. I have appreciated his friendship from my first day here, and, with my colleagues, will feel a great pang of loss when the new Congress opens in January and he will not take his seat as a Senator from South Carolina. I think all of us recall those lines from 'Hamlet' when we think about our friend and his remarkable life. 'He was a man, take him for all in all/I ensure shall not look upon his like again.'”