ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 11, 1995 TAG: 9512110026
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: George F. Will
SOURCE: GEORGE F. WILL
LET'S PUT it this way: South Carolinians have a habit of going their own way, sometimes with cannon and cavalry, so the Heart Association should save its breath, because Carolinians are going to keep going to the Beacon restaurant in Spartanburg, which subscribes to the famous doctrine that if it isn't fried, it isn't food.
Stand downwind of the place and your cholesterol count rises 40 points. Order any delicacy, such as the chili cheeseburger, and say ``aplenty,'' and the delicacy will come buried beneath an Everest of french fries and fried onion rings.
So what is America's most spectacular advertisement for healthy living doing here, for the second time today? Well, the first time was for breakfast, before the parade, when he tucked so heartily into the eggs and grits - an unusual indulgence - that he is now skipping lunch but pressing the flesh of lunchers. That's what Strom Thurmond is doing.
That is what Thurmond, who turned 93 last week, has been doing almost nonstop since he first won elective office the year Herbert Hoover first won elective office. Hoover won the presidency in 1928; Thurmond became a county superintendent. Thurmond, who has served with about one-fifth of the 1,826 people who have been members of the Senate since 1789, today is serving with one, Republican Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who was not born when Thurmond came to the Senate.
This month Thurmond, whose age is 45 percent of that of the Constitution, completes his 41st year in the Senate. In February he will become the oldest person ever to serve in Congress. If next year he wins an eighth term, and serves all of it, he will be 100 years old.
An aide to Thurmond says his boss still sets a pace the aide can hardly keep. The aide is 72. One of Thurmond's foremost supporters in this city says Thurmond is fit as a fiddle. (If you are not careful, Thurmond will tell you what he eats - fruits and vegetables and other healthy stuff - and what he drinks - nothing any fun - and about his calisthenics and swimming and exercise bike and the weights he lifts.) The supporter says Thurmond is hard to keep up with. The supporter is 82 and has known Thurmond since 1938.
Only three other states (Mississippi with James Eastland and John Stennis, Louisiana with Allen Ellender and Russell Long, and Georgia with Walter George and Richard Russell) have had what South Carolina has - two senators with a combined service of 70 years. Fritz Hollings, who will be 74 on New Year's Day, has been a senator 29 years and is still South Carolina's junior senator.
A sizable majority of South Carolinians say Thurmond should not be running, but that does not mean a majority will vote against him. The last time he had a close race - close by his standards: he got 56 percent - was 1978. It was close enough that during the campaign he promised he would not run again. He was just joshing. Since then he has been re-elected with majorities of 66 and 64 percent.
Thurmond, probably America's only remaining politician who has received votes from Civil War veterans (all Confederates, we may assume), in 1971 became the first Southern senator to hire a black staffer, and in 1982 voted to make Martin Luther King's birthday a federal holiday. Thurmond earned his reputation for intransigence - he holds the Senate filibuster record, 24 hours and 18 minutes, set in opposition to the mild civil rights bill of 1957 - yet has changed as much as his state. And no state has changed more than South Carolina in the last half-century.
In and around this city, for example, unemployment is about 2.6 percent, thanks to the new BMW assembly plant and associated industries. Tax rates and unionization rates are low and business is booming.
Not everywhere, of course. This city has not one but two Wal-Marts on its outskirts, so the downtown looks a bit down at the heels, especially on a day so cold and rainy that the annual Christmas parade cannot draw a crowd. But it drew Thurmond, who dearly loves parades. So as fire engines with sirens blaring lead some soggy marchers and floats through nearly deserted streets, Thurmond waves from a car on which the hand-lettered sign identifying him dangles at an odd angle.
Afterward, back at the Beacon, he is asked why he does such things in his 10th decade. He answers ingenuously that ``I like bringing pleasure to people and people like parades.'' Then he begins working the room, table by table, before heading down the road to tomorrow and the ``Chitlin' Strut'' in the town of Salley.
- Washington Post Writers Group
LENGTH: Medium: 84 linesby CNB