Happy Birthday, Senior Senator

Sen. Strom Thurmond is turning 99, and even he finds that hard to believe.

"Sometimes I pinch myself and get out of bed laughing, because I'm still here," he told a former intern, commentator Armstrong Williams.

Thurmond would rather be nowhere else than the Senate, in which he has served longer than any other member, holds the record for solo filibustering and still casts votes in a clear voice that reaches from his front-row desk to the farthest corners of the gallery.

Ever more fragile, he turns 99 Wednesday and intends to serve until his eighth Senate term expires in January 2003. He plans to retire back home in South Carolina at the age of 100.

James Strom Thurmond began life there at a time when airplanes and much of the stuff of modern America were the stuff of dreams.

Born Dec. 5, 1902, in Edgefield, he knew veterans of the Civil War and became a hero himself when he landed in Normandy on D-Day. Thurmond bolted the Democratic Party in 1948 over the party's civil rights platform and under the banner of the States Rights Party — the "Dixiecrats" — carried four Southern states and gained 39 electoral votes in an unsuccessful challenge of President Truman. He again quit the Democrats in 1964 and has been a Republican ever since.

Thurmond has served in the Senate since 1954, the first senator elected as a write-in candidate. He still holds the record for solo filibustering — more than 24 hours consecutively — which he set debating a desegregation bill that passed despite his persistence. Thurmond later changed his mind and supported racial integration, attributing the shift to keeping in tune with the nation.

Thurmond is legendary not solely for his political endurance but for a vigor that only lately has begun to wane. He began a family at age 69 and remains something of a flirt.

"To Pretty Hillary," Thurmond wrote on a photograph depicting his embrace of Hillary Rodham Clinton at her swearing-in as a senator.

In 1998, Thurmond groused that he was far more qualified to ride the space shuttle than the whippersnapper already promised a seat: former astronaut and retired Sen. John Glenn, then 77.

"If NASA really wanted to study the effects of space travel on an older American, they should have called me," Thurmond cracked.

The twinkle in Thurmond's eye and his influence over legislative matters have faded as his health declined. His fitness for office has been questioned by opponents, publications and colleagues, but the South Carolina senator steadfastly sticks with the job.

A half-dozen hospital visits this year culminated in Thurmond's collapse at his desk in the Senate this fall. He has since moved from his riverfront Alexandria, Va., residence into Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

He arrives on Capitol Hill each morning at 9:30 and gets around its vast campus with the help of his aides and a wheelchair. He has not missed a vote. Thurmond sometimes meets with constituents, although hose gatherings have decreased in recent months.

"The only thing that's changed is where he sleeps at night," said spokeswoman Rebecca Fleming.

It is widely understood that most of Thurmond's legislative and representative duties are carried out under his authority by longtime chief of staff Robert "Duke" Short. Short was not elected to make such decisions, but even Thurmond's most ardent political foes are too polite to make a fuss about that.

"I think all of us are willing to give him this opportunity to sort of fade into the sunset," said South Carolina Democratic chairman Dick Harpootlian.

Besides, Thurmond is no longer a political threat. When the Senate was split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats this year, Senate members and aides engaged in what came to be known as the "Strom Watch," because any downturn in Thurmond's health could force him to give up his seat and break the tie.

At the time, as the Senate's president pro tem, Thurmond was third in line to succeed the president after the vice president and the speaker of the House.

But when Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords left the GOP in June and handed control to the Democrats, Thurmond's influence faded.

His age, stature and health evoke compassion even in the toughest partisans. During a roll call vote this year, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., took Thurmond's arm to steady him when he became disoriented while passing out candy on the Senate floor.

In October, when Thurmond slumped over in the Senate, Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., ordered the galleries emptied to prevent the public from witnessing any indignities. Thurmond, his colleagues said, never lost consciousness although he was taken to a hospital for observation.

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