The country’s oldest – and perhaps most storied – senator was hospitalized briefly yesterday after feeling dizzy at a reception at the University of South Carolina.
Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), 96, was treated and released from Palmetto Baptist Medical Center in Columbia, S.C., where he was rushed after complaining of dizziness during an afternoon reception at the nearby university.
“He was just overheated,” hospital spokeswoman Mary Anne Banich said.
Banich said Thurmond told emergency room doctors he felt dizzy from the heat, but that he was in good spirits during his brief treatment.
“He was in a great mood, shaking hands with everybody,” she said.
The red-haired Thurmond was first elected to the Senate as a write-in candidate in 1954. Six years earlier, he ran for president as a “state’s rights” Democrat. Several years before that, he landed at Normandy on D-Day.
Now, Thurmond, one of the most colorful figures in politics, is third in line to succeed the president as the Senate’s president pro tempore.
He began his career as a hard-line segregationist and set a record by filibustering a fair housing bill for more than 24 hours. He switched parties in 1964 and then started easing his position on race relations.