About 7 o'clock one Saturday night in the early 1960s, my wife and I were sitting in our den watching television. The doorbell rang. I opened the door and there stood Sen. Strom Thurmond.

I knew he was in Orangeburg for a speaking engagement but was quite surprised to see him standing at my front door. "They are having a cocktail party ... I prefer not to be there until it is over ... I would like to spend some time with you and Grace," he said.

Assuring him that he was welcome in our home and that I would get him to his speaking engagement on time, he told his driver to return to the Holiday Inn. This was my first time since 1947 to be one-on-one with the senator. Usually, the senator was accompanied by a member of his staff. That night, we talked about that 1947 meeting that was the setting for my first interview in the newspaper business.

Strom Thurmond was the newly elected governor of South Carolina in 1947. I was a freshman at Orangeburg High School and a part-time production employee and columnist for the Orangeburg Observer, a weekly newspaper that existed into the 1950s. One day my English teacher, Miss Maude Bryant, asked me if I would like to interview our new governor. Flabbergasted, I gasped a "Yes ma'am." Miss Bryant told me that Gov. Thurmond was going to be in town the following week and she would arrange it.

I dashed to the library to find a book on interviewing and one on duties of a state governor. At that age, I was more attuned to sports and girls than to governmental affairs. My column, Teen Talk, was far from being upper drawer. Usually I wrote of events that had upset the school's principal, E.C. Simpson, the most. He didn't like for students to shoot firecrackers and ride bicycles in the school building.

The following week I was in Miss Bryant's classroom after school to meet with Gov. Thurmond. I was in awe of this man whose career I had researched in the library. Most impressive to me was the fact that he had been in the leading elements of the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II. We talked for about 30 minutes during which he answered all my questions. After the governor left, I told Miss Bryant that the interview was a bit over my head and asked for help, knowing that she was the best student of English grammar in the entire school system.

After the column was published, I received a letter from Gov. Thurmond. He said he appreciated the column and praised my "expert use of English grammar." In later years, our paths crossed many times. With Harry Dent of St. Matthews as the senator's administrative assistant, it was like Orangeburg having a personal senator in Washington.

In the 1960s, with John F. Kennedy in the White House, I went on a trip to Washington with a group of area farmers. We went by train, but traveling ahead of us was a massive truck loaded with watermelons by the farmers. The farmers were protesting the prevailing crop situation with watermelons. They were determined to throw the entire load of watermelons over the front White House fence.

Realizing the temperament of the farmers, I suggested we go and meet with Sen. Thurmond and Harry Dent before anybody did anything. The senator didn't hesitate in letting it be known that parking the big truck in front of the White House and throwing the melons over the fence would not be allowed. Nor would the president accept the watermelons as a gift. Dent and the senator conferred for a few minutes and came back with a plan. They told us to bring the truck over to the Capitol and carry a few watermelons to the steps at such-and-such time.

When we arrived at the Capitol, Sen. Thurmond and South Carolina's other senator, Olin D. Johnston, were waiting along with a camera crew from NBC television. That evening, the farmers, their big truck and the two senators eating watermelon were shown on the Huntley-Brinkley evening news. The farmers learned a lesson on how Sen. Thurmond could get things done in Washington, although their truck had to return to South Carolina almost with a full load.

In the 1980s, after college, our son Dean Jr. was on the senator's Washington staff for two years. His experiences working for Sen. Thurmond in the nation's capital will be recalled among the hallmarks of his life. While Dean Jr. was in Washington, Sen. Thurmond sponsored a special one-day seminar on Capitol Hall for South Carolina newsmen. Editor Lee Harter and I attended. On the program were Judy Woodruff, now of CNN, John Dancy of NBC news and other luminaries of the Washington press corps. At a reception that evening, Lee and I hobnobbed with the likes of Vice President Bush and others.

Sen. Thurmond always introduced us as "my two boys from Orangeburg."

* Dean B. Livingston is retired publisher of The Times and Democrat.

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