600 gather to toast retiring S.C. Sen. Hollings

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - More than 600 friends from South Carolina and Washington toasted retiring U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings on Monday evening as one of the Senate's most colorful and productive members of the last century.

The goodbye gala for Hollings, who will depart the Senate in January after 38 years, brought 31 fellow senators - and an array of the nation's capital's who's who - to the gilded Mellon Auditorium in downtown Washington.

Hollings only reluctantly agreed to Monday's farewell affair, insisting that it focus not only on him but on his job after retirement - boosting the cancer center at the Medical University of South Carolina that bears his name.

Hollings' longtime friend Jack Valenti - former head of the Motion Picture Association of America and special assistant to former President Johnson - was master of ceremonies.

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/special_packages/election2004/9663668.htm

[Deja Q]

1. Toast him like a marshmallow. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

A true DINO.

[wyethwire]

2. Kiss my ass

Here are some things you might not know about Fritz Hollings.

Peacefully integrated Clemson University, letting a young man named Harvey Gantt study architecture. Hollings stood before a legislature full of massive resistance and said "South Carolina has run out of courts. We must learn the lesson of 100 years ago and obey the rule of law."

After Bobby Kennedy took his hunger tour of the Mississippi Delta, Hollings did a similar tour in South Carolina. Appalled by what he saw, Hollings founded the Womens, Infants and Children program - which gave food stamp nutritional assistance to millions of poor families.

Does that sound like a DINO to you?

[2Design]

4. sounds like this guy did some good things - is he a dem?

the things he did sound like a dem

[leesa]

3. doubtful he'll be missed

[Sven77]

5. happy retirement

senoir disney