Posted on 12/05/2001 11:48:57 AM PST by aomagrat
SALUDA (AP) — Lois Crouch Matheny Addy, a schoolteacher and principal who was most famous as the former baby sitter for U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, has died. She was 109.
Addy died Monday at the Saluda Nursing Center.
"Mrs. Lois was such a fine lady and took good care of me and all the other children," said Thurmond, who turned 99 on Wednesday.
Addy wasn't as famous as her one-time charge, but she often was interviewed on election days when she cast her vote for the nation's oldest and longest-serving senator.
"Thurmond always came by to see her when he was coming to visit," Saluda Nursing Center Administrator Robert Bowles said. "A lot of our residents grew up with her and knew her well."
In a 1995 interview, Addy recalled taking care of a young Thurmond, whose father was law partner with Addy's brother-in-law.
"Beginning when he was 2, he would spend the day with my sister and she would call me and my two little sisters to come play with him," Addy said. "Since I was older, I took charge of him.
"The easiest way to entertain him was riding horseback. We felt like he was our little brother."
Addy said in 1996 that she had gone to the polls for every national election since women were allowed to vote in 1920. The first president she met was Woodrow Wilson.
A memorial service was scheduled for 3 p.m. Thursday at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Saluda.
Thurmond has said he will retire from the Senate when his term ends in January 2003. He recently moved into the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and is now using a wheelchair to get around the Capitol.
She was talking about events involving a current US Senator that happened in 1904....
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BTW, I hear Strom is now in favor of term limits....
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