Free Republic

CENTRALIA, Wash. -- Following his mother's lead, a 53-year-old doctor in Onalaska has come forward to talk openly about his heritage as the mixed-race grandson of the late South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, a former segregationist. Dr. Ronald Williams, an emergency room physician at Morton General Hospital, spoke proudly about his grandfather in an interview with The Chronicle of Centralia and said he regrets he wasn't closer to Thurmond. "I can't imagine not being able to claim your own father," Williams told the paper in a copyright story published Wednesday. "It was even hard for us not to acknowledge it,...