Full Text of the Excerpt

JAMES G. BANKS:

I want to ask you a question about your self concept, self image. Do you see yourself as a self made man.

STROM THURMOND:

Well, no necessarily. Because I had a good father and a good mother.

JAMES G. BANKS:

A good start.

STROM THURMOND:

Yeah, a very good start.

JAMES G. BANKS:

Of course you're from Edgefield remember. That counts for something, doesn't it.

STROM THURMOND:

Well, I think I would have done it without them, frankly. But they were encouragement. I'm confident that I would've gone and got a college education if both of them had been killed in a wreck. Because I had it instilled in me by them that if you're going to do anything worthwhile you've got to have an education.

JAMES G. BANKS:

You had saved some money too, right;for it?

STROM THURMOND:

By the time I'd finished the sixth grade, from the cows I had raised and the pigs I had raised and the trading;I was quite a trader;horses and everything. I had saved six hundred dollars.

JAMES G. BANKS:

When you were in the sixth grade?

STROM THURMOND:

No, by the time I finished the tenth grade I had saved six hundred dollars.

JAMES G. BANKS:

Of your own money?

STROM THURMOND:

That's right. Six hundred dollars then, would be worth about six thousand dollars today. But when I went to college my father paid my actual expenses. The money I had saved;I had a little savings if I wanted to do things for myself.

JAMES G. BANKS:

Does the word ambitious bother you? They say, he's ambitious, does that word bother you?

STROM THURMOND:

No, I admire anybody who's ambitious, wants to get ahead.

JAMES G. BANKS:

Drive?

STROM THURMOND:

You don't get anywhere unless you're ambitious and willing to work I don't think.

JAMES G. BANKS:

Would you describe yourself as confident? Self assured?

STROM THURMOND:

Well, I'm pretty confident. I've always felt if anybody else could do it, I could do it.