Robert C. Byrd

West Virginia master of Senate rules whose 51 years ended as the longest-serving member ever.

Overview

Raised by a coal miner in Raleigh County, a onetime Ku Klux Klan member who renounced the group, Byrd served in the House from 1953 and the Senate from 1959 to 2010, becoming the longest-serving member and the longest-serving senator in history at his death. He led the Democrats as majority leader from 1977 to 1981, then held the Appropriations chairmanship on and off for two decades, steering billions to his poor state's roads, buildings, and FBI center, while the Senate adopted his history as its official one. His four-volume history of the chamber and pocket Constitution made him its living institutional memory.