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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Back in 1959, when I was press aide to Sen. Robert C. Byrd in Washington, I never dreamed that he would evolve into my hero.

The 1950s were a different world, a time of undisguised prejudice, racial segregation, censorship taboos and other puritanical strictures. The Gazette had denounced Byrd for belonging to the hate-filled Ku Klux Klan. In those days, I considered him just another self-hustling mountain politician who preached in rural churches and played his fiddle at campaign rallies, catering to white Appalachian narrowness.

But multitudes of West Virginians liked him. He was elected three times to the Legislature, then three times to the U.S. House of Representatives. Klan allegations hounded him, but voters shrugged them off. In 1958, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and needed more staff.

I had been bored, endlessly tending the Gazette's city desk until midnight. When Byrd offered more than double my newspaper salary, I brushed aside my uncertainties and moved to Washington. The vision of lounging in the Senate cloakroom with Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Everett Dirksen and the like dazzled me.

Capitol Hill life is a charade. Staff aides are lackeys who hover at the elbows of Congress members, doing everything possible to make them look leaderly. I lasted only seven months. I got an ulcer, gained 30 pounds, and fled back to the Gazette's wonderful chaos.

My apprehensions about Byrd seemed justified a few years later when he fought against equality laws and staged a 14-hour filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

But slowly, as decades turned, a remarkable change developed. Byrd grew in stature and wisdom, steadily distancing himself from the mountain prejudices of his boyhood.

His long seniority moved him higher in Senate power, and he began funneling millions in federal projects and jobs to West Virginia. He became the state's best economic development machine. (The late Gazette Editor Don Marsh argued that Byrd's home-state boons "aren't pork-barrel." I replied, "Oink, oink -- bring 'em on.")

This newspaper named Byrd West Virginian of the Year in 1974, then again in 1977, a third time in 1990. He deserved it each time.

But he didn't reach hero status with me until 2002, when he became almost a lone-wolf voice against President Bush's clamor to invade Iraq. While most of Congress timidly sat mute, Byrd showed great courage as he stood time after time to warn that the White House was dragging America into a senseless, unnecessary, harmful war.

The Bush clique said Iraq possessed horror weapons and was in bed with terrorists who would unleash them on Americans. Byrd said there was no evidence to support this claim -- and it turned out that he was correct.

The Bush clique said Iraq's people would greet U.S. troops as liberators, and that Iraq's own oil wealth would pay America's military costs. Byrd said this prediction was nonsense -- and it turned out that he was correct.

His eloquent Senate speeches were mostly ignored by the Washington news media, but many Americans began savoring them and distributing them by e-mail. They spread around the world, reaching millions of people. Some of us in the Gazette newsroom almost cheered as we read his bold attacks on the warmongers. The speeches later were reprinted in Byrd's book, "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency."

This paper named him West Virginian of the Year a fourth time in 2002, and again he deserved it.

Byrd became so aged and feeble he no longer could walk. Yet he seemed like a lion to me in his brave resistance to the smirking, shallow president. After Democrat Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, Byrd remained an independent battler, not always following the party line. The ailing West Virginia senator hovered near death several times, but fought back bravely. He didn't lose his independent voice, even challenging the mighty coal industry. Last month, after the Massey Energy tragedy, he raged that "29 men are now dead. Dead. Dead. Simply because they went to work that morning."

It took nearly a half-century for me to see him as a genuine hero. Now, sadly, West Virginia has lost this courageous fighter. A long West Virginia epoch ended before dawn Monday.

Haught, the Gazette's editor, can be reached by phone at 348-5199 or e-mail at hau...@wvgazette.com. This column is adapted from a chapter in Haught's 2008 book, "Fascinating West Virginia."