The life of Robert C. Byrd, longest-serving Congress member in U.S. history, touched many, many lives.

His Senate career, spanning 50 years, covers slightly more than a fifth of the nation's history, if you count from 1776. If you reckon from 1789 -- when the country ratified the Constitution that he carried in his pocket and that defined his role -- his tenure approaches one-fourth of the republic's existence.

But there was more to him and his Senate career than sheer longevity.

Sen. Byrd was much loved by people who voted for him again and again, who turned out to hear and cheer him when he told stories or fiddled. Some of the appeal was habit. It was the comfort of the known and even the self-interest of keeping a senior senator in power. Some of his popularity came from genuine gratitude for good work -- either in helping constituents when they called, or winning federal funding for projects that stimulate local economies. Certainly the lure of a winning streak -- and even participating in it -- had its appeal. How long could he go?

Still, there was more.

Throughout his life he demonstrated a great capacity to learn and to change. He repudiated the racism of his youth. Perhaps it was politically expedient to do so at first. Later, he spoke in the same breath of two votes in his Senate career that he regretted -- his vote against the Civil Rights Act and his vote for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, both in 1964. The statute he opposed outlawed racial segregation in schools, workplaces and public spaces. The one he supported opened the way for the long, protracted and deadly war in Vietnam.

Nearly four decades later, Byrd, citing lessons learned from Vietnam, urged Congress to oppose a similar resolution loosing war in Iraq. Byrd warned his colleagues they would regret the "war of choice" just as he and many of his contemporaries regretted ignoring warnings in 1964.

Most recently, after a career allied to coal interests, Byrd urged mine owners to "embrace the future." He said West Virginians must not deny the science pointing to climate change. He criticized efforts to vilify safety and health regulators. Coal still satisfies a big part of the nation's energy appetite, he said, but demand for coal, coal employment and support for mountaintop removal are all diminishing. West Virginia has plenty of work to do to find a "prudent and profitable middle ground," he said.

His passion for reading and memorizing history, particularly ancient history, was a topic of mockery, some of it affectionate. He lectured everyone -- fellow senators, local officeholders, reporters, voters, pages, presidents. And he was deadly serious about the absolute necessity of knowing the past -- how things got to be the way they are -- as preparation for dealing with the present and the future.

"I started out on a long journey of discovery as a boy, finding in histories of Rome and of the Founding Fathers essential tools to knowing who I was and what I wanted to work for in representing the people of West Virginia in Washington," he wrote in his last book Letter to a New President: Commonsense Lessons for Our Next Leader. "I may have had something to prove, I will readily admit, if not to my colleagues in the House and then the Senate, then at least to myself. I craved a deeper knowledge of our republic and its traditions the way a hungry man craves bread."

As an older man, he returned repeatedly to Cato the Elder, Ovid or Shakespeare, ancient Etruscans, the Federalist Papers or Daniel Defoe -- but no longer out of duty.

"I sought respite from the rigors of legislating in the cool wisdom of books because the heroes I found there were my teachers and companions," he wrote.

Just as a whole family or even a community feels a swell of triumph when a smart kid in their midst earns a scholarship or scores a touchdown, so have West Virginians enjoyed a sense of satisfaction at Sen. Byrd's accomplishments.

In him, people saw aspects of themselves and their parents and grandparents: solid, sensible, often obstinate, flawed, deliberative, dependable and complex, full of potential revealed through education, hard work and personal growth.

Whatever else happened Monday, for West Virginians, an era passed.