White House hopeful Lindsey Graham
Graham has long said that though he remains single, he is a family man. Of his sister, Darline, he writes, ‘I’m as proud of her as my parents would have been, and as close to her as ever.’ ‘I have relatives and lifelong friends, who have been there for me at every success and every setback,’ he says. ‘I have never, not for one moment, not after the deaths of my parents, not when I felt sorriest for myself, not when I was scared or lost or tired or uncertain, not when I was happy and successful and doing things I never imagined I would do, I have never felt the lack of a family.’
The veteran lawmaker said he remembers hanging out at his family’s bar and grill – the Sanitary Cafe – which also functioned as a liquor store and pool hall, and putting on a show for the patrons. A ‘precocious’ child, the U.S. Senator says he sipped beer out of patrons’ bottles while they were in the restroom and stole drags off their cigarettes, earning him the nickname ‘Stinkball.’ It was all in good fun, though, and his family was ‘almost as close as kin’ with the regulars, he says.
