In honor of Sen. Robert Byrd, flags at the White House will be flown at half-staff. Today, his body will lie in the Senate chamber before being flown to West Virginia for a memorial service. Friday, there will be a public viewing at a memorial attended by Congressional leaders and President Obama and then the body will return to Washington D.C. for a burial where he will be laid to rest next to his wife, Emma.

Senator Byrd's ability to funnel federal money to West Virginia made him beloved in his home state and derided as a "King of Pork" by other others. Gaston Caperton was the governor of West Virginia from 1989 to 1996, and saw Byrd's ability to maneuver in the Senate close up.

17,000 votes, nine terms, 51 years. Sen. Robert Byrd died early Monday morning at the age of 92. He was the longest serving member of Congress in American history. He grew up in a rural coalfield community in West Virginia and this was a major aspect of his identity as a leader from West Virginia.

Senator Robert Byrd not only held virtually every job worth having in the United States Senate, but he also created some meant solely for himself. When I arrived in Washington, D.C. as a reporter in the early 80s, Byrd was already hard at work writing an official history of the U.S. Senate. He announced the official history initiative one day when his granddaughter and her fifth grade class were in the gallery. The Senate record quotes the Majority Leader as saying: "It might be well if they had something to go back to school and talk about."

As Robert Byrd passes, an era in race relations ends. Byrd started his political life as an Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan. In 1944, Byrd wrote the following in a letter to Senator Theodore Bilbo: "I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds." Byrd filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act for 14 hours.

We're remembering Sen. Robert Byrd, who died early this morning at the age of 92. Rep. Nick Rahall (D), who has represented southern West Virginia in Congress since 1977, tells what Byrd's passing means to him, as a member of the state's Congressional delegation.

There's also a scar on Byrd's proud history of service. He got his start as a political organizer in the Ku Klux Klan and he was an outspoken critic of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. That's a history that Senator Byrd acknowledged, but apologized for, later in life.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd served in Congress longer than anyone in the nation's history. The senator's office announced that he passed away at 3 a.m. Monday morning at a suburban Washington hospital. The West Virginia Democrat was 92, and was serving in an unprecedented ninth term in the U.S. Senate.

Robert C. Byrd, the longest-serving legislator in the history of the United States Senate, died Monday at age 92. Byrd came to the Senate from West Virginia in January, 1959, after serving three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Over a Senate career that spanned nine terms, he attained an unparalleled reputation as a master of Senate procedure, the body’s unofficial historian, and the unchallenged keeper of the Senate’s institutions and traditions.