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of six free throws in a high school basketball game, said everything he knows "about politics that is good I learned from Jim Abdnor."
• "He was a hardworking and effective fighter for South Dakota, and one of the most decent and genuine people to ever hold elective office," Thune told The Associated Press in a statement Wednesday. "He always managed to maintain what I think was a very healthy perspective about who he was and where he was from, and he never let the title of the office get to him."

• Former state lawmaker Lee Schoenbeck of Watertown, who worked for Abdnor as a new college graduate decades ago, said Abdnor encouraged dozens of young people to get into government service. The senator also frequently ran behind schedule because he couldn't tear himself away from conversations, he said.
• "That guy just couldn't get enough chances to talk to people in South Dakota," Schoenbeck said.
• After leaving Washington, Abdnor lived alternately between homes in South Dakota in Kennebec and Rapid City and spent winters in recent years in Florida -- though he always considered Kennebec his home. He leased his 4,000-acre ranch while serving in the Senate.
• "Kennebec is a little quieter than Rapid City. The streets were empty at 8 o'clock at night. It was quite an adjustment after living in Washington since 1972," he said in a 1993 interview.
• Abdnor moved from Rapid City to a retirement facility in Sioux Falls in 2003, but spent winters in Fort Myers, Fla. He moved to assisted living in late 2010.

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