The paper had been running a photo of Helms taken on a day when he was fighting the flu. Helms asked whether The N&O could run a different photo of him.

"I realize that mine is not just another pretty face," Helms wrote in a letter preserved at the Jesse Helms Center in Wingate.

"It would require a photographer-magician to make me appear other than something akin to a harried hound dog." He offered "kindest personal regards."

Sitton responded that he had reviewed the paper's photos of Helms and tossed the bad ones. He asked Helms to come by The N&O to have a new photo made. Helms replied that he would.

That might have been the high point of the relationship between Helms (who served in the Senate from 1973 to 2003) and Sitton (editor from 1968 to 1990).

They soon became devoted adversaries. Helms, who grew up in the small town of Monroe, was a preserver of the Old South. He was one of the state's strongest voices for segregation in the 1950s. He opposed civil rights legislation as a TV commentator in the 1960s and in the Senate.

Sitton also was a son of the South but concluded differently about how it should address its historic mistreatment of black citizens. From 1958 to 1964, he traveled the South covering the civil rights movement for The New York Times, often under dangerous conditions. His reporting helped change how Americans felt about their dual-caste society. He was one of the best reporters of the 20th century.

As the editor of this newspaper, Sitton led an opinion staff that advocated for civil rights and frequently criticized Helms.

When Helms died July 4, The N&O's Bill Krueger called Sitton, who is 82 and retired in his native Georgia, for comment. "I think he saw me as a foe," Sitton said.

That's an understatement.

Helms and Sitton were in many ways similar -- tough, honest, dogged, uncompromising. They were made for each other. Their mano a mano struggle made for great editorial commentary and great political theater.

When he campaigned in Eastern North Carolina, Helms often criticized The N&O and Sitton, to the hoots of his supporters.

Helms enjoyed having Sitton as an adversary, said Tom Ellis, the Raleigh lawyer who was a longtime Helms adviser.

"Absolutely," Ellis said. "It made what Jesse believed in a contrast (to Sitton's columns and editorials). If you don't have an adversary, then what you believe in will not be as effective."

Sitton said of Helms: "To my knowledge, he never put his finger in the public till and he was honest about his beliefs, which were not my beliefs. But he went his way, and I went mine."

There won't be another Jesse Helms. And there won't be another Claude Sitton -- or at least it won't be me. While I admire and respect Sitton (I worked for him from 1983-86), I don't see the world as starkly as he did.

And while Sitton was in charge of news and commentary -- and directed them in tandem -- I don't supervise the editorial pages. I'll use this column to advocate for open government and for public figures to talk with us. But I won't push a partisan position.

When he wrote Sitton in 1973 about the photograph, Helms ended by writing, "Do whatever you think is right."

Jesse Helms always did. So did Claude Sitton.