In 1948 Byrd won election to the Senate of Virginia for the district including Winchester, the area his father previously represented. He was the third consecutive generation of the Byrd family to enter politics. His grandfather Richard Evelyn Byrd Sr. served as the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and his father had served as a Virginia state senator, Governor of Virginia and United States senator. Byrd had begun accompanying his father on trips during the elder's governorship, and once remarked that "I was in every county and city in the state by the time I was thirteen years old." In time Byrd became a key member in his father's statewide political network, known as the Byrd Organization.