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CENTRAL, S.C. — If elected, Senator Lindsey Graham would be the first bachelor to win the White House since Grover Cleveland. But that does not mean he will be on the campaign trail without any family members in tow.

Mr. Graham, 59, a Republican who is a hawk on foreign policy, featured his relatives prominently at his announcement here on Monday — none more so than his sister, Darline Graham Nordone, who introduced him. Ms. Nordone did her best to show Mr. Graham’s softer side by sharing stories of how he taught her to ride a bicycle and recalling the pain of losing both their parents, one after the other, at young ages.

“Lindsey was always my parent,” Ms. Nordone said in an interview in the bar on Main Street that their family once owned. “There was no doubt in my mind or anyone else’s mind that Lindsey was my guardian.”

Mr. Graham and his sister grew up in a small room behind the bar, which was then known as the Sanitary Cafe. They eventually moved into a trailer and then into a house next door. In 1976, when he was 20 and his sister was 11, their mother died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma; 15 months later, their father died of a heart attack.

Ms. Nordone said she had kept a low profile during her brother’s previous campaigns, but that she would be willing to attend events with him now and do anything she could to help him win the White House.

A mother of two whose occupation is helping people with disabilities find jobs, Ms. Nordone said that her brother’s sense of responsibility, in caring for her, was why he had never married.

“He was a young man taking on a young girl and teenager to raise,” she said. “He was just dedicating all of that time to raising me and going to school and trying to get an education. There’s just only so much time in a day.”

Mr. Graham later became his sister’s legal guardian while he was in the Air Force, allowing her to qualify for his military benefits.

Mr. Graham’s bachelorhood has been seized upon by his political opponents before, most recently last year, when a little-known conservative primary challenger called him “ambiguously gay.”

Ms. Nordone said that such personal attacks were hard for her to take, but that she tried to tune out criticism of her brother — while showing people that Mr. Graham was much more than a politician.

“He’s kind of like a brother, a father and a mother rolled into one,” she said.