Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Anyone with the slightest interest in Wyoming knew him. He was as ubiquitous a figure as was his famous statement concerning our state. “Wyoming is just a small town with really long streets.”
The man from Cody, Senator Alan Simpson, passed away last week at the venerable age of 93. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people have stories of interactions with Al.
I first met him in the summer of 1978, when my father and I were building a three-apartment building on the foundation of the old Lutheran Church at Kinnear.
I was hanging sheetrock in the front apartment when I spotted a tall, skinny guy in a blue suit walking up the highway where the Morton / Kinnear Fire Hall is now. He crossed south to where we were working and I yelled to my dad, “There’s a politician coming this way.”
My dad didn’t have much use for politicians but stepped away from mudding the sheetrock we’d hung in the front kitchen for a minute.
Al took two giant steps up the six-step concrete stoop and extended his hand to me, while introducing himself. I shook it and introduced my dad.
Dad didn’t bother to wipe the sheetrock mud off his right hand and shook Al’s hand. Al looked a bit chagrined for a second, but coolly started talking about home construction, lumber prices, and general agriculture. His hands were dirty, but he got a couple of votes that afternoon.
A few years later, when I was a student senator in the ASUW (Associated Students of the University of Wyoming) and later the ASUW external affairs executive responsible for lobbying the state legislature, I got to know Al much better.
At graduation, we had a party at the late Red Jacoby’s house near the UW Campus. Al was one of our graduation speakers and we shared a beer at Red’s house.
My dad once again, with my roommate Frank Schmit’s father from Bismarck, North Dakota, a construction foreman, shared their common dislike of politicians in voices perhaps a bit too late for a social setting like this one.
Frank’s dad said, “I’d like to nuke Washington, D.C. while all those politicians were in town.”
My dad responded, “Yes, but first dynamite all the tunnels so none of those rats can get out.”
Frank and I just laughed and shook our heads at our fathers, but I caught a glimpse of Al on the opposite side of the room they were in. He’d heard the entire conversation, but in a true poker face, never acknowledged the slight.
I was dating a gal who went to work in Al’s office as an aide in the fall of 1980. I made the trip to Washington, D.C. and visited Senator Simpson’s office.
As always, water was an issue in Fremont County. My dad asked me to question the senator on upstream storage, and improvements to Bull Lake, Pilot Butte Reservoir, and the entire Midvale Irrigation District.
One afternoon, Al set aside an hour for me in his office and we discussed those topics. I was impressed with his responses. He was much more familiar with irrigation around his hometown in Cody, but he knew a lot about our particular problems, and worked to resolve many of them over the intervening years.
If you knew Al Simpson, he knew you and rarely, if ever, forgot a name.
When we won the 1988 State Basketball Championship in Shoshoni, I received a letter from Al a couple of weeks after the tournament.
It wasn’t one of those form letters that politicians now routinely sent out, signed by a signature machine to look authentic, this one was handwritten and four pages long.
He congratulated me and the boys for the state title, then began reminiscing about his playing days as a Cody Bronc.
Al wrote about three away games he played in for the Broncs. Cody had beaten Lander on a Thursday, stayed overnight, then beat Riverton on Friday.
“Coach decided to pick up a third game on the way home in Shoshoni,” Al wrote. “We’d handled Riverton and Lander pretty easily. We didn’t do so well in that cracker box gym in Shoshoni. We were a head taller than all those guys, but they hit from the cheap seats all night and beat us soundly.”
I still have the letter that Senator Simpson wrote to me.
At 6-7, Al was one of the first big men to play for the Cowboys. He lettered in both football and basketball before heading off to the US Army for a post-Korean War stint.
Jump ahead another couple of decades and I’m in the Arena Auditorium in Laramie with my son-in-law Adam, with a press pass, watching the Cowboys play New Mexico.
We were sitting on press row, directly in front of the premier seats, when Al and his wife walked down the aisle.
“Want me to introduce you to Senator Simpson?” I asked Adam.
“You don’t know him,” was Adam’s reply.
I said, “Come on.”
Al was about to sit down when he saw me. He extended his hand and said, “Hi Randy, how are things in Shoshoni?”
I wasn’t in Shoshoni at the time, instead working at Wyoming Indian, but Al didn’t know I’d changed jobs, he just knew who I was and made a connection. He asked how Harold Bailey was doing as well.
In his later years, Al became a spokesman of reason and common sense in a state gone mad politically.
His most famous skill was in compromising legislation so that it benefited everyone involved.
By negotiating, Al accomplished things, something impossible for the Balkanized, bomb-throwing, entrenched politicians of today.
How else could he civilly interact with the face of the liberal side in Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts? The pair of polar opposites became friends and recorded a news show called “Face Off” where they openly debated the issues of the day. In 1900, two-minute sessions, stretching over seven years, the two senators discussed the issues.
Al was the face of the republican party for a long time. A close friend of President George Bush. In his final years he was ridiculed as a “Rino” or “Libtard” by the extremists of today’s GOP.
He represented a connection to a time when politicians worked for the people, not for the dollars doled out by corporations and billionaires.
Al was known for western colloquialisms. My favorite was one he often repeated after particularly tough floor fights in the Senate and the extensive backroom negotiations that used to take place for the benefit of the American people.
“Getting this bill passed is going to be more difficult than giving dry birth to a live porcupine.”
Al was one of a kind, and the state of Wyoming is a lesser place without his wit and wisdom.
Godspeed, senator.