Pete Simpson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
July 31, 1930[1]
Pete Simpson | |
|---|---|
| Member of the Wyoming House of Representatives | |
| In office 1981–1984 | |
| Preceded by | Victor Garber |
| Succeeded by | Hardy H. Tate |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Peter Kooi Simpson July 31, 1930[1] Cody, Wyoming, U.S. |
| Party | Republican |
| Spouse | Lynne Alice Livingston |
| Relations | Milward Simpson Alan Simpson Colin M. Simpson |
| Children | 3 |
| Alma mater | University of Wyoming University of Oregon |
| Profession | Historian; college and university administrator |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch/service |  United States Navy |
Peter Kooi Simpson Sr. (born July 31, 1930) is an American historian and politician who is a member of the Simpson political family of Wyoming. From 1981 to 1984, he was a member of the Wyoming House of Representatives from Sheridan, where at the time he was employed in administration by the community college, Sheridan College.[2]
In 1986, Simpson was the Wyoming Republican gubernatorial nominee. He polled 46 percent of the vote in his race against the Democrat Michael J. Sullivan[3] of Douglas in Converse County in southeastern Wyoming.[4]
A native of Cody in Park County, Wyoming, Simpson is one of two sons of the late Governor and U.S. Senator Milward L. Simpson and Lorna (née Kooi), a native of Chicago.[5] Pete Simpson's great-grandparents, Maggie and John Simpson, platted and named Jackson, Wyoming. Another great-grandparent, Finn Burnett, knew Sacajawea and was an advisor the Shoshone chief, Washakie.[6]
Simpson graduated in 1953 from the University of Wyoming in Laramie, where he was a member of the student senate, lettered in basketball with the UW Cowboys, and received a Bachelor of Arts, the first of his three degrees in the field of history. After four years in the United States Navy,[7] he moved to Billings, Montana, where he starred in a local television program and became involved in folk music.[8]
Career
Academics
Simpson returned to University of Wyoming and in 1962 earned his Master of Arts degree, with his thesis, A History of the First Wyoming Legislature. He would be a member of that body some two decades thereafter.[9]
Simpson thereafter earned his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon. His dissertation on the cattle industry, "The Community of Cattlemen: A Social History of the Cattle Industry in Southeastern Oregon, 1869-1912," was published as a book in 1987. He is a member of the fraternity Alpha Tau Omega. In the early 1970s, Simpson returned to Wyoming to accept a position as the assistant to the president at Casper College in Casper, the state's second largest city. He then became dean of instruction at Sheridan College.[7]
After his legislative service ended in 1984, Simpson left Sheridan to become vice president for development at the University of Wyoming and the executive director of the UW Foundation. He resigned from UW to run for governor but returned in 1987 as vice president for development and alumni affairs. Thereafter, he was elevated to his terminal position of UW vice president for institutional advancement. After retirement in 1997, Simpson remained in Laramie and taught history on an adjunct basis at UW and was in 1999 and 2000 the Milward Simpson Distinguished Visiting Professor, named for his father.[7]
The Simpson Fund has financed various speakers of different backgrounds and disciplines to UW, including former United States Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, former United States Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt, U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, Jr., and ABC journalist Sam Donaldson.[10] Over the years, Simpson has emceed various UW events. In 2009, he was inducted for "Special Achievement" into the UW Athletics Hall of Fame.[7]
While at UW, Simpson and his brother, Alan, were invited to team teach for one semester only by the political science department, but Pete Simpson was still teaching the course twelve years later.[11] After he left the U.S. Senate, Alan Simpson became a lecturer for several years for the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, but he returned to Cody in 2000 to practice law with his two sons, Colin and William Simpson.[12]
Long involved in civic affairs, Pete Simpson in 2010 joined his former gubernatorial rival, Mike Sullivan, at a fundraising appearance in Rock Springs in southwestern Wyoming for the benefit of the library in Sweetwater County.[13]
Pete Simpson narrated the hour-long documentary Over Wyoming which was produced by WyomingPBS in 2016.[14]
Politics
During his four-year stint in the legislature, Simpson was a member of the House Appropriations Committee.[2] Two years after leaving the state House, he waged a hard-fought race for governor but fell short. UW history professor Phil Roberts suggested that the principal reason that Pete Simpson may have lost that race to Mike Sullivan was that Alan Simpson was already serving in his second term in the U.S. Senate: "There are a number of people that speculate because there already was a Simpson in the Senate, they probably wanted just one Simpson at a time."[6]
Roberts said that family names have been less important in Wyoming politics than in other states with prominent political families.[6] That view held true when, in 2014, when Liz Cheney, daughter of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, challenged Alan Simpson's Senate successor, Mike Enzi in the Republican primary.[15] Enzi won the election.
