Senator Craig Thomas
(1933-2007)

Statements by Senators Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, and Michael B. Enzi on the Death of Senator Craig Thomas, from 153 Cong. Rec. S7017-S7020 (daily ed. June 5, 2007).

"Madam President, we hear it often said that this is a Senate family, and it is times such as these when we do realize we are a family, a very small family of just 100--99 today.
I can remember early last December I called and talked to Craig in the hospital, and he said: I am getting better. And he was. He did get better. It just didn't last, and we all feel so bad about that.
I remember Craig Thomas for his legislative efforts. Wyoming, like Nevada, is a public land State. Wyoming has a lot of public land issues dealing with Federal agencies. I see his colleague here, Mike Enzi, and I can remember working with them on an issue which, to most people, seemed like not much, but to the two Senators from Wyoming and to the Senator from Nevada, it meant a lot. We were dealing with a place called Martin's Cove, and even Senators from Utah were called in to see if we could resolve this, and we were able to resolve it eventually. But Craig was really tough when it came to public lands issues.
I can remember, as can Lula, whom we all know, Craig Thomas' persistence on a piece of legislation on an issue dealing with the potash of a mining company in Wyoming. He would ask us if we had been able to get it cleared. If he asked us once, he asked us 50 times, and we eventually got it cleared. I worked hard on this side for that for a couple of reasons: First, it was the right thing to do, and second, Craig wanted it so badly. So we were able to work that out.
I will miss Craig Thomas. Craig Thomas was the kind of person with whom I liked to deal. He told you how he felt--he wanted this done; he didn't want that done. I recognized that he was very proud of being a Senator.
I would have to say, however, that he was just as proud of being a marine. His Marine Corps service was certainly commendable. He was in the Marine Corps in the late 1950s, 1955 to 1959. He went in as a private and came out as a captain. He was a graduate of the University of Wyoming with a degree in agriculture, and that is why he was one of the leading experts in the Senate--in the Congress, I should say--on agriculture and, of course, issues affecting rural communities."

Majority Leader Harry Reid

"Madam President, a visitor to the rodeo in Cheyenne, WY, just last summer would have seen a strong, confident, 73-year-old man holding the reins under a cowboy hat riding past the grandstand with a smile. A few weeks earlier, visitors to rustic Cody, WY, would have seen the same tough cowboy riding down Sheridan Avenue in the Cody Stampede Parade. Just a few days ago, a tourist here in Washington, getting an early start on the monuments, could have seen Craig Lyle Thomas racing off 395 near the 14th Street Bridge in another kind of Mustang on his way to the Capitol for a hard day's work.
In recent years, Craig Thomas led an effort here in the Senate to honor the deeds and the spirit of the American cowboy, and his very full American life came to a sad end last night. We, his friends and colleagues, remember him as the modern-day embodiment of the cowboy ideals he celebrated and loved.
He was raised on a ranch just outside Cody, the rodeo capital of the world, in the Big Horn Basin, a windy town in the northwest corner of the Cowboy State. He grew up in the shadow of Heart Mountain to the north and Carter Mountain to the south and under the memory of Cody's founder, William Frederick Cody, known to history and to schoolchildren from Butte to Boston as Buffalo Bill.
He was a humble man with an adventurous spirit from a lonely corner of the country who put his family, his country, and his State above all else. He served as a marine from 1955 to 1959, retiring as a captain. He married a woman with a generous heart. My wife Elaine is a good friend of Susan's, and one of the joys of Elaine's time in the last few years was being invited out to Susan's school to speak to her students.
Craig was the proud father of four children--Lexie, Patrick, Gregg, and Peter--who today mourn their father's death.
Craig was as much at home on horseback, roping, and ranching, as he was in a committee hearing room. How many times he must have daydreamed about being back home, out of a suit, with a rope in his hand and a steer in his sights.
Craig had served in public office 22 years when he fell ill at a church service with Susan last November in Casper. Shortly after that, the people of Wyoming elected him to his third term in the Senate, with 70 percent of the vote. A born fighter, Craig's doctors said he would be back here in January. He beat their predictions by a month. He was here in December. Craig suffered quietly over the last half year, as all of us hoped for the best. It wasn't to be.
Every year, Craig pressed for a day that would memorialize the iconic status of the cowboy in American history, a day that honored their courage, hard work, honesty, and grit. I can think of no better way of honoring that spirit than by honoring this man who embodied it to the fullest. By his devotion to family, country, constituents, and friends, Craig Lyle Thomas showed us what it means to be an American. He embodied the best ideals of a Wyoming cowboy and made the Senate and those who had the privilege of knowing him far better for it.
We mourn with Susan, Craig's children, and Craig's staff here in the Senate. We honor them today, too, for their model of professionalism and caring concern they have shown over the last difficult months. We will miss Craig terribly, his calm toughness, his drive, and his cowboy spirit, but we are consoled by the thought that he will ride again, restored in body and flashing a smile as he goes."

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

"Madam President, when my plane touched down last night, I received an e-mail that told of the fate of a great man. It was a tremendous surprise to me. I just completed a week in Wyoming of explaining to people that he even timed his chemotherapy so he didn't have to miss votes, and what a tough and strong man he was.
Craig Thomas was a marine at heart, but he was a cowboy in his soul. He was quiet, he was focused, he was independent, he was hard-working. He loved the Senate and he loved the Marines and he loved his horses. The flags have been lowered, and there is a great deal of sadness in our hearts today as we mourn his loss and celebrate his life. I have had a lot of thoughts, but I haven’t had a chance to put them together. They come gushing back, together with a lot of tears.
For those of us from Wyoming, Craig Thomas was more than just our Senator. He was our voice in the Senate, and he was never one to back off from a fight, especially when he was battling for two things most dear: what was best for Wyoming and what was best for America.
Craig had long Wyoming roots, and he was very proud of them. He grew up in Cody and became friends with Al Simpson. Later on the two of them would serve together in the Senate. After he graduated from the University of Wyoming, he immediately began his service to the country he loved. He joined the Marine Corps. I am convinced that experience helped to shape his character and molded his destiny. I think his steely resolve and firm will took shape during those days that helped guide him and prepare him for the battles that would come later in his political life.
When Craig's service in the Marine Corps was through, he began what was to be his life's work, which was serving the people of Wyoming to ensure their best interests were taken care of and their needs were addressed.
His first efforts for Wyoming brought him to the Wyoming Farm Bureau and the Wyoming Rural Electric Association.
He was proud of his service with both of these organizations. It kept him actively involved in issues that meant a great deal to him and, more importantly, it kept him in touch with the people of Wyoming and their day-to-day problems. It also set him on the road to doing anything and everything he could to make life easier for his fellow citizens in Wyoming.
I remember the days we served together in the Wyoming House. I was a mayor and had municipal electrical experience. He was with the rural electric association. We worked a lot of electrical bills together at that time. We could bring in both perspectives, find the middle ground, and make sure all of the people, rural and urban--I use the term ``urban'' for Wyoming rather loosely, but urban--would be able to have low-cost and consistent electricity.
Nobody knew energy or electricity better than Craig. That led him to run for the Wyoming House. Dick Cheney was appointed Secretary of Defense, and Craig ran for it and won his seat. It was not an easy victory, but it showed what a fighter and battler he was as he took on that challenge, which was done in a relatively short period of time. The executive committee just has a few days to select candidates, and then there is a very short time for an election for the position in the Wyoming House. He used his usual toughness, went around the State, talked to everybody, and won that election.
Incidentally, the person he ran against in the primary, Tom Sansonetti, became his chief of staff, which shows how people get along in Wyoming.
To no one's surprise, Craig focused on Wyoming issues in the House and he was reelected. Then when Malcolm Wallop decided to retire, Craig was such a popular choice he didn't have any opposition in the primary. He did face another battle in the general election, but once again his fighting spirit prevailed and he found a way to win. Interestingly enough, the person he defeated in the general election was a very popular Governor of Wyoming who was just ending his term. That Governor was later appointed Ambassador to Ireland by President Clinton. To Craig Thomas's credit, the hearing was scheduled for that ambassadorship before the papers ever got to the Capitol. Ambassador Sullivan did a fantastic job in Ireland.
He won the Senate seat, and 2 years later I ran for the Senate and serve. He is one of the few Wyoming residents who ever served both in the House and in the Senate. It has not been a tradition in Wyoming to move from the House to the Senate. I was elected and then got a chance to work with him again. He was a remarkable man of vision on how to make Wyoming and our country better places to live. He spent a good deal of his time traveling Wyoming. He was one of the most ardent travelers we have ever had in the Senate, going back virtually every weekend, traveling to a different part of the State, talking to people and trying to get their vision for the future.
One of his efforts on that was called Vision 2020. He challenged the people of Wyoming. He stretched the people's imagination on what our State ought to be like in the year 2020. That was in 1998, but we are getting a lot closer to 2020, and I think the State is moving toward the vision that he predicted at that time. It was a goal he cherished and fought for. Many of the things he envisioned, or the people of Wyoming envisioned, have been achieved through his efforts on the Senate floor.
Craig Thomas will long be remembered as one of Wyoming's toughest and fiercest advocates. Craig knew that much of our work gets done in committees, so he pursued those committees that would help him fight for Wyoming in the Senate. He served on the critical Finance Committee. He was a staunch fiscal conservative, and he believed very strongly that people in Wyoming and across the Nation know better how to spend their hard-earned money than does the Federal Government. He used his position on the committee to lighten the tax burden and to make our Tax Code more fair.
He was the ranking member on the Indian Affairs Committee. He served as chairman of the National Parks Subcommittee where he was a tireless advocate for our park system. I think he visited most of the parks. Earlier, when our Republican leader was talking about horseback, it was even possible sometimes to see him with the park policemen on horseback taking a look at the parks of the Capitol.
I would mention also that usually when you saw him on horseback you also saw his wife Susan on horseback. She was a tireless traveler and an outstanding campaigner and another person who searches for the visions of Wyoming. In parades, they always rode horses. They had special saddle blankets that helped to say who they were--as if people in Wyoming wouldn't know who they were. I would mention that she was thrown from a horse a couple of times, too. Bands and horses don't always go well in hand. But, as Craig always said, she was the real campaigner in the family. She actually liked it. She does a marvelous job for our State, as well as did Craig.
Craig was very active on all of the agricultural issues and international trade, particularly country-of-origin labeling. He supported our cattlemen with grazing rights and responsible environmental quality incentive programs for runoff issues. He has worked tirelessly to get changes in the Endangered Species Act. He realized that was a national program with national goals and it should not punish individuals or counties or even the States, and that there ought to be responsibility at the Federal level.
With energy, he was the lead sponsor of our soda ash royalty relief bill. He was the lead sponsor on the recreational fee demonstration program that allowed the national parks to keep a higher percentage of the receipts that were received on public lands where they were collected, and he specifically made efforts to include section 413 of the Energy Policy Act, which authorizes Federal cost-share for the building of a coal gasification project above 4,000 feet. That would help get a clean coal plant built in Wyoming, which would prove the technology with Wyoming coal at high altitude. We have huge resources of coal. We ship over one-third of the Nation's coal--over 1 million tons a day.
The reason we ship so much coal is because it is very low sulfur. He was providing a mechanism to be able to have some assurance that coal gasification of this clean coal would be included in projects that we did in the United States. It would help to prove the technology at high altitude and show its viability and would make a difference for all the United States in all their energy in the future.
He was also instrumental in writing the electricity title of EPAct. Recently, his efforts to get a coal-to-liquids section of whatever Energy bill we will be debating, although unsuccessful thus far, advanced the debate to the furthest point it had moved.
During the last FAA reauthorization, Craig was very instrumental in radar upgrades for the Jackson airport, which was imperative for the growth of the city and airport, especially related to tourism. I think Jackson is the only city in Wyoming that has long distance direct flights. Most of them come through Salt Lake or Denver or Minneapolis. But Jackson actually has flights that come from Houston and Atlanta direct.
He also did a lot for Wyoming with two big transportation authorization bills to ensure that the large land area, low-population States, received a fair amount of highway funding. As I mentioned, on fiscal issues he was a staunch conservative who believed the people knew how to spend their money better than the Federal Government.
A few months ago, Craig shared his medical situation with us. He was in for another difficult fight, but he was used to them. He has been a battler all his life. He took the fierce determination that he learned as a marine and brought it to this latest battle against leukemia. Unfortunately, it was a battle this great fighter was not to win.
Although that last battle of his life was lost, there were so many victories in his life that we will long remember. Craig died as he lived, with his spurs on, fighting for Wyoming to the very end. I am sure we all have our favorite instant replay memories of Craig and his unique style.
I have always believed you can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit. That was Craig--never one to seek the limelight or to draw attention to himself. He was the one working in committee to assure that the voices of the Wyoming people and America were heard and heard clearly.
For me, I will always remember Craig's spirit, for his spirit in life was a great illustration of the spirit of Wyoming. His life became a living portrait of the American West. He saw the world from the saddle of his horse and from under the brim of his cowboy hat. He was proud of Wyoming and Wyoming was proud to be represented by him.
Craig was my senior Senator. He was my confidant and mentor. But most of all, he was a very good friend. Diana and I will always feel appreciation for the fact that Craig and Susan made us part of their family. Our prayers are with Susan and their family during these difficult times.
I will miss him. But because he was such a special presence in my life and the lives of so many others, I have a long list of instant replay memories I will always cherish of him: the times we were out on the campaign trail, the legislation we worked on together and, more importantly, the impact he had on my life personally, as he had on so many others.
Wyoming is a different place today because of this great loss of ours. There is great sadness in the State and also great joy as we celebrate the life of one of our special citizens. He was with us for all too short a time, but he will never be forgotten.
I received a book called ``give me Mountains for my Horses,'' by Tom Reed. But what I always ask for is that they give us men to match our mountains and our horses--and that would be Craig.
I want to share just a little piece of this because I know that Craig is already riding in a far better place. It says:
There is a taste to this place, this time. Nothing is behind you. Everything is ahead. But you don't really think about what is ahead, you only think of now, for this partnership you have entered into is one of the moment, of now. Now has you in a saddle on a bay horse, heading up a trail of pines and spruce and mountain, of stream and meadow.
Behind you, connected by only your hand and a lead rope but carrying everything important to you, is another bay horse, an almost identical match to the one you are riding. You call them nicknames as if they were human compadres, drinking buddies. You cluck and coo and talk to them as if they give a damn about what you have to say. You think they do and maybe, just maybe [they do].
Right now they are stepping out, heads nodding, down the trail and through the stream and all you have to do is ride. So you ride.
That evening as dusk brings the mosquitoes out of the willows--the same dusk that put the horse flies to bed--you choose a camp. It is a good place, save for the bugs, with room for the horses in the broad, deep green meadow and camp back against the lodgepoles and your kitchen down a ways. So you ease off the bay's back and stretch your muscles with that stiff-good, worked-hard feeling, and you begin to unload the packhorse, talking to him, thanking him. In a while he has on his hobbles and is out there with his buddy, snorting contentedly in the tall grass and swishing a long, coal-black tail at the mosquitoes.
It goes like this for days, the ride, the squeak of the saddle leather, the smell of dust, the taste of it on your tongue. The smell of horse sweat and your own and the soft muzzles nuzzling you after a long day. Good camp after good camp. Muscles turning hard. Eyes becoming sharp for wildlife. And riding, always riding.
One evening a big sow grizzly and her cub cross a broad meadow far out there. A tough gal, rambling, giving you and your horses a wide berth. But still the binoculars sweat in your hands and your mouth is dry.
``Boy, what a beautiful animal.''
The next morning a moose walks the same path. You have not seen another human in days but there's a jet contrail reminding you that yes, this is the modern world. You ride.
Craig loved the modern world. He worked hard in this body. He would have liked to have been out there in those mountains on those horses enjoying the smell and the sounds. Now he is riding. Ride on my friend, ride on."

Senator Michael B. Enzi

About Senator Craig Thomas:
   Senator Thomas' Web site
   Senator Thomas' entry in the Biographical Directory of Congress.