Posted on 06/11/2005 8:30:23 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Historic Governors' Mansion opens today
By Becky Orr rep6@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE - People celebrated the 100th birthday of the Wyoming Historic Governors' Mansion in style Friday night at the centennial banquet.
The evening recognized Wyoming governors, first ladies and first families.
The gala paid tribute to those first family members whose efforts played a significant role in restoring the mansion at 300 E. 21st St.
The Historic Governors' Mansion Foundation raised $1.5 million to restore the former home of Wyoming's top elected officials and their families.
Money came from several sources, including the Legislature, donations, grants and help from members of Wyoming's first families.
Gov. Dave Freudenthal told the packed banquet room at the Hitching Post Inn that the Historic Governors' Mansion is an "incredible restoration." He said the restoration captures various periods of history in Wyoming.
"We have in Cheyenne and in much of Wyoming destroyed an awful lot of buildings that were part of our history," Freudenthal said.
"I think that the foundation deserves credit for not only preserving the building, but a chunk of history."
The evening honored the efforts of several state governors and first ladies.
Elisabet de Valle, chairwoman of the Historic Governors' Mansion Foundation and centennial committee, outlined the contributions.
She described efforts that ranged from redecorating and modernizing the mansion and helping with the landscape design to establishing the foundation and contributing money to start it.
Those honored Friday for their efforts were:
• Freudenthal and first lady Nancy Freudenthal.
• First lady Bobby Hathaway. Gov. Stanley K. Hathaway accepted the honor on his late wife's behalf.
• First lady Jane Sullivan.
• First lady Win Hickey.
• First lady Sherri Geringer.
• Gov. Clifford Hansen and first lady Martha Hansen.
De Valle also recognized many in the audience who were relatives and descendants of Wyoming's governors and first families. She also thanked those legislators whose efforts were key.
The evening itself provided a sense of history. The program started with a parade of former state governors and first ladies along with the Freudenthals.
Lynn Dixon, master of ceremonies, explained the intensive restoration process. He narrated as guests studied slides that showed the condition of the mansion before and during the restoration. Dixon also is on the foundation board.
The historic mansion was in bad shape. Slides depicted a ceiling lined with cracks, which was not an uncommon sight at the mansion, he said.
"The back porch was literally falling off the building," he said.
Former U.S. Sen. Alan Kooi Simpson talked about his memories of the mansion, or manse, as he called it during a humorous speech. His father, Milward Simpson, was elected governor in 1954.
"What a wonderful state, and what a wonderful place to live," Simpson said.
Simpson told a story of when JJ Hickey defeated his father for the governor's office in 1958. During a party at the mansion after the election but before Hickey took office, one attendee lamented how he was happy Milward Simpson had been defeated, an opinion he shared with Alan Simpson's mother, Lorna Kooi Simpson.
"'They'll be living here on Jan. 8,'" Alan Simpson said, quoting his mother's reply.
The man, who mistakenly had thought Simpson's mother was Win Hickey, replied, "'Even after 83 years, this old tongue can get you in a lot of trouble,'" Simpson recounted.
Here's more on the Governor's Mansion restoration in Cheyenne:
By Becky Orr
rep6@wyomingnews.com
Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE - Gov. Dave Freudenthal looked across the mansion's lawn at the crowd gathered on the street.
"As Bobby Hathaway said, 'Come on in folks, it's your house,' " Freudenthal said, as he welcomed visitors inside the newly-renovated Historic Governors' Mansion.
Freudenthal was referring to former first lady Bobby Hathaway, the late wife of former Gov. Stan Hathaway. She was one of the mansion's big supporters who proposed that it become a house museum.
The mansion opened its doors on Saturday after an almost 18-month restoration project. More than 500 people saw inside the mansion on its reopening day.
"This is not just a pretty old house," Elisabet de VallŠe, chairwoman of the Historic Governors' Mansion Foundation said during the rededication ceremony.
"This was home to Wyoming's governors. It's a very personal historic site."
The day brought together many governors, first ladies and first families and their descendants.
The state Legislature contributed more than $1.1 million toward the restoration, de VallŠe said. The amount is about two-thirds of the money raised so far.
The visit brought back memories for former first lady Win Hickey. She is the wife of the late Gov. J.J. Hickey, who was Wyoming's governor from 1959 to 1961.
Hickey toured the mansion with sons Paul and John. Paul Hickey remembered that when he was about 8 years old, he used the mansion's laundry chute for a science experiment.
"We tried as our science experiment one week to see if a cat really does land on its feet," he said. The cat survived unscathed. "It proved the theory."
At the height of the Cold War, workers converted a basement room into a bomb shelter during the Hickey administration.
"Somebody got the idea that the whole country was about to be bombed to bits," Mrs. Hickey said. In order to get the rest of the state interested in building shelters, the logic was that the governor's house needed one, she said.
"We put some canned goods down there and called it a bomb shelter," she said.
"We didn't have any reason to go there." That was a good thing because it was crowded.
Attention to detail in the mansion's fallout shelter - right down to stocking the shelves with 1960s-era pink hair curlers and green 7 Up bottles - is testament to the painstaking care involved in the restoration.
Tim White, curator of the mansion, said he spent about four months putting the decorating scheme together.
"It's totally restored, top to bottom," Phil Noble, director of Wyoming's Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources, said. "Each room represents a different period in the lives of the governors who lived here."
Gov. Bryant B. Brooks and his family lived there first. Shelly Trumbull is the granddaughter of Lena Brooks, one of the governor's five children.
"I love the carriage house," Trumbull said. The carriage house is where her grandmother kept her favorite horse when she was a child.
Her grandmother and her grandmother's sister, Melissa, chose their second-floor bedroom because it was nearest to the carriage house. Trumbull said that was done so her grandmother could keep an eye on the animal.
William Bradford Ross III, of Washington, D.C., and Maryland, and his family came for the birthday celebration.
Ross is the grandson of Nellie Tayloe and William Ross. Both were Wyoming governors.
He said his grandmother used to play the piano for the friends of her children when they came home from the university on weekends.
Nels H. Smith was governor from 1939 to 1943. His grandson, Nels J. Smith was about 4 years old when his grandparents left the mansion.
Still, he has memories. He said he experienced a strange feeling Saturday when he walked into the kitchen.
The kitchen is restored to how it looked in 1937. Smith said he was struck by a feeling he had when he walked in the back door.
"There was no doubt in my mind I had been there and that was the way it was," he said of the kitchen as it looked in the past.
Photographs of how the kitchen looked in 1937 confirmed how exact the restoration has come.
"It's an amazing job," Smith said. "It takes a huge commitment of time and attention and money. Fortunately, we had the people who were able to do it."
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