Finding Wyoming
When Marta and Tom Stroock first moved to Casper, “I can live anywhere for a year,” he claimed she told him. But they both soon realized they had found home. They had four daughters in Casper: Margaret, Sandra, Elizabeth, and Anne. Marta and her four daughters and their families survive him.
Once arrived in Casper Stroock plunged into the oil business, starting his own firm in 1952. Jim Barlow, a prominent Casper geologist now living in Wilson, said Stroock was a consummate landman who was highly respected in his profession. “It requires very good knowledge of the oil and gas business and a reputation for doing an efficient, professional job,” Barlow said. “Tom had a reputation for getting the job done.” Stroock acquired oil and gas leases for his own account or “worked on a ticket”, securing leases for oil companies and operating companies, Barlow said.
“Tom was very intent in his business and in his life in general, socially or family-wise or community-wise,” Barlow said. Stroock also became director of a number of corporations, including Key Bank of Wyoming.
With a strong belief in the importance of education, Stroock joined the Natrona County School Board and served some years as president of the Wyoming School Board Association, which led him to lobby the state legislature for more state funding for schools.
After election to the state Senate, he became “a master on the state budget,” said John Turner, former Republican state senator from Jackson who served with Stroock.“He really understood all the programs of state government and education. He did his homework, understood other points of view, dug below the surface.”
Stroock watched the issues of state revenue from the oil, gas, coal and other mineral industries with an eagle eye, striving to ensure the state got its due in taxes and royalties. He watched state expenditures with equal intensity; state agency heads who had to appear before him and defend their budgets to the Joint Appropriations Committee (particularly in the lean, bust years of the late 1980s), would comment ruefully, “I was Stroocked.”
He supported economic development, but in an evenhanded way, without kowtowing to powerful special interests. In the 1970s, he and Patton in the Wyoming Senate joined with two young House legislators – Alan Simpson and Ed Herschler – to take on the Union Pacific, when the railroad tried to take control of the budding trona industry by blocking mineral right holders from crossing section corners to reach deposits within UP’s checkerboard areas.
“That was as nasty as politics got,” Stroock remembered last year. “They were threatening guys, threatening to move out of motels that people owned…They threatened me with cancelling the farm-out contracts I had to drill on their checkerboard. And they weren’t going to let me have it. They just got nasty.”
Stroock and Patton fought UP in the Senate, and then chortled up in the gallery while Simpson told the House that UP had “slipped the green weenie” to Wyoming. “We came unglued,” he recalled. “It was really a fun moment.” And they beat back the powerful UP lobby.
Turner, who later became director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, worked with Stroock on such issues as protection of in-stream flows and an attempt in the 1980s to create what was finally approved– over 20 years later– as the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust Fund. Stroock’s interests covered a broad spectrum, Turner said: “He had a quick, tough mind, but a generous heart. He’s been a great public servant and loved Wyoming deeply.”
Sarah Gorin of Laramie, a co-founder of the Equality State Policy Center who has been involved in legislative lobbying on environmental and “good government” issues for decades, said Stroock was “something of a terrifying figure” when she first met him at the Legislature in the 1980s.
But the two later found common ground, partly through their interest in Wyoming and Wyoming politics, Gorin said. “He was always a Republican in the mold of people like governors [Stan] Hathaway and [Cliff] Hansen who wanted to make government work rather than just being anti-government.”
Stroock was “a delightful person to talk to, very engaged, very candid, very well informed, very open to ideas,” Gorin said. “At least in my experience with him he wasn’t ideologically tied-up. He didn’t make assumptions about other people’s views either. He was willing to engage in discussion.”
In that spirit, Stroock worked across the aisle with Democrats, particularly as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he and Republicans Kelly Mader and Boyd Eddins would find common ground with Democrats Winn Hickey and John Vinich. “There hadn’t gotten to be this sharp ideological edge, to the liberals on one side, and the ultra-conservatives on the other,” he said in 2008. “That didn’t exist in those days.”
Stroock inevitably became a confidant, sometime-advisor and sometime-adversary to Wyoming governors, particularly in the lean years of the 1980s when Gov. Mike Sullivan, a Democrat, had to deal with dwindling state revenues and Stroock, a Republican leader, headed the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Sullivan said Monday that he and Stroock were friends long before Sullivan thought of political office. When Sullivan was governor, he said, “we worked very closely together because we were dealing with difficult times. I was grateful for his knowledge and the nature of his leadership.”
Stroock tested the mettle of Dave Freudenthal early on, when Freudenthal was top aide to Gov. Ed Herschler, the Democrat who preceded Sullivan, and who frequently sent messages to legislators via Freudenthal. In 2002, Stroock was a key Republican to endorse Democrat Freudenthal for governor early on, helping him win. Stroock continued to talk frequently with Freudenthal in the years since.
Freudenthal said Monday that Stroock embodied a form of civility often missing in today’s political climate. “People forget those early days when Ed (Herschler) and Tom would go at it, both tough, both Marines, but at the end of the day, they could still be friends.”
Stroock was impressive, Freudenthal said. “He read all the time. He would fill any conversation or debate with all sorts of facts and figures. Physically, he wasn’t a big guy, but he could dominate a room.”
Ready to help promising young people from Wyoming, Stroock saw potential in the young Dick Cheney of Casper and helped him get admission to Yale (the future vice-president flunked out). Stroock later told friends that he was bitterly disappointed by Cheney’s policy of supporting torture of prisoners in the “war on terror,” and that he wrote to Cheney saying so but never heard back.
{ 11 comments }
As a child I played with Margie in the Stroock home. My life long strong connection with the Latin American culture was born there. I remember working on an arts festival with Guatemalan artists in Canada and corresponding with them while they served in Guatemala. I was so proud to know them. The integrity and truthful expression in Tom has put a compassionate and noble American face in troubled places and issues.
Tom Stroock was a gentleman full of honesty, happiness, pure love, conviction and integrated action towards the good in life. As a young landman in the oil business his encouraging words made me feel equal to all of the men in the industry. I ran for, President of the Wyoming Association of Professional Landmen, in-part, due to encouragement from Tom. I enjoyed that year in office, and a highlight included sitting with Tom, and others, at the old Derrick near the Platte River during its dedication. Tom’s dedication to the good in life will never be forgotten. His children also reflect the good in life. Sincerely, Jill Reed
A wonderful article about a wonderful and unique man. But in all the tributes to Tom, little has been said about his support for art in Wyoming. Tom was a great patron of my father, the sculptor Robert Russin. He was one the men responsible for the fountain at City Hall and the Prometheus in front of the Library, and he helped create a sculpture fellowship at UW that gave many artists their start. And Tom would certainly want to be remembered, among all his many other achievements, as a great fisherman. He could fish, and tell fish stories, with the best of them. I will miss him greatly.
A historic figure in our state, he took time to drive down to Laramie regularly to lend his unique perspective on Wyoming to students in my history classes as well as to me. Like many others, I will miss his wise counsel.
As a young person and close friend to Tom and Marta’s oldest daughter, Margie, Tom’s passion and firey temper was daunting. The man had convictions and deeply cared about issues and people. As he aged, he was all heart. I adored him!
I enjoyed the read and comments from good friends! A well written piece on one of the public servants who set the bar so high for those of us who have followed him into public service. We have much to live up to because of visionaries like Tom.
I was fortunate to get to know Tom when I was the environmental writer for the Star-Tribune and later covered his ambassadorial appointment when based in D.C. He was both a gracious and blunt man – often at the same time. One of the last of the Teddy Roosevelt Republicans, and a man who left Wyoming much the better for his having adopted it as his home.
I’ll miss Tom. He was a generous man and his political life overshadowed other things he did in the community, including supporting the arts. He shared some great advice with me over the years and remained interested and engaged right up to the end.
A true gentleman and a scholar who will be sorely missed. Wyoming has lost a friend.
Well done. A worthy tribute to a one-of-a-kind Wyomingite.
An excellent tribute to and overview of a remarkable man,