‘He was an uncommonly generous man,’ his brother, Pete Simpson, said in a statement.
Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) died on March 14, after having fostered a spirit of bipartisanship for nearly two decades in the Senate.
Simpson, 93, died early Friday morning after struggling to recover from a broken hip in December, his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a museum group where he served as a board member for 56 years, said in a statement.
“He was an uncommonly generous man,” said Pete Simpson, his older brother, in the statement. “And I mean generous in an absolutely unconditional way. Giving of his time, giving of his energy—and he did it in politics and he did it in the family, forever.”
Simpson, a towering political figure from Wyoming, like former Vice President Dick Cheney, was known for his humor.
“We have two political parties in this country, the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. I belong to the Stupid Party,” Simpson once quipped.
A political moderate, Simpson served three terms in the Senate from 1979 to 1997, including through the Reagan era. During this time, he rallied senators as the chamber’s majority whip and later became minority whip when the Democratic Party retook the Senate in 1987.
While famously a deficit hawk, Simpson also supported abortion access, an example of his moderate views throughout his time in the GOP.
He was also longtime friends with Democrats Robert Reich, President Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, and Norman Mineta, transportation secretary for President George W. Bush.
Simpson and Mineta met as Boy Scouts during World War II when Mineta and his family were imprisoned as Japanese Americans in the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center near Simpson’s hometown of Cody, Wyoming.
Both raised awareness after leaving politics of the incarceration of roughly 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps during the war.
Mineta, who passed away in 2022, recalled a time when Simpson asked him about the biggest difference between them as a Democrat and a Republican.
“Alan thought about it, and he said, ‘Well, I wear size 15 shoes and he wears a size 8 and a half,’” Mineta said, according to the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.
‘Mighty Force’
The senator was “gifted in crossing party lines and building bipartisan consensus,” Colin Simpson, one of his three children and a former Wyoming House speaker, said in the statement.
“Dad and Pete have anchored the extended Simpson family for decades with the same love, humor, compassion and dedication their parents did before them,” he added. “Dad was a mighty force and with Mom’s steady hand by his side we are so blessed and proud to have been along for the ride of a lifetime.”
President Barack Obama appointed Simpson in 2010 to co-lead the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a debt reduction task force that devised a plan to save $4 trillion by implementing spending cuts and tax increases.
At 6-foot-7, Simpson was the tallest Senator on record until 6-foot-9 Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) took office in 2017.
Simpson’s family was a minor political dynasty. His father, Milward Simpson, served as governor, U.S. senator, and state legislator. His mother, Lorna Kooi Simpson, was president of the Red Cross in Cody, Wyoming, and served on the local planning commission.
“I saw Dad loved politics and the law, and I wanted to do that,” Simpson once said.
His older brother, Pete, was a University of Wyoming historian who served in the Wyoming House and unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1986 as a Republican. Colin, Alan Simpson’s son, was speaker of the Wyoming House, and Milward Simpson, his nephew, directed the state parks department.
Born in Denver in 1931, Simpson had run-ins with Cody law enforcement throughout childhood for gun-shooting and vandalism, but went on to graduate from Cody High School in 1949 and the University of Wyoming in 1954.
That same year, he married Ann Schroll from Greybull, Wyoming, and joined the U.S. Army. He served in both the Fifth Infantry Division and the Second Armored “Hell on Wheels” Division in Germany.
Last summer, Alan and Ann Simpson celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary by hosting a community ice cream social in Cody Park with relatives and hundreds of others.
‘Contact Sport’
Simpson got a law degree in 1958 from the University of Wyoming after leaving the Army. He then worked for his father’s law firm for the next 19 years. In 1964, he was elected to the Wyoming House, serving until his ascension to the U.S. Senate in 1979.
As a college football and basketball player, Simpson fondly referred to politics as a “contact sport.”
“I’ve been called everything,” Simpson said in 2003. “If you don’t like the combat, get out.”
That candor made the senator popular with his constituents. He was also famous for his well-read and hardworking ethic, diving into immigration, veterans’ affairs, and environmental issues.
Simpson’s Senate appointments included the Immigration Subcommittee and the Veterans Affairs Committee. He also supported reviewing criminal sentences after a period of time and opposed giving juveniles life sentences without parole.
“When they get to be 30 or 40 and they been in the clink for 20 years, or 30 or 40, and they have learned how to read and how to do things, why not?” Simpson told The Associated Press in 2009.
In 1995, he said he’d had enough of being in the Senate and declined to run again.
“Part of me said I could do this for another three or four years but not six,” Simpson said at the time. “The old fire in the belly is out. The edge is off.”
Simpson lectured on politics and the media at Harvard University and the University of Wyoming after leaving the Senate. He urged college students to become involved in politics in his speeches.
President Joe Biden awarded Simpson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022.
He is survived by his wife Ann, sons Colin Simpson and William Simpson, daughter Susan Simpson Gallagher, and brother Pete.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.