Missing the 'big guy' at this time of year

• Terry Woster

Terry Woster

Talk about it

I spent most of my professional career as a state-government news reporter. I don’t miss the work, but I sometimes miss the people.

This time of year, one of the people I miss is Gov. George Mickelson. The anniversary of the airplane crash that killed him is next Tuesday, April 19. It will have been 18 years since Mickelson, three Sioux Falls economic development officials, two state administrators and two state pilots died in the crash in an Iowa farmyard. With the exception of the Rapid City flood of 1972, I can think of no sadder news event I covered in more than 40 years as a reporter.

I met Mickelson in 1975. He’d just been sworn in as a member of the South Dakota House of Representatives, a freshman lawmaker from Brookings. He was a tall, solid guy. He could have seemed a little fierce if he had been able to keep the smile off his face for any length of time. Even as governor, with all of the state’s problems and opportunities on his shoulders, he smiled.

I don’t remember making him mad during the six years he was in the House. After he became governor, I did upset him a few times with stories I was working and questions I was asking. A couple of times, he tried really, really hard to stay angry as he told me what he thought was wrong with a story. He was serious, and I listened seriously, but I soon learned that after a minute or two of being a gruff politician, the corners of his mouth would begin to curve toward the ceiling and pretty soon, he’d be smiling. He knew it, too, and sometimes when he felt the smile coming on, he’d just stop talking and laugh, shaking his head. He knew he’d gotten his point across with me, and he saw no reason to carry a grudge for any longer than he could hold a frown.

Mickelson loved to swap stories about the good old days of politics. When he told stories that involved his own experiences, they tended to be the kind in which he was able to laugh at himself for some silly action or situation. One of my favorites was the one about his freshman year in the House. Speaker Joe Barnett, a legend of a lawmaker, called him to the podium during a debate and whispered, “This bill has no redeeming qualities. Get up and kill it.”

“OK, Joe. Uh, how do I do that?” Mickelson said he asked the speaker.

“Do I have to tell you everything?” Barnett supposedly shot back. That line in the story was always accompanied by a hoot of laughter.

One afternoon of long debates over minor issues, I leaned back in my chair in the press box and stared at the mural on the House ceiling. Mickelson, who was presiding that afternoon, left the podium and came to the press box. He sat beside me, leaned back and studied the mural, too, until we both began to giggle.

When Mickelson was governor, it wasn’t unusual for him to leave his second-floor office and take the back stairs to the Senate or House lobby for a first-hand look at the action. On the way to and from his office, he’d stop to talk with legislators, Capitol employees, pages, lobbyists, reporters and as many visitors to the place as he could reach. He dearly loved to see the high-school students who visited each day during session, and they clearly loved to have him wade into their midst, asking names, talking sports, sharing laughs.

His press secretary once said he was just a big kid at heart. It showed most when he was around a group of kids.

The relationship between reporters and governors is way too complicated for them ever to be close friends, but I miss that big guy.

With Mickelson that day in 1993 were Sioux Falls developers Roger Hainje, Angus Anson and David Birkeland; state Economic Development Commissioner Rolly Dolly; state Energy Policy Director Ron Reed; and state pilots Ron Becker and David Hansen. It seems fitting to mention their names this time of year.

Tags: terry woster, george mickelson, news, opinion