LANDER — Delbert McOmie’s political destiny may have been locked in at his birth on Oct. 26, 1935.
The doctor who delivered him happened to be the city’s previous mayor. His grandfather on his mother’s side, William T. Jones, had been elected mayor that same year and would serve through 1947.
The stars seemed aligned for McOmie’s own turn in the office, serving as Lander’s mayor for 14 years.
He also was elected seven times to the state House of Representatives, serving from 1999 to 2013.
Now 90, he spends a good amount of time debating the world’s problems with other aging-yet-feisty members of Lander’s Fox News All-Stars.
“My life has been public service,” he told Cowboy State Daily. "I get involved with things. I just saw things that needed to be talked about and done, and the next thing I know people appoint me to it.
"For me it’s always been about what’s best for the people.”
At first, however, McOmie’s motivation for politics wasn’t as wide-ranging as doing “what’s best for the people.”
He wanted to keep frogs and snakes from coming out of the city’s water faucets.
McOmie said the city’s water supply comes from the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie River and it wasn’t uncommon then for frogs and other creatures to make their way through the system and into people’s pipes.
‘Second Cousins’ To The Germain Kaiser
The father of five who have had their own successful lives and careers, McOmie is now a great-grandfather, and still talks with passion about the political issues of the day.
A recent Fox News All-Stars coffee meeting with other old guys in the city erupted into a debate about grand juries.
While decibels were raised and opposite views exchanged, they all left as friends.
McOmie family roots delve deep in the Cowboy State.
Family on his mother's side were the Oldenbergs from South Pass. His great-grandfather’s bricks still make up many of the historic structures in town.
The Oldenbergs were “second cousins” to the German kaiser who started World War I, he said.
On his father’s side, he recounts how his grandfather, John McOmie, abandoned his grandmother and family when homesteading in the region.
He left to find a job in Utah and never returned. His grandmother died in the 1918 flu epidemic leaving his father homeless.
“My dad was raised on the reservation by Indian families from the time he was 6 years old to 11 years old,” he said. “One of them who helped raise him was named Delbert Ward, and he was one of the heads of the Indian councils.
"When I graduated from high school, he gave me the most beautiful suitcase to go to college. Some of my best friends were the Indians.”
Steam Engine Rides
Growing up in Lander, the city where the “rail ends and the trails begin,” McOmie recalls floats down the Popo Agie River and hitching rides on steam engines from the depot to the roundhouse with kind locomotive engineers.
“The house is still there where the engineers stayed overnight. And we had big cattle pens, and they’d run the wild horses in there and send them off to the glue factory,” he said. “My dad bought me a horse from there when I was a kid. I couldn’t get on it because it would crow hop. I hate horses now.”
While still in grade school, McOmie got a job with the local creamery and by the time he left that job was skilled in making popsicles, ice cream, butter, cottage cheese and other products.
McOmie also enjoyed athletics and played softball into his 60s. He still has a prized shirt from a bowling tournament where he tied with the best bowler in town.
Another passion as a young man was singing.
His drama and singing efforts in high school led to a vocal scholarship at Casper College. His name can be found in newspaper wedding pages as singing for the wedding of family friends.
McOmie and his wife Pat were married after meeting at a singles party. She was wearing a pink dress. He said he spent five years pursuing her before she agreed to marry him.
She said when they married he had five kids, nine cats, and a dog. She was 29.
“We’ve been married 50 years and I still don’t have him broke in,” Pat said. “It’s been a wonderful, wonderful ride.”
Pat describes her husband as “stubborn, very intelligent, (and) sometimes too compassionate.”
She said that he “trusts people very quickly and sometimes he should step back.”
McOmie agrees that his wife can “read people better than I can.”
Two years after their marriage, while McOmie worked his full-time job for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, they bought a restaurant at the Lander truck stop.
Other businesses followed, including the Oxbow Restaurant, which they owned and operated for 18 years, a satellite business, and others.
Political Launch
Politics for McOmie began when he was having a drink at a Lander bar with friends talking about the condition of Lander’s water.
The guys told McOmie they would pay for his application fees if he would run for mayor to improve the dubious nature of what could come out of people’s water faucets.
A chlorine plant at the end of town also made the water taste terrible, he said.
He recalled a neighbor coming over one day and sharing that her faucet quit working. It was plugged with a water snake.
“When I ran, I said I wanted to do something about Lander’s ‘pasteurized’ water,” he said. “We got it after it went through everybody’s pasture.”
McOmie was successful and spearheaded efforts to build a new water plant for the city.
He stayed in office for the next 12 years while holding down his job at the Wyoming Department of Transportation.
Other challenges that come with running a municipality over the years included the city’s loss of U.S. Steel, a hospital controversy, and the normal infrastructure issues such as installing sidewalks that would survive the soils and not crack after the first winter.
During his tenure as mayor, McOmie co-founded with the Riverton mayor the Fremont Council of Governments and also was instrumental with the late U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi in forming the Wyoming Association of Municipalities.
Enzi was the mayor of Gillette at the time.
McOmie said the current county bus system is a direct benefit of starting the Fremont organization.
Former Lander Journal newspaper editor and publisher Bill Sniffin, a longtime friend of McOmie’s, characterizes him as a “visionary” during his terms as mayor.
“He was very forward thinking,” said Sniffin, a columnist for Cowboy State Daily. “He really worried about the future of the community and was unbelievably involved in economic development.”
Meeting A Challenge
When U.S. Steel left the region in 1984, McOmie and Sniffin helped raise money to create Leader Corp., a for-profit company that worked to bring retirees into the community to fill the 400 or so so houses left vacant by U.S. Steel workers. It succeeded.
That company was later closed and funds from it converted to the nonprofit Lander Economic Development Association that helped lure businesses to the community, including Eagle Bronze.
Helping Lander rebound from economic hits was a community effort, McOmie said.
“It didn’t take all that long, because Lander is a wonderful place to live. People like it here,” he said. “They wanted to move NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) to Jackson. The leaders didn’t want to leave here.
"Now their world headquarters is here in Lander.”
As a state legislator, McOmie said he's proud to have been on the House Education Committee that passed the Hathaway Scholarship bill giving Wyoming high school graduates help to pursue higher education.
He also authored a bill that allows Wyoming drivers on primary and secondary roads to pass a vehicle going slower than the speed limit by up to 10 mph faster than the speed limit.
“It was all about safety,” he said.
McOmie also has no regrets for the seat belt bill he helped push through the Legislature. It took three times to get it done.
His best friend, a legislator from Saratoga, had some special words for him during the process.
“He called me a 'brown-shirted, boot-jacketed Nazi,'” McOmie said.
Pat still remembers her husband's response.
“Delbert said that may be the truth, but if I can save a life by passing this bill, so be it,” she said.
The two lawmakers then went out to lunch together.
Former Democrat
McOmie, who ran on the Republican ticket, said he grew up a Democrat, but the Democratic Party left him.
He defines himself as a “maverick” in the Republican Party while in the Wyoming House. As the GOP Whip responsible for counting votes, he once protested his party’s tactics during their caucuses by attending the Democratic caucus at Applebee’s.
After leaving the Legislature, he was recruited to serve another term as mayor.
He said during that time his eyesight started to fail due to macular degeneration. McOmie recently had his aortic valve replaced as well.
Health issues have not stopped him from attending his morning coffee bull sessions, which allow his sharp mind to continue debating the issues of the day.
When McOmie left the Lander mayor's office the last time in 2018 culminating his 30 years of public service, Wyoming U.S. Sen. John Barrasso honored him from the floor of the Senate.
“Del and I served in the Wyoming state Legislature together for five years,” Barrasso said. “His opinions and advice carried great weight in both chambers and across the aisle. Del was known for his integrity and devotion to Wyoming.”
Sniffin calls McOmie a “unique man.”
A ‘Patriot’
“He’s a patriot,” Sniffin said. “He loves his country, he loves his state, he loves his town and he spent a lifetime proving that in every which way possible.”
McOmie, who continues to use his Irish tenor to sing “Happy Birthday” to family on their special days, thinks of them when asked about legacy.
He also remembers incidents during his political career when there were major disagreements, and he had to put the hammer down to restore order in a meeting.
Pat, who witnessed some of those incidents, said her husband was always genuine in wanting to give his best.
“Hopefully they will remember him as someone who cared,” she said.
McOmie, who never lost an election, said he always tried to seek out his detractors and opponents to share why he voted a certain way or came to his views on issues.
“That’s the best way to communicate with people is to go talk to them,” he said.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
