The news comes of the passing of Vice President Dick Cheney at the age of 84. For Cheney, South Dakota was familiar territory – he was born in Lincoln, Nebraska and spent most of his life in Wyoming, the state he represented in the U.S. House.
Cheney’s closest tie to South Dakota, though, was his love of pheasant hunting. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, national news would routinely report that Vice President Cheney had retreated to an “undisclosed location” as a security precaution. It was not widely known until years later that, on more than one occasion, that “undisclosed location” was Paul Nelson Farms, a private hunting lodge near Gettysburg, South Dakota.
For years, Cheney made annual autumn pilgrimages to South Dakota for pheasant hunting, arriving quietly at the Pierre airport and disappearing into the prairie for several days at a time. Along with friends and Secret Service agents, he was one of many who visit our state to participate in our pheasant hunting tradition. (Cheney’s infamous 2006 hunting accident, of course, took place on a quail hunt in Texas, not in South Dakota.)
For Cheney, South Dakota offered more than recreation. It was also friendly political territory. He headlined a 2004 Sioux Falls fundraiser that helped elect John Thune to the U.S. Senate and strengthened ties between the Bush administration and South Dakota Republicans. Cheney was later among those whom Thune lobbied in his successful fight to save Ellsworth Air Force Base from closure.
Cheney was widely acknowledged to be the most powerful vice president in the nation’s history, capping off a decades-long career that includes stints as chief of staff to President Ford, defense secretary in the Ford and Bush 41 administrations, and congressman from Wyoming. It is for others, though, to write about Cheney’s political legacy; needless to say, the Bush/Cheney era seems very far removed from the current day.
For South Dakotans, we can remember him as just another hunter following a dog through the corn rows, content to enjoy a South Dakota pheasant hunt.
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