I didn't know Craig and Susan Thomas well, but I knew them.

And I honestly think most folks who live anywhere in the state could say the same thing.

It struck me that when they attended events, they really attended events. They didn't just show up at the shaking hands, reception thing and then leave as soon as they were seen.

They were veterans of marathon events - the University of Wyoming Sports Hall of Fame, the Wyoming Sports Hall of Fame, Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Wyoming recognition breakfasts and reverse raffles not only in Casper but in Glenrock's school cafeteria, at UW Alumni Association dinners and at so many hundreds more events.

The friend and I have shaken our heads the past several "election seasons." Anyone running for anything seems to think Wyoming football Saturdays are the time to be in Laramie.

They make sure they're in Tailgate Park shaking hands, eating messy barbecue, saying all of the right things - often with a look at their staff that pleads "get me out of here." And then, just as the real fans are making their way into the War for kickoff, they bolt.

Not Craig and Susan. They've stayed and cheered and sometimes frozen right along with the rest of us fans.

That's not what made him a great senator, but it's just a tiny part of what made him a real Wyoming guy.

Regardless of your politics, he was one of the good guys. He fought for stuff that is a part of us, like our national parks and our beautiful land that is far greater in mass than our people and other stuff that matters in this big, square state.

He was a man of integrity, a man of his word.

His staff says among many wonderful qualities, he was hilarious. I just think he was a really good guy.

It's been said that you can tell a lot about a person by the partner he or she chooses. In the case of Craig and Susan, each would say they made a great choice.

When Susan speaks to you, she really speaks to you. She cares about your responses. She doesn't look beyond you to see whom she can speak to next. She's a real person, a Wyoming gal, and today and tomorrow and for time to come, she'll have any support she might need.

You've just got to admire a woman who spends hundreds of dollars on a bag of dried pinto beans at a benefit auction and then the next day, sends along her own recipe for "Pinto Bean Fudge."

Within just days, we'll have a new United States Senator from the great state of Wyoming. We'll learn about his or her partner and family and where they went to school and what they do when they're not working 24/7.

And we'll begin to see him or her at things everyone should be at.

But will they be stayers?

Will we see them on the plastic benches when it's 40 degrees and the wind whips into the Valley of the Gods and in four quarters of football, you get sunburned, windburned and snowed on?

Time will tell. But we shall not forget Sen. Craig Thomas, one of the good guys.

Community News editor Sally Ann Shurmur can be reached at (307) 266-0520; sallyann.shurmur@casperstartribune.net or read her online at www.casperstartribune.net/dishin