Cliff Hansen, the oldest living former U.S. senator, who died Tuesday at age 97, served the last of his two terms in a suite of rooms in Washington's Dirksen Senate Office building. His desk was at one end, and his most junior staff member worked at the other.

Every evening when he was in town, Hansen would turn out his own light and walk through the string of offices, saying goodnight to members of his staff. When he got to the desk of that junior staffer, he'd ask, "May I borrow your phone?"

"Senator," the staffer would say, "this is your phone. Of course you can use it."

Hansen would pick up the receiver, dial a number and say, "Honey, I'm on my way home." And with that, he would be off to his apartment and his devoted wife, Martha.

I know these details, because I was that junior staffer.

Clifford P. Hansen was the last of a breed, a true Wyoming rancher who rose from county commissioner, to president of the state stock growers association, to governor, and finally U.S. senator, serving from 1967 to 1978. Though he was friends with Washington's powerful, he avoided the cocktail party and dinner circuit. His idea of a stiff drink was half a capful of Cutty Sark in a tall glass of water.

With his warm Western smile and utter lack of pretense, he was a favorite of his Senate colleagues and congressional employees alike. If the cafeteria workers found out you worked for Cliff Hansen, you got special treatment.

Though he kept his eye on Western and public lands issues, he was no lockstep Republican conservative. He broke with the Nixon administration in the late 1960s and opposed Defense Secretary Melvin Laird's controversial plan to deploy the ABM, the anti-ballistic missile.

As Nixon's second term began to sink under the weight of the Watergate scandal, Hansen played a small role in the president's departure. He quietly urged his close friend, Barry Goldwater, to lead a group of Republican House and Senate members to the White House, where they told Richard Nixon that impeachment was a virtual certainty and that he should resign.

He was among prominent Teton County residents who, in the late 1940s, fought the expansion of Grand Teton National Park, considering it a federal land grab. But years later, Hansen considered his opposition a mistake and was an enthusiastic park booster. He also became a close friend of Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford's vice president and grandson of John D. Rockefeller, whose Snake River Land Company bought, then gave to the federal government, much of the land in the present day park.

Cliff Hansen grew up on a cattle ranch but never tasted beef until he was a student at the University of Wyoming. "Beef is what we produced. We ate deer and elk," he later recalled.

I learned first-hand what a promoter of the beef industry he was. When I first joined his staff, he took pity on a newcomer in the big city and invited me to dinner -- at the Howard Johnson's hotel on Virginia Avenue, which would later figure in the Watergate scandal as the lookout for the break-in at Democratic headquarters.

After studying the menu, I told the waitress I'd have the trout.

My new boss put his hand on my arm. "This young man will have the steak," he announced.

He had a distinctive way of speaking, a ringing voice that was never rushed. It was doubtless a legacy of his profound childhood stutter. He never forgot that a ranch hand once told him, after hearing him try to speak, "Don't worry, Cliff. Someday you'll be governor." He would think to himself, "I'll show them," and he practiced making speeches on horseback to the cattle.

He was an honest man, of rock solid integrity, who loved his wife, his children, his grandchildren, and his state. And when his service to his nation was over, he went back to Wyoming, where he died, not far from the log house where he was born.

Pete Williams, a native of Wyoming, is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He served on Sen. Hansen's staff in the mid-1970s.