Wyoming’s Speaker of the House is Albert Sommers, from Sublette County. Most of us know him as a politician and as a rancher. But who is Albert otherwise? And what about his wife – the artist Sue Sommers?
The award winning podcast out of WNYC studios ‘Death, Sex & Money’ wanted to dig in. Wyoming Public Radio’s Caitlin Tan spoke with the show’s host Anna Sale about the episode, ‘Married With No Kids and a Ranching Business With No Heirs’.
This copy has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Caitlin Tan: So for those who aren't familiar, give us an overview of your podcast, Death, Sex & Money.
Anna Sale: It's a show that we've been making since 2014. It's an interview show with a bold name. We say the show is about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more. And the real intention behind the show is to do interviews with people who are well known and famous and people who are not well known at all, and also with our listeners that we hear from, about the stuff that we all kind of go through and have to figure out, but at the same time can feel quite isolated around.
And so when you have a show that's about relationships, life and death, and how we support our families and make money, you really can make episodes about just about anything. So that's what I really like about it creatively.
CT: You interview all sorts of people from around the world – celebrities and everyday people. I'm curious, how did Albert and Sue Sommers in Pinedale, Wyoming get on your radar?
AS: Well, I have this strange life where I get to spend a lot of time in Cody, Wyoming, even though I don't live there full time. That's because I'm married to a wildlife ecologist Arthur Middleton, and he, from before we met, has done research around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). So through him, I've gotten to know Wyoming in a really deep way, in particular, Northwest Wyoming and Cody. But also, when you hang around Wyoming long enough, you start to sort of realize that everyone's about one or two degrees of separation apart.
So for a number of years, I'd heard about Albert from Arthur, as this multigenerational rancher who lived near Pinedale, and also that he was a legislator, and also that he was very interested in conservation and migration corridors. And I was like, “Who is this guy?”
And then separately, I have a friend named Carol Bell, who lives in Cody, and she lived for a time in Denver when she was going to grad school. She was telling me about hanging out with this woman named Sue Sommers, who comes down from Pinedale to go to galleries in Denver because she's an artist. And then I realized that Sue and Albert were married to each other. And I was just like, “What? Who are these two? And how did they find each other? And what is this marriage like?” And so it started with that question.
CT: So was there any hesitation for Albert and Sue, I mean, you mentioned the podcast has a bold name, and it offers an intimate interview style. And I don't know if either of them have ever shared such private, intimate details about their life so publicly.
AS: I was very aware that it was kind of a big ask, like, “Do you want to tell your personal story on a show that goes out on the internet?”
I had heard that Sue was aware of the show and had listened to the show. So I emailed her first. And I asked her, and she was interested immediately. We had a conversation about it, and she did say, “You know, Albert might need a little bit more convincing.”
So I reached out to Albert separately. He did not know about the show, and just wanted to know what I wanted to talk to him about. We talked about he and Sue, and we also talked about the conservation easement choices that that he and his family had made about their ranch and the land. After we had a talk, he was like, “Okay, I'll talk to you about this stuff.” And then I said, “Albert, I want to make sure you know the name of my show. This is what it's called. And the reason it's called this, is it’s about things we think about a lot and need to talk about more, etc.” And he sort of said kind of in a funny way, “Well, I'm not going to talk to you about that second part.” Which meant sex, but he would talk to me about death and money and I was like, “That's fine. Deal.”
CT: What about the lead up to the interview for you? You mentioned you live in Cody some of the time, I'm assuming you drove down to Pinedale. Did being here in Pinedale kind of shape the interview for you a little and what was it like driving up to their ranch?
AS: People who live in Pinedale probably don't want to hear me say this, but when I was in Pinedale and looking around, getting coffee at a coffee shop,I was like, “This place rules. I need to spend more time here.” Which is probably how a lot of people feel when they come through Pinedale. So it's wonderful, but it's also wonderful because it's not overrun and crowded.
I was really taken with the place and the landscape and driving out on the road to the Sommers’ ranch. It's just magnificent – what you see when you look around. It really helped me get my head into what it must mean to grow up on that kind of land, to be told that it's your responsibility to take care of that land, and everything that depends on it. So it helped me
understand in even a deeper way the stakes of the choices that they had to make about the future of the ranch.
CT: You have people listening from all over the world, and I'm assuming it's a flavor of interview that they maybe haven't heard before – maybe haven't even heard of Pinedale before.
AS: They're great spokespeople. There's a little bit of tape at the very beginning of the episode that really made sense to me about what it can feel like when you feel a part of a community like Pinedale. It's something I have felt in Cody. Sue was describing when she first showed up, having moved around a lot all throughout growing up and as a young person, and landing in Pinedale kind of by mistake, and then realizing that she was in a place where if people were gathering, and she said she was going to bring brownies, and she brought the brownies, like she'd done an important thing. She describes it as the first place where she ever felt relevant. I thought it was really beautiful and important, because it's not just about Wyoming, it's not just about small towns in Wyoming, to me they were really describing this ethic of when you live in a community that's on a small enough scale that you are constantly aware of your interdependence. That is something that I think people who don't live in rural communities don't know how to do and don't necessarily know the depth of that – what it feels like when you feel a part of that. And so that was another thing I wanted to share with people who live in really different parts of the world.
CT: I'm curious what other takeaways you had or what might have left the biggest impression on you? In the second half of the interview, you guys talked a lot about them deciding not to have kids and what that means for passing the ranch down. But in the first half, we hear about how Sue and Albert met. It's a really beautiful story that even brings Albert to tears a couple of times. And me growing up in Pinedale, I've known Albert as a rancher, as a politician and friendly face in the community. But, I've never thought about his love story. So that's what stood out for me – how about for you?
AS: I did not know until we were sitting down talking that their courtship was basically over a series of public meetings that the Bureau of Land Management was holding about energy development in Sublette County. And I thought, “How perfect, you know?” Because nothing gets us talking about what our values are and thinking about what's important to us more than a public meeting. And so that they were sitting and having this extended conversation over the course of those public meetings, I just loved learning that.
It was interesting to me that both of them, independent of meeting each other, sort of reached a point in their life where they were clear what was important to them, and what they would value in a longer relationship. Like, Albert talks about having a moment when he was 38, realizing he didn't want to, if he could help it, he didn't want to be a rancher who just worked his whole life and died alone. So it's kind of striking tape.
I felt that also with how they talked about their decisions about managing the land. It was a time when people weren't doing conservation easement sales a lot, it was kind of a new thing. And I was really struck by this idea of remembering when you're making a big decision to start with the values that you want to lead with, like what you want the outcome to be, and then that you can figure out the different ways to that, and it could be something quite novel. And that's what the Sommmers ranch had to do. They had to figure out, “How can we keep this ranch going?” when Albert and his sister both didn't have heirs. What the conservation easement allowed is for there to be a sense of how that landscape is going to be conserved. Also it allowed for there to be money to keep the business going. And then they found the young ranching family to take it over, that they're gifting the ranch to.
I liked the idea of sharing that with listeners who might not know anything about agriculture, who might not know anything about what it's like to have succession plans for family ranching and farms. I think so often when we talk about land decisions you assume, “How do I extract the most value out of this?” And that becomes a decision about, “How do I sell and who's going to pay the highest dollar?” And that was not at all the driving question for the Sommers. It was about, “How do we maintain the value of this land?” And I wanted to share that with people.
CT: Have you gotten any interesting or unique feedback?
AS: Oh, yeah, it's been really fun. It's been fun to hear from people in Wyoming who are like, “Whoa, I didn't know this about them.” And then to hear from people who know nothing about ranching, or who know nothing about Wyoming.
I have a friend who is an older friend who lives in Berkeley, where I live most of the time. She was really taken with the idea that marriages can look lots of different ways. She really liked the way that Albert and Sue talked about the real foundation of mutual respect that they have, and also that they each have carved out space to do their own thing inside that marriage. So it's neat to hear how people hear different things and are interested in different things who have never been to Pinedale.
You can listen to the full Death, Sex & Money interview with Albert and Sue Sommers wherever you find your podcasts or click here.
