She's my first lady

By Bill Sniffin

This is about my wife Nancy. I have known her since she was 18. She has been my wife since 1966.

She is my first lady and she would make a wonderful First Lady for the people of Wyoming.

Let me tell you what she is not. She is not a big-time social person who wears the most expensive dresses and keeps track of all the top events on the social calendar.
She is also not a mean-spirited person who talks about people behind their backs or treats people in a spiteful way.

Now, let me tell you about Nancy:

She is a people person. She loves being with people and she goes out of her way to make those around her feel better about themselves.

She has a big heart with an almost inexhaustible amount of love for those who need love.

She loves children, especially her own grandchildren. She is the ultimate grandmother.

She gives of herself for charities. For many years, she has been a major force in providing over 100 Christmas baskets for needy families in the Lander area.

She has been a long-time member of the Catholic Social Services board. That board and the staff work very hard to help find homes for adoptive children.

Nancy is a primary organizer of the Lander Relay for Life cancer event. As a cancer survivor, she believes that it is her responsibility to work as hard as possible to help other people avoid getting cancer and to avoid dying of cancer.

She loves animals. We have an old dog named Shadow whom she dotes over. Our family also has nine ducks and three llamas, all of which get lots of food and TLC. The birds and the deer that roam our home near Lander's City Park all know there will be food aplenty in Nancy Sniffin's back yard.

She is a good athlete. She is one of the smoothest skiers I have ever seen and was a good racquetball player. Our children were good athletes and I give the credit to the good genes they inherited from her. Did I tell you about her big, beautiful blue eyes? They are the kindest and gentlest eyes you will ever gaze into. One of the reasons I decided to sell off most of our businesses in 1999 (not just to run for governor) was that Nancy was working herself to the bone trying to be a "mother figure" to more than 60 employees on our staff.

Her caring efforts for the staff were legendary. And it was running her ragged. While our business operation got bigger - the better it became for me because of my delegating style -- it became worse for her. She loved all our employees so much, as well as their families, which I could see it was keeping her frazzled.

Life is so very precious

Four weeks after we sold our major properties, we discovered that she had breast cancer. When she called me at my coffee group with the news that Monday morning, I rushed home into her arms. We both cried. We took the phone off the hook and just held each other all day.

I couldn't stand the thought of losing her. As she clutched me ever closer, I knew she was scared stiff that her life was about to be snuffed out. The initial prognosis showed the cancer was also in a lymph node, which is usually a very bad sign. We were scared out of our wits. What we thought was the beginning of a perfect life had turned into the scariest time of our lives.

The doctors were kind but didn't mince words about how sick Nancy was going to become. She had many chemotherapy sessions and lost all her hair. She spent a huge amount of time in bed just recuperating from what the chemo was doing to her.

Finally, the chemotherapy sessions were over.

Now, she would travel 11,000 miles over a three-month period on a bus from Lander to Casper doing radiation. During the course of all this, she developed a terrible infection in her leg. Her immune system was so battered by the chemo, that it took over two years for it to even restore itself partially.

She required some special surgery in Casper to cure the infection in her thigh, which had caused her to lose the ability to walk. Once that was over, she was on the mend and finally in December, 2001, her blood counts started climbing back toward normal.

Nancy was back on her feet again as I announced plans to run for governor. She is my first lady and I could never think about tackling a venture like this without her at my side. It was good to have her back.

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