Lynn Cheney

Blue skies meant NO LIMITS for Lynne Cheney

Lynn Cheney speaking to the Casper republican Women at the Holiday Inn 3.28.99. CASPER STAR-TRIBUNE COLLECTION, CASPER COLLEGE WESTERN HISTORY CENTER

SUSAN ANDERSON

Lynne Cheney may not have imagined that she would become one of Wyoming’s most successful writers back in high school in Casper. But the encouragement she got from teacher Margaret Shilder was so important to her that she still remembered lines in a story the teacher praised 60 years later, while promoting her latest nationally successful book, “The Virginia Dynasty.” Bestselling historian Walter Isaacson may have called her 2020 book “wonderfully readable,” but the encouragement Cheney still treasures came from a teacher at Natrona County High School in the 1950s.

The value of history and education mattered to Cheney throughout her life as she published six bestsellers about American history for children and six respected nonfiction history books, including “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered” and “Kings of the Hill” about speakers of the U.S. House with her husband, Dick Cheney.

Three books written while Dick Cheney was Vice President and she was “Second Lady” are still popular with young people. “A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women” and “Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America” were written with Robin Preiss Glasser; “We the People: The Story of Our Constitution” became a New York Times bestselling illustrated history of how the Constitution was created.

In her memoir of a Wyoming childhood, “Blue Skies, No Fences,” Cheney describes how the Wyoming setting gave her a sense of “no fences” on what can be accomplished. “You’re not feeling limitations. There was the prairie you could run over and the world you could run into,” she said recently.

One world she plunged into was national baton twirling competition. In her youth, sports weren’t an option for ambitious young girls, so performing as a baton twirler was one way to excel in physical skill. Cheney describes her approach to baton twirling competition as “intense,” including tossing milk bottles in her home that collided and exploded all over the living room. But by 1953 she was accomplished enough to become Junior State

Champion and go on to compete in the national competition in St. Paul, Minn.

“I had no idea that I couldn’t be as successful as girls from Minnesota. I was an outsider,” she says. But “growing up in Wyoming without a limit on expectations that if you’re a girl, certain things you can’t do” was an amazing gift she says.

She relied on plenty of hard work and a positive thinking technique. “Whenever a twirling contest was coming up,” she wrote in “Blue Skies,” I would “imagine myself winning it, see myself standing at the microphone, graciously accepting the first-place trophy—and then it would happen.”

After high school, education became her new field of accomplishment, and she earned a master’s degree from University of Wyoming and a PhD from University of Wisconsin. One of the first times she encountered a barrier because of her gender was when she was looking for a job after graduate school and a potential employer said, “Dr. Cheney, are you really interested in teaching or are you married?”

But Lynne Cheney was not one to give up. She succeeded in publishing articles centered on history. “It all Began in Wyoming” about women’s suffrage was an early publication of hers in American Heritage Magazine in 1973.

“It was slow going,’ she says about starting her writing career, but she decided, “Sure, I can do this.” More national magazine articles followed and then books and professional accomplishments such as chairing the National Endowment for the Humanities for seven years and co-hosting the Sunday edition of CNN’s Crossfire.

With success in writing and media came a desire to encourage others. In 2003 Cheney established the James Madison Book Award, which has given a $10,000 award each year to the author of a book bringing American history to young readers.

With her husband Dick, she established the Richard B. and Lynne V. Cheney Study-Abroad Scholar-

WHITE HOUSE PHOTO In this undated photo, Reenactors Sarah Clayson (r) and Cathy Becker read a emigrant’s diary entry for Lynne Cheney at the National Historic Trails Center in Casper. Vice President Dick Cheney looks on.

Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick

Cheney, sits at her table after giving a speech during the opening ceremony of the Dick & Lynne Cheney Cowboy Ethics Club on Tuesday morning at the Boys & Girls Club of Central Wyoming in Casper.

DAN CEPEDA FILE, STAR-TRIBUNE

ship Fund at University of Wyoming to help students see the world. It’s the largest land-grant university study abroad scholarship endowment in the U.S., a project that fits with her advice for young people, “If you can, get out and see the world.” Cheney recalls students who have used the scholarships to study in a wide variety of areas, including midwifery in Guatemala or the Enlightenment in Scotland.

“We have tried to encourage and make it possible” to reach their goals, she says, just as her early teachers in Casper did for her.

Lynne Cheney authored the recent biography “James Madison, A Life Reconsidered.” COURTESY

Books by Lynne Cheney

Young Reader’s Books by Lynne Cheney

„ “Our 50 States: A Family Adventure” „ “We the People: The Story of Our

Constitution” „ “America: A Patriotic Primer” „ “When Washington Crossed the

Delaware” „ “A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women” „ “A Time for Freedom: What

Happened When in America

Nonfiction Books by Lynne Cheney

„ “The Virginia Dynasty” „ “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered” „ “Blue Skies, No Fences” „ “Telling the Truth” „ “Kings of the Hill” „ “The Body Politic”