Today is Ted Wilson's final day as the director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.
At 64, he's retiring after 18 years.
I've known Wilson for 34 years, meeting him when I was a senior at Skyline High School. My first meeting with Wilson shows the kind of guy he is, and why so many people — young and old — have appreciated him over the years.
At the start of my senior year a number of my friends told me I had to get into this new guy's class. While he was teaching economics — an elective I had no real interest in — they said his homeroom class was a hoot.
So, that afternoon when school let out, a few of my buddies led me into Mr. Wilson's room. While he seemed older to me then, he was actually only 29 or 30.
Anyway, Wilson was polite, joking with my friends, but he said he couldn't let me into his homeroom class because it was full. Literally. There were no more desks for another student.
One of my friends looked around, said, "We can fix that," and walked across the hallway into an advanced French classroom — knowing that classroom had plenty of extra seats — and pulled a chair across the hall into Wilson's room, putting it at the back end of one of the rows.
"Now Bernick can just sit back here with us," he said.
Wilson laughed.
OK, he said, if you can get the counselor to give him the transfer, he can come in.
I got the transfer — that being in the days before computers. The counselor really didn't know how many students were in Wilson's first-period class and probably wouldn't have cared if he did.
What does this incident show? That Wilson was the kind of guy who would bend the rules for a student who wanted to get into his class. No harm. No foul. And he also knew he was a good teacher, and I'd learn some economics along the way, which I did.
Fast forward nine years.
Wilson is the first-term Salt Lake mayor in a bitter battle with a couple of other city commissioners over control of city government. Citygate, it was called, a personnel scandal that in and of itself wasn't that big.
But Wilson, always the good politician with fine instincts about the media and the public, knew that at its heart Citygate wasn't about the city personnel director temporarily being assigned to work under the police chief.
It was about secrecy, back-room deals, political hanky-panky.
And TV and the newspapers loved it.
"We had TV guys set up over here every day for months. We had live broadcasts on radio and front page stories in all the papers every day," Wilson recently recalled.
He didn't have to shake my memory. I was a relatively young reporter. Deseret News City Editor Lou Bate threw me into the Citygate storm, giving me the City Hall beat when that reporter was reassigned.
It was like drinking from a firehose.
No holds barred.
I quickly found out that the Tribune reporter at City Hall was listening through the door of Wilson's inner office during heated gatherings. And that Wilson knew he was because a loyal aide had let the reporter use his office next to Wilson's under the agreement that the reporter would get a second-source confirmation on whatever he overheard. (We found this out when one city commissioner got so mad during a private meeting with Wilson that he jumped up and ran out of the wrong door, bashing the Trib reporter in the head as he flung the door open.)
Wilson knew that the media is a powerful tool, as long as you, the officeholder, were basically on the same side as the people you represented.
Wilson had fine relations with the press, by and large.
As a Democrat he probably figured he needed all the help he could get in Republican-dominated Utah. But he also did well in the media and cultivated those relationships.
As Wilson recalls, during his race in 1982 against Sen. Orrin Hatch, Wilson learned to speak in 30-second sound bites for TV and radio. Hatch, although in the Senate for six years, tended back then to ramble on. And Hatch's edited comments weren't as crisp as Wilson's short jabs.
Wilson won re-election to the mayor's job in 1979 and 1983.
"Burned out," as he puts it, Wilson accepted the job as director of the Hinckley Institute in 1985, resigning his mayorship.
He says it was a smart move, one he never regretted, even when the fact he left early harmed him in his 1988 governor's race when opponents called him a quitter.
Wilson was a good fit at the Hinckley Institute. While he had to deal with some of the malarkey of university life, the institute has its own board of directors, and Wilson could teach political science classes without having to get a Ph.D. (He has a master's degree in economics.)
Wilson's political connections allowed him to get a number of leading politicians and pundits to speak at the U. And he did a fine job moderating dozens of debates and issues forums.
Young U. students should mourn Wilson's retirement — they won't get the chance to attend his classes or be mentored by him as a Hinckley Institute intern.
Wilson won't be leaving Utah or public life here, however. He may even run for some part-time political office again, he says.
But for all those years of honest politics, good humor and valid insights, I say: Thanks, Ted.
And getting to see that Trib reporter bashed in the head by your door wasn't bad, either.
Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com.