Rodney Vernon Anderson

Rodney Vernon Anderson graduated to heaven on April 26, 2025. He was known to all as “Pete” and was born July 9, 1931, in Kimball Nebraska to Ruth (Lundberg) and Reuben. He was the third of four children but the first to be born in a hospital. He was raised on the family homestead at Highpoint between Pine Bluffs and Albin. As a preschooler he occasionally rode horseback to attend the one room schoolhouse at High Point with his older brothers, largely due to his constant motion and frazzled mother. He attended K-12 in Albin, graduating in 1949. His grades were good but his true motivations to attend were basketball and his dad’s punishment-by-chore method. At Bethel college he played on the tennis team and was newcomer-of-the-year on the basketball team as a freshman.

He enlisted in the army in 1952 and served as a member of the 82nd airborne, earning top honors for marksmanship in both rifle and carbine. He married Dorothy (Dot) Peterson of Harrisburg, Nebraska in 1954 while on active duty. After discharge in 1955, they settled on the farm in Pine Bluffs where they raised their family and lived out their lives. Dot died in 1996, and Pete remarried Bonnie (Elliott) Peterson, a family friend, in 1997. Bonnie died in 2022.

As a retirement activity, Pete ran for office and served Southeast Laramie County in the Wyoming legislature from 1992 – 2010 rising to House Speaker Pro Tempore and Chairman of the Revenue Committee before retiring from public life in 2010 at the age of 80.

Pete loved Jesus, his family, every single person he ever met in his entire life with no exceptions, the Bible, Crossroads Church, basketball, tennis, hunting, breakfast club, ice cream, playing bridge, driving way too fast and the Colorado Rockies. Roughly in that order.

He was preceded in death by his two older brothers, Melvin and Donald; and by son in law, Curt Cornils. He is survived by his sister, Ila McIlvain (Bill); sister-in-law, Vernita Anderson (Don); his three children, Jerri Cornils, Jim Anderson (Jane) and Linda Sue Teeters (Rick); also by 11 grandchildren, 23 great grandchildren and innumerable nieces, nephews and their many offspring.

Services will be held at the Pine Bluffs Community Center on Monday, May 19, 2025, at 2PM.

Flowers may be delivered to Wiederspahn-Radomsky Funeral Home in Cheyenne. Memorial gifts may be delivered to Crossroads Community Church of Pine Bluffs, WY and may be designated for the benefit of either Samaritan’s Purse or Crossroads.