Kimmitts announce public service internship, lecture

The children of Stan Kimmitt, former Secretary of the U.S. Senate and legendary aide to the late Montana Sen. Mike Mansfield, recently announced a UM internship and lecture series in his name.

The five siblings, including U.S. Deputy Secretary of Treasury Robert Kimmitt and U.S. Assistant Deputy Secretary of Defense Mark Kimmitt, met with students and held a panel to announce the J. Stanley Kimmitt Public Service Lecture and Internship.

Their father spent most of his lifetime in public service, and all of the Kimmitt children, including Jay Kimmitt, Mary Laxton and Judy Rainey, have been drawn to public service as well.

At the event UM President George Dennison said the internship will be a paid position in the offices of one member of the Montana delegation. The lecture series will bring a nationally known public servant to speak at UM every year.

Former Montana Rep. Pat Williams remembered Stan Kimmitt as a mentor to countless Montanans who ventured into the legislative maze of Washington, D.C.

“He was a master of order, rules and keeping legislative box scores,” Williams said. “He never seemed to tire of the public’s purpose. He was thrilled when government was at its best.”

Kimmitt was born in Lewistown and raised in Great Falls. He left Montana to serve in World War II and retired from the U.S. Army as a colonel after 25 years.

Robert Kimmitt said his father “imbued in all of us a deep understanding of what it is to serve others.” Kimmitt told of how Bill Clinton, then a junior at Georgetown University, shyly ventured into Stan Kimmitt’s office. Clinton ended up spending a bit of time in conversation with Kimmitt and later said, “Stan Kimmitt was the first person to treat me like I was a somebody when I was a nobody.”

Kimmitt said his father would not have allowed all the hoopla about him. “He would have never wanted it to be about him,” Kimmitt said. He ended with advice his father gave to a legislative staff person right before he died: “If you want to be successful in public service, never sacrifice your principles.”

He said his father “left Montana but Montana never left him.”

Stan Kimmitt, long a polished Washington insider, told a Montana reporter not long before he died that he still considered himself a “gopher-shooting Montana boy.”