23rd and Dexter: Pete Maysmith

By Jack Farrar

Pete Maysmith is a longtime liberal/ environmentalist/wonk. He’s currently senior vice president of campaigns for the League of Conservation Voters, a former executive director of Conservation Colorado and former executive director of Colorado Common Cause. The mid-term election results were a soothing pain reliever, easing some of the effects of Trumpism. Maysmith and his wife Nancy, a graphic designer, used to live in Park Hill. They currently reside with their daughters Sydney, 16, and Zoe, 14, in Stapleton.

I asked Maysmith what fictional characters he would most like to meet in person.  He chose Vianne and Isabelle, the sisters who are the main characters in the novel The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah, which he just finished reading with Zoe. The book describes the enormous hardships of life in France during Nazi occupation, and the people who resisted in many different ways, including rescuing downed Allied airmen.

“It’s a story about coming of age in a period when it was difficult to survive – politically and personally,” Maysmith says. “It’s inspiring, fierce, scary. The resistance took so many forms.”

What would he ask Vianne and Isabelle? “Where did your strength come from?  How did you keep going? And I would thank them for what they sacrificed and how they inspired others.”