Daniel "Dan" G. Blythe

Daniel Gordon Blythe, Esq., father, adventurer, and long-time member of the Cheyenne community died at his home on Monday in the company of his sister Rebecca Martindale, Ashley Miller, and his grandson Eli Blythe. He was 74.

Born 26 March 1950, the first child of Ruth and Jack Blythe of Oklahoma City, his family moved north when Jack was offered a faculty position in the Department of Geology at Wichita State University in Kansas, Ruth’s hometown. After graduating from high school in 1968, Dan attended WSU and then Washburn University School of Law before moving to Wyoming in 1977, where he practiced law in his own firm and then as a litigator for the Federal Public Defender’s office until his retirement in 2016.

A master advocate with professor’s command of the law, Dan combined precision and empathy with a fidelity to the United States Constitution providing astute counsel and quality representation to all of his clients.

His head was in the law, but his passion was for adventure, stirred by his Uncle Austin who let the baby-boomer children run free at the family farm outside Wichita. His uncle also found his first employment at a local bicycle shop. A love of two wheels soon included a motor when he purchased a 150cc Honda to travel to and from his college employment in Rocky Mountain National Park. After establishing himself as an attorney in the late 1970s and early 80s, he upgraded to a Cessna earning his pilots’ license in 1986 and spending much of the ‘80s and ‘90s flying his 172 around Wyoming, Northern Colorado, and Western Nebraska.

Two sons and a family cabin brought new people and a new place with whom to share his passion for adventure and exploration as the three of them hiked, backpacked, fished, and hunted their way around the Medicine Bow mountains.

As he introduced his boys to his passions, they showed him theirs. He moved the family to a small acreage north of town, built a barn and an arena so Patrick and Robert could practice team roping, steer wrestling, and calf roping, with the occasional, and impromptu, saddle bronc riding clinic.

Cultivating and honing a love of rodeo while driving his sons and trailing their horses around the Rocky Mountain West, Dan brought that knowledge back to his hometown when he began volunteering for Cheyenne Frontier Days in the late 1990s. By 2009 he became a member of the Heels Committee where he helped to establish both the Cowboy’s Bistro and Cowboy’s Shuttle.

As his sons made lives of their own and the arena returned to the prairie, he traveled around Europe with friends and family while saving the Americas for solo trips on his motorcycles, including a 2014 motorcycle-trip through Mexico and Belize along with numerous adventures throughout the United States and Canada.

Dan is survived by his sister Becca, brother Andy, two sons, Patrick and Robert, their spouses Jean and Katy, and two grandchildren, Eli and Elizabeth. The time and place of a celebration of life will be announced later.