SALT LAKE CITY — Ted Wilson, a three-term mayor of Salt Lake City and one-time candidate for Utah governor, died Thursday of congestive heart failure and Parkinson's disease, according to family.
The 84-year-old was first elected to the mayor's office in 1975 and served 10 years before leaving. He later ran for U.S. Senate in 1982, challenging Sen. Orrin Hatch, and later in 1988.
In honor of Wilson, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox ordered that flags be flown at half staff until sunset Saturday night.
After his time in the mayor's office, Wilson served as Director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.
Throughout Utah and around the U.S., students remember their time with Wilson during his 18-year tenure at the university for his encouragement to embrace politics as a contribution to community and an expression of personal passion, always keeping the goal in mind.
A statement released after Wilson's passing said he was surrounded by family when he died.
"As the eternal optimist, he loved people and they loved him back," the statement read. "We are honored that his memory will live on in the legacy he built as Salt Lake City Mayor, through the countless people he has taught and mentored, his decades of humanitarian service, and his mountaineering accomplishments.
"Ted’s lifetime priorities were his family and public service. He built and nurtured many deep and meaningful friendships and would remind us all to 'never sweat the small stuff.'"
For Wilson, cooperation and compromise were his technique to accomplish things he cared about deeply. Not just in politics. His time in Utah's mountains rivaled his time in the office and the classroom.
In his youth, Wilson and friends in the Alpenbock Climbing Club pioneered mountaineering routes in the Wasatch and beyond.
