When Missouri Republicans won the state Senate for the first time in 53 years back in 2001, Peter Kinder of Cape Girardeau became the new Senate president pro tem. He soon received a congratulatory call from Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo.

“I asked him will it be like herding cats,” recalled Kinder, now the state Republican chair, “And he replied: ‘No. More like loading frogs into a wheelbarrow!'”

When the news came on May 13 that Bond — former state auditor, two term governor, and senator for 24 years — died at age 86, Kinder, and what seemed to be an entire generation of Show-Me State Republicans, vividly recalled anecdotes and warm remembrances of the man from Moscow, Missouri, whose adult life encompassed the change of his state from reliably Democrat turf to one that was rock-ribbed Republican and conservative.

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