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HAVE YOU MET . . .?
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Pete Hackford
Inspector/Safety Director, State of Utah
IIt has all of the elements of a good
screenplay: roustabouts, an oil boom, love,
and a boot-wearing protagonist determined to
pull himself up by, well . . . the bootstraps.
Urban Cowboy? Nope.
It’s the real-life story of Utah Inspector/Safety
Director Pete Hackford.
Born in Roosevelt, located in northeast Utah, the youngest son
of a heavy construction worker and postal clerk mom admits to
a happy childhood. “My older [by one year] brother Greg and I
were raised on an Indian reservation,” Pete recalls with a smile.
“We attended school in American Legion halls.”
The future Utah official led a fairly routine adolescence until the
age of 15 when he took a summer job as an oilfield roustabout.
“The oil business in east Utah was booming in the 60s and 70s,”
he explains. “There was work for everybody!”
Unfortunately for Pete, or perhaps fortunately, work for a
15-year-old — while not glamorous — gave the newly hired
roustabout an inside look at his future career. Literally.
“One of my first jobs was to climb into a boiler, remove the tubes,
and clean out the gunk at the bottom,” he shares while stroking a
neatly trimmed goatee. “Life was good growing up in northeastern
Utah.” But it was youth unexpectedly cut short.
A year after Pete took the oilfield job, his father passed away.
“I guess the things I remember most about my dad were two
philosophies he instilled in me,” he fondly observes. “The one I
try to live by is: ‘Do what is right in your head.’ That advice has
guided me in the right direction for as long as I can remember.”
NATIONAl BOARD BUllETIN/FAll 2006
Midway through Pete’s senior year in high school, misfortune
again struck: his mother died in a car accident. Suddenly, the
young Hackford brothers were all alone.
Over the next several years, each helped the other into adult-
hood. Having returned to the oilfields following high school, Pete
admits he had no ideas on what he wanted to do professionally.
It was in1983 that Pete was introduced (through relatives) to
someone who would profoundly alter his life. “That’s when I met
Kathy,” he beams. “It was love at first sight.” They married two
months later.
Shortly after Pete popped the question, Kathy posed one of her
own: what is it, she inquired, would he like to do for the rest of
his life?
Still working the oilfields in eastern Utah, Pete drove to Salt Lake
City to speak with a Navy recruiter. “He told me my background
in oil might make me a suitable candidate for an engineering
program,” the state official recollects. Following an aptitude test,
Pete was offered an opportunity to enter the Navy’s boiler program.
Heading to boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Base, the
Roosevelt native saved enough money to bring his wife and new
baby son to join him in Chicago. In November 1985, the Hackfords
BULLETIN photograph by Nick Sockoloff