Alaska Statehood Pioneers: In Their Own Words

Episode 7: Katie Hurley

Episode transcript

Katie Hurley: Bob Bartlett said I had a Ph.D. at the College of Ernest Gruening. He wrote me that when we were all going out of office.

Opening Titles

Narrator: Katie Hurley, born Kathryn Torkelson in 1921, was the daughter of Norweigan immigrants who met in Juneau. She was a long-time staffer to territorial Gov. Ernest Gruening, and chief clerk of the Alaska Constitutional Convention. In 1960, she remarried and moved to Wasilla. She was the first woman in Alaska to win a contested primary election for a statewide seat and is a member of the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame.

Intertitle: Growing Up in Juneau

Katie Hurley: My parents were Norwegian immigrants who met in Juneau and my father was a fisherman and a carpenter. He had worked in the AJ Treadwell Mine as a carpenter, but he had fished – I think he was fishing when I was born, but he – halibut fisherman.

My oldest sister was Helen and my youngest sister was Ruth. And my mother named me Kathryn, but my first name was Olga. And I don’t know how come I had enough sense when I went to school to say my name was Kathryn. Olga, and I was Olga until I started school and there are some of my contemporaries who used to give me – tease me by calling me Olga in school.
And I think that my mother named me that because my father’s name was Olof and I think that was the closest she could get to that.

And he died when I was only a freshman in high school. But he had been working for the city when he died. He was – they were very education was utmost and we couldn’t goof off at all, my sisters and I, had to toe the line. I came home with a C in citizenship and my mother had a fit. She didn’t look at all those other grades. She wanted to know why? And I had told her I had talked too much.

I think there were only 35 in my graduating class, but my sister who was just a year behind me there were 70 in hers. That happened to be a big class. So there were only about 150 to 200 in the whole high school.

Because my father had died and my mother said well wouldn’t be any money to go more than one year so I’d go to business college and I would have done better to have just had one year of college, but that was the way she figured it out. It was to help my sister because my sister was married to a medical student and so I had to live with them so that my mother paid them and that was a big help for them. It was not very good for me, but living with your older sister isn’t the greatest.

Binky Walker Business College and it is defunct now. But I made some wonderful friends and loved living in Portland. In fact I had a job that my mother was very strong-willed and I didn’t dare go against what she wanted me to do. And she insisted I came back – come back to Alaska, which I blessed her for because in Portland I was going to work in an insurance office, which it certainly would have been a dead end.

Intertitle: Working for Territorial Gov. Ernest Gruening

Katie Hurley: But when I came back to Juneau, why it was 1940 and there was the beginning the build-up of not in Juneau but around the state for like Fort Richardson and they were building something over in Sitka. And there was a lot of activity, but there weren’t very many jobs for secretaries. So I went through the employment service and I got a temporary job working in the Game Commission, cause my eighth grade teacher was working in the Game Commission then and he gave me a good job referral. And then they ran out of money or I would have stayed there. It was just amazing how things worked out.

So I went to the employment service. I had gotten to know the guy there in charge and he sent me up to the Governor’s Office. They had a call out for a stenographer. And there were three or four other women and some of them I knew from high school and I knew how good they were. I knew they were way better than I was, so I didn’t really think that I would get the job. But because I – the mother of one of my classmates was working there and someone else knew me and the Governor had only been in Alaska a year and his secretary had come from Washington, DC and she had only been there a year but she was the one who did the hiring. And afterwards she told me that those women had made me out that I was such a goodie-goodie that she almost didn’t hire me.

Her name was Estella Draper. And she was from Maine and she was a pistol. She liked off-color jokes and I’ll tell you people would come in to tell her these jokes and I was sitting across the desk from her and I just laughed you know with her and then afterwards I’d say, what was that all about? Then she would tell me and so I got quite an education. My mother was not very keen on my working there. She thought she was a little fast, you know, that was a good word in the 40’s.

But she taught me a lot and she was very clear as to you know how I should stand up for myself, that Ernest Gruening was very – he was not easy to work for she said because he had such an education he expected everybody else to be up to that level. And she said whenever he says something you don’t understand just stop and ask him. Well that was kind of scary you know. Here he was Governor of Alaska, graduated from Harvard, medical doctor.

He had been working in the Interior Department and he was I think when he first came here felt pretty isolated and that is when he – Bob Bartlett was the Secretary of Alaska, which is like the Lieutenant Governor when Gruening came. He was a holdover. And they became good friends because of this bond of both having been newspapermen before they went into governmental service.

And anyway the first day I went – for the test I had to take letters from him. And his letter – he was getting rid of all of his correspondence and the letter I got was written to the Governor of Puerto Rico and it had all of these Spanish names and talking about something that I’d never heard of. And I was amazed that I passed that test, but that was my beginning.

And the next day he was starting on his message to the legislature in 1941. This was December of 1940 that I started. So he was already working cause it was going to be his first session and he had me bring my typewriter in and he would dictate to me on the typewriter and I was a very fast typist. And then with triple space and rip it out and then he would take it and work it over. So that was a new experience I had never even done that before and I was very pleased that I could do that.

But for the first six months every time the buzzer rang at my desk to come in I would shake. I can remember I was so afraid that I wouldn’t get it right or wouldn’t be able to understand him. You know he had a very Eastern New York accent you know when I first met him and being raised in Juneau I certainly had not been exposed to anyone who had been from the East.

He was very wonderful cause I would stop him a lot of the times and ask him what the word meant and he would take the time and it was like I was his daughter. He had just three sons and I was kind of that age and he was so patient with me. And I think it was because I was so enthusiastic about everything. I knew it was a big adventure you know every day was not like going to work.

That was the thing that was so amazing was how patient he was with me and I think it was because he – I really realized that I was making history, that I was part of history.

I guess I started calling him Governor you know and then other people called him Ernest, but I told him I couldn’t I didn’t think that was – I just couldn’t call him that so I – he always signed his personal notes EG and that’s how I – it just kind of – I never asked him. I just started, but mostly I referred to him that way when I was talking to people – EG.

But it was so amazing after about a year how I could think of him as more of a friend. But I’ll tell you for those first six months it was and I would on all of the women in the office were about twice, not twice, but they were in their 40’s and I was like 20 years old with very little life experiences. But we had lots of fun.

Intertitle: 1941 – Gruening’s Income Tax Bill

Katie Hurley: You know the legislature was so anti — it was – they didn’t want him to be governor in the first place and then he had all these ideas about taxation and making the fishing industry pay more taxes and the gold mine industry pay more taxes and they would – but there were a few people who realized how good he was going to be for Alaska and they – he made good friends with them. But he was fixated. If he got something in his head and he kept going and no matter if he had maybe only one vote that for him he wouldn’t give up with it you know.

He had an income tax bill introduced in that 1941 session and it failed and it was the last, almost the last week in the session it had gotten through.

The house was very good. It was Democratic and there were 16 members, but there were only eight senators and so it only took to stop something it only took four people.

There were four divisions, the judicial districts and you know the people in Nome had as much representation as the people in Juneau in the Senate. There were two senators from the Nome area, two senators from the Anchorage area, two senators from Fairbanks, and two senators from Southeast and that was it.

And they killed it in the Senate and so he decided to introduce it in the other house and I had to type that bill and I had to stay there all night long typing the bill because it had to be typed in a way that they could make – it would match their typewriters. We had elite type and they had pica type and so I had to and the other women in the office fixed all. We had carbon paper. I had to make three copies and it was all numbered paper. They had to set up these sheets of paper and I had to remember to be sure to put it in the typewriter the right way.

And I had to type that bill and I remember going home and the birds were singing. It was about six o’clock in the morning that I – all alone in that building, except for the when I think about that and I was like 20 years old. Nobody else was there except me.

That was how determined he was about and there was no hope that he was going to get that bill passed but he was not going to let it go by without another chance at it.

He was so angry about the way the legislature had acted
And they were getting by with very little taxation on the crop, you know the canned salmon, and the fact that they were also handpicking legislators and financing them.

Well he was outraged that they didn’t pay – that it was a resource that was you know a renewable resource but that they weren’t paying their fair share. It was you know something like the constitution says it belonged to all the people of Alaska

And he – and there had been very little coverage of the session because in those days they didn’t send reporters down to cover and the Juneau Empire was so anti-Gruening that they wouldn’t print – you know they’d just print the negative stuff.
And he realized that was the only way he was going to let the people know what had happened.

He sent a message to the people. I have a copy of that.
Right up there on the shelf. And that — he couldn’t get it. The Chamber of Commerce in Fairbanks refused to – I guess the News-Miner refused to print it.

And of course we did mail it out, but that was the first release. And there is a wonderful alliteration in there that I use all the time. Penny pitching pretended patriots. That is what he referred to the people who wouldn’t support having a National Guard Building built. He loved alliterations, but that one I have never forgotten.

And after the 41st session he started working with Tony Dimond to see if they couldn’t increase the size of the legislature and that bill passed so that in 1944 there were six – they doubled the size of the senate and there were 24 in the house and I think it was 16 in the senate. And that’s when change came. In 1945 session was like night and day between ’43.
So this way there was more chance for the legislation to get through.

Intertitle: Anti-Discrimination Act

Katie Hurley: The discrimination law that he put forth the first session in 1941 and you know Elizabeth Peratrovich gets a lot of credit for passing it, but it was – he had put it in in ’41 and in ’43 and that was a plan. I mean we all knew that she was going to be there and he had worked behind the scenes to be sure that she would be recognized so that she could do that. But he was very generous in his book to give her credit too so I have soft pedal my feeling about the fact that he didn’t really get the recognition for having fought for that.

He was just stunned that people had signs up. Oh the one that got him the most was No Dogs or Natives you know. That really – when he saw those he’d go in and shake it at the – but it was pretty sad commentary on Alaska still.

And he went over to the bar – I remember him going over to the bar in Douglas and talking to the guy there and he was Italian and he said how would you like it if somebody put up a sign and said No Italians Allowed. And he did it with a Greek restaurateur in Anchorage the same thing. And he was not afraid to call it to their attention, how wrong that was. But it was a different era. But it was at such a different kind of campaigning that you know there wasn’t the money being thrown around like it is today. It was a pretty much one on one and I’m not sure but what they would have used that against him that he was too sophisticated too much from New York.

You know when he was out in the Bush those Native people just adored him because he really was very much down to earth with them and he was the one who to me brought this message back about how well educated – I mean they just had education from within and some of their talents that they could – I remember his first tale saying how they could take motors apart and put them back together and make them go and no one else could. And he was so fascinated by the people out there.
They called him the Great White Father or something like that.

Intertitle: Hostile Press

Katie Hurley: We got all the papers. That was one of my jobs was clipping those newspapers and my kids thinks that’s my fixation. I’m still doing it. Because I had to – Estella would mark the stories. He had kept wonderful scrapbooks. They must be up in the archives up there because all that stuff was put in a scrapbook and you know the pros and the cons. Oh, yeah, he – it was – it sort of rubbed off, but I know it couldn’t help but get to him you know when everybody would be so negative.

It was hard to think that people could be so mean. I mean they were on him. They were just – they were really – even when he first came up here there was a lot of anti-Semitic approach you know. Jew from New York and I didn’t even know what that there were what Jews were when I was growing up in Juneau. My father was working with the Mayor of Juneau, who was a Jew, but nobody ever talked about it in a negative way.

Cap Lathrop hated him and Murium, his secretary. …
Murium Dickey, she was not – we didn’t care much about her either….

I mean some people I found out you know later on they were really quite nice people, but EG – they were the enemy because they didn’t support his programs. Or they influenced people in the legislature to oppose, but Cap Lathrop was oh, my he used the power of his newspapers to – and he still owned the News-Miner.

He had the power of the press and he used it very well, very well.

Chuck Herbert was sent down to Juneau. He told me this story himself that he was sent down to Juneau by the people in Fairbanks to fight Gruening. And when he came down and met him and talked with him he realized that they were all wrong. That this person was somebody who could make Alaskan’s realize that they had a voice and he became very supportive of his program.

When Chuck Herbert came down he had no idea you know until he talked with him what a person of vision he was and depth as far as knowledge of government. And but that was what everybody had been fed.

I don’t know what happened to him when he got back home, but they probably, I think he tried very hard to convince them otherwise, you know the people, the chambers – the Chambers of Commerce were notoriously against taxation and they were against EG’s program but it was – he just never gave up.
And I mean they had nasty editorials even when it was at the end you know.

Thanks, good-bye, good riddance or something like that you know. We’re glad you’re going.

Intertitle: “A Ph.D. at the College of Ernest Gruening”

Katie Hurley: I was just a clerk stenographer a couple of years and then I was the assistant secretary and then I became his secretary, which was like chief of staff. … It was in May of 1945 that I became his secretary. By that time you know we had been through a lot of battles. …

But he had such a wonderful gift of using words, as you know. That was what was so exciting about when I finally got over my nervousness was just the way – just taking his dictation was a pleasure because he knew exactly how he wanted to say something. And he oftentimes would walk around and when especially he was writing speeches. He smoked cigars and he’d walk around smoking a cigar.

Text: Her first husband was a Juneau photographer named Joseph Alexander.

Katie Hurley: And when I became pregnant with my son while I was working, my husband was in the service, and he said well how long can you work? I said I have to work. And so I worked up until the day before my son was born which was unheard of because you weren’t supposed to be in public when you were showing.

I’ll never forget when I told him that I was pregnant and I said you know I really hadn’t planned to get pregnant you know. I wasn’t exactly ready for that but anyway I said I was pregnant and he said, was it the Immaculate Conception? And that’s the first time that’s – but it was just blew me away you know. I thought what do I say now? But he realized that – and he had this twinkle in his eye you know. And that was in the next breath he said, how long can you work? And then he said does this cigar bother you, you know? And I said oh, no, I wasn’t having any problems like that.

And that was the thing that always made me so unhappy when people criticized him as not being very human, but it was just his way he had been raised you know. And he just couldn’t it was hard for him to be – show his emotions.

And you know the other thing that he did which I thought was – says something about his personality. His term was four years every time and when Eisenhower came in he was inaugurated you know in January and he wanted to – he was ready to appoint the new governor. The governor said my term doesn’t end until April 13th and the legislature they were so angry because they wanted their own governor there then because the Republicans had been a big sweep in the legislature too. But he stayed there and we all stayed there until the 13th of April right in the midst of the session they had to make the change. Of course they didn’t do much cause they held all the legislation until he couldn’t do any of his mischief.

Bob Bartlett said I had a Ph.D. at the College of Ernest Gruening. He wrote me that when we were all going out of office.

Intertitle: Writing State History Pre-Statehood

Katie Hurley: He started working on it while he was in the – still governor. He was writing some things and I worked on it at home.

He was reading a lot of stuff doing research in all that time and getting stuff from the library there in Juneau and you know he told me that he was going to call it the State of Alaska.

I typed those chapters and sent them to the – worked at home and did those and he was living out at his cabin.

And then it was during the Constitutional Convention that his son committed suicide.

Oh, it was very hard and especially hard because he was in a down time in his career. There was nothing going on. He had – of course he was – how old – he was in his 60’s.

And yeah, it was very tough. And I know that EG wanted to be the National Committeeman for the Democratic Party and he was very upset with me because I didn’t support him for that because it was not good for the party. He was not experienced in that. And Alex Miller, he was doing a good job. I mean that’s the kind of a person you need in that job and it was very upsetting to him and it was just sort – it was doubly bad for me because he had this tragedy of Peter. And so, but I just – it was hard for him to understand why I didn’t think that he would be and I think that’s part of the reason why he hung around the convention quite a bit too. He was just at loose ends.

Intertitle: The Alaska Constitutional Convention

Katie Hurley: Commons, it was the Commons. It was a very new building. And the bookstore was there and they just gave the bottom part over to the delegates. And they had made a stage so that Bill Egan was one level above, but he was the only person up on that level and I was right below him. I have a picture. It is very primitive. It is not fancy. It is just this table and everybody smoked who smoked. Can you believe it? You can see everybody smoking during the session. Bill Egan was a chain smoker and I never smoked, but I certainly breathed enough smoke during that convention.

I was the Chief Clerk. And that meant that I was the person who took the minutes of the Plenary Sessions. Plenary I guess everybody knows that that is when everyone was together and all 55 delegates were there. And I had been the secretary of the senate in the 1955 legislature and had a similar role of taking action minutes and I worked 12 years for Ernest – territorial Governor Ernest Gruening. And I had – I was in charge was what they call the boiler room which was where the stenographers and typists took care of committee reports and so forth, but we had a very small staff I think of about six people.

One thing that I had an advantage that I had met or knew of all but one of the delegates before I got there.

You know everybody when they came through town on — in those early 40’s it was – the boat would be in town for a short time and people from up North would always come to the governor’s office. It was a busy place and that’s how I got to know so many people around the state that when I went to the convention I knew almost all of the delegates.

And also Bill Egan was a very good chair and he would call them by name and so I could you know get that down fast, but also, yes, it was – I had to concentrate.

The election of the president was pretty – there was one person who really wanted it badly, Vic Rivers, and he had been a very good legislator and he would have been an adequate chair but he would not have been the kind of chair that Bill Egan was and really bringing people together. And that was so amazing how people – they may have come there some of them with an agenda. But they certainly – they never showed because it was just so much – but there were some real healthy debates and it good to see and good that it was cause the results were much more effective because they had debated them so heartily.

He didn’t care about being a star himself I guess is the best – the reason why he – and he was so willing to look at people individually and not be judgmental. And yet you know there were people who he had worked with and I think were on opposite sides but he saw his role, just did it, and much more – much better than anyone could have imagined that he had a very you know just a gentle way.

My favorite is when he would stop – he’d see somebody who was inexperienced, hadn’t been in a legislative body or hadn’t served on a city council or had any kind of experience and he could tell that they wanted to make a motion or make an amendment and he’d stop and call a recess and motion to them to come up and he’d say yeah. Cause I could hear him cause he was – they were right beside me and he’d say did you want to have – say something or did you want to make a motion. And he’d help them write it and that’s a real gift in a presiding officer.

He would call a recess when he thought that people just needed to cool off and but Style and Drafting Committee was getting very irritated that their work was being – like they had lost – that the members had – were so critical of their changes and what they were doing was trying to make the language simple and straightforward and it did turn out that it is, but they had to go through some battles like that, but and they were – in fact Mr. Davis did resign. Nobody would let him go I mean he was ready to walk away. …

They could work those things through and you never could do that in the legislature. …

They were long days at the end.

And I had an apartment in Northward Building and they provided me a typewriter there because there was only one bus a day out and one bus a day back and I didn’t have a car and we all rode out most – a lot of people didn’t have cars. So I would bring my notes back that I wasn’t able to do while we were still at the University back to my room and type away. And sometimes until four o’clock in the morning towards the end, but I was always up and ready to go at eight o’clock.

You know we had just the basic things that we still had to do and there was no way that you could rush just typing and that kind of thing. It takes so much time to do certain things.

Then the minutes were – I just did a rough draft and then I brought it in the next morning to the staff and then they cut stencils. Do you know what that is?

Well in order – they had mimeograph machines and in order to print the stuff on the mimeograph to make more than one copy. They were blue and you had to readjust the typewriter so it didn’t – there was a lever on the typewriter where it would not be ribbon typing and it would set the thing down and then they would type up and then they had to run the copies off on a mimeograph machine.

Oh, yeah, one of my little pet peeves is with the Rules Committee that adopted that the – my minutes would be – I wouldn’t get to sign my minutes. They were signed by Tom Stewart as the Secretary and he wasn’t even there. They were my – but that’s the difference I mean as a woman now I would have screamed my head off, but then I was just so glad to be there that wasn’t important but historically it is important. But the minutes then when he was out of town I got to sign the minutes as the Chief Clerk.

During the signing everything was – it wasn’t you know it wasn’t – it was exciting, but it wasn’t as emotional as after that they went back over to close the thing sine die and that when I called the roll the last time I got so choked up saying their names that when I looked up there are these guys that I never would think that they had tears in their eyes, the ones that were sitting like Steve McCutcheon and Herb Hillshire. I mean those are hard-nosed guys and I had – oh, it was – it’s on the tape, the official tape and somebody sent me that from I couldn’t believe how choked up I was, but it was – we had been together and been – it was like Jim Hurley gave the presentation. He was just a very outstanding delegate at that time. I had not ever dreamed that I would be married to him, but he gave this little talk of giving – honoring Bill Egan and he said it was something like being in a battle with your fellow soldiers and having won and that you always would be close because of having done that. …

It was so emotional at the end.

Just the other day I said it was the biggest thrill of my life looking back to have had that opportunity to be there in that capacity because holding that position was way better than what – in my book – then what Tom Stewart was because he wasn’t present on the floor but rarely and then he had – he was gone during some of the most exciting debates in December when they were debating the judicial article and so forth.

I felt that I had witnessed statesmanship that I’ve never seen since.

Intertitle: “The Day That We Became a State”

Text: After voters approved the convention’s constitution, Alaska’s statehood bill gained traction in Congress.

Katie Hurley: And during the convention I don’t think anyone had any conception that it would happen so quickly. Looking back it is amazing that it was just two years and they thought – that’s why hardly anybody of the lobbyists came to the convention. They thought it was an exercise in futility. Too bad those guys are so carried away that they are spending all that time writing it – the constitution.

Bob Bartlett had called to let me know that this was going to be the day, some time that day he was sure it was going to be the vote cause they had been arguing it and he was quite sure. And so I had called Bill and said I want to come by and we had connected and I volunteered during election to help with counting and stuff. So we were out there and it came on and we – I think I was even driving and Thane it was about three or four miles and we dashed in. I parked the car and ran up the steps, two at a time, I was so excited to get up there. Cause I knew I wouldn’t see all of it but David was so excited, too, about it. And we got up there and saw the –

Saw it coming over the Teletype. They were calling the role. I still – by the time we got there I guess there was some argument I knew I was able to get there cause you know in the senate they still – they don’t use automatic they still call the role and it takes a while to call. At that time of course there were 98, no 96 senators because Hawaii came in after us.

To me that was the day that we became a state because there had been no much work and we had been so long. I had been in Washington in 1950 when the house had passed the state – I was in the gallery. I was with Mary Lee Council. Bob had seen to it that we were there when they passed the statehood bill in 1950. So this is like eight years later. So that was very exciting to be there.

Intertitle: Moving On

Katie Hurley: I served through the first state legislature and then I married Jim Hurley and moved here in 1960 – in the summer of 1960. So I got out of things sort of cause I had a couple of young kids.

Everybody always wanted to know why I didn’t go to Washington with Gruening. Well I didn’t want to leave Alaska then and so I didn’t want to go with him and anyway I was going to marry Jim and moved up here. And he was on the Central Committee and doing things and I was just taking care of kids. And you know we were living on a farm and I loved it. It was such a change from Juneau. My friends in Juneau couldn’t believe that I was living on a farm and we had a cow and I had a vegetable garden. I didn’t milk the cow. I said I’m not doing that. But then I got you know I was doing things with PTA and things like that with my school.

Text: In 1968, Mike Gravel beat Gruening in the Democratic Senate primary election. Gruening tried to get reelected as a write-in candidate.
Katie Hurley: I had a sign – we went to the ballot box and I knew it was futile but of course I had to do it and we had a lot of fun. It was a cold day, but he was pretty crushed by Bob Bartlett’s endorsement of Gravel. And I was shocked and I think that Bob was not well. He was dying you know and I think he was on drugs and so forth. I don’t think he would have done that if it hadn’t been because I remember hearing it. His voice was not very strong but it was hard for EG because he talked to me – he did talk to me about that.

He couldn’t understand why he did and I just – I really told him that I just thought that Bob was not in his right senses when he did it. I thought he needed to have some closure to it because it really had bothered him. What did I do you know? Well I knew what he had done. It was just his – there were plenty of times that he certainly got in the way of Bob and he was just because of his personality and I don’t think he realized how hurtful that was for Bob you know so.

Text: In 1972, Gruening discovered he had cancer. After his autobiography “Many Battles” was published in 1973, he made one last trip to Alaska.

Katie Hurley: And he knew that he didn’t have much more time. And you could tell from his demeanor that he went around to see everybody. Came out here to see me and you know spent time and he was very mellow and reminiscing and that was at Christmas time and then he died in June I think it was.

I was there in Washington and had gone over to see him and while I was there or when I had called ahead of time and someone said that he wasn’t doing well, but for me to come on out. And Mrs. Gruening was there and so I went in the ambulance with him and she went in a car. And we got over there and who should be there but George McGovern. And then I stayed a little while and then I left, but he died that night. But he was in terrible pain and cause he had – I forget what his cancer was, but he was on – and he was ranting – he was just railing against all the powers that be. And you know Nixon he had been the impeachment came shortly after he died and all I could think of was that oh, if EG had only lived that long so he could see that he was right. He called him a crook you know when he was campaigning for McGovern when he was up here in Alaska. Never could see Nixon.

Intertitle: Playing Politics

Katie Hurley:In ’71 when or ’70 when Bill was elected again, I said to my friend Alex Miller I said you know how come Bill hasn’t appointed me to anything? I thought he would think of me and he said have you asked? And I said no, I didn’t know I had to ask. I thought he’d think of me. So I told him I wanted to be on the State Board of Education and so I got appointed to the State Board of Education. So then I said to Alex I said well you know I think the best thing to do is to be the president. I said how do you do that? He said you have to ask. You have to do your ward. You have to go and call all those people and tell them you want to be the president. Well that was a new role for me. I’d never – everything had been handed to me before. I never had to have an interview you know for to go to work at the senate or to do any of that stuff. So I – anyway I got to be the president of the State Board of Education and I did that for eight years. And they never had an election so after I got – I don’t know how come we never had an election but anyway I just continued to be the president.

So my husband said to me you know he said you ought to run for lieutenant governor and I said I’ve always been a king maker. I’ve never been – I’ve always been behind the scenes. He said well you got the experience I think he had another reason for wanting me to run.
He was beginning to be called Mr. Katie Hurley and he didn’t like that. And it was very sad in a lot of ways because he was – I still loved him and it was hard, but anyway some of the teachers asked me you know would I – that they looking for somebody to run and I said, oh, I don’t have any money so what am I going to do? Oh, we’ll get the money and so forth. Anyway I decided to file and Jim was very supportive. In fact we had to mortgage our house to get some money cause they weren’t giving women candidates much money in those days.

I didn’t have much money so I wasn’t able to travel to as many villages, but I had those seven years on the State Board of Education and I had no idea that so many people knew me.

I wasn’t very good in the beginning I know that. It was tough for me to have make speeches and as I said I really felt like I was you know over my head for a while until I met some of the other candidates and watched them.

Text: She soundly won the Democratic primary, but she and her gubernatorial running mate took third in the general election. She lost to incumbent Republican Gov. Jay Hammond’s ticket and former Gov. Wally Hickel, who ran as a write-in.

Katie Hurley:I – it was downhill – it was just terrible because there were so many, the write-ins started and I – there was no way we were going to win I could see that, but had to be a good soldier and act like we were going to win, but it was pretty much of a disaster.

Even though I spent a lot of time paying off the debt, but it was worth it. I mean I really did have fun. And I learned a lot too. It was good experience.

So then I ended – as a result I got a job – I was asked to head up the Alaska Women’s Commission. And so I got that in 80’s and I enjoyed that very much. That was three years. And then I was tired of commuting to Anchorage. It was really tough to do that and my girls were in college and I was – Jim was over in Kodiak and wasn’t coming back.

So anyway I – somebody said there was going to be an open seat here in the valley. So I decided to file and I had just token competition so it wasn’t so difficult, but I was running against a Republican who didn’t spend one cent and he didn’t do very much, but – except he was at all of the places nettling me about my position on abortion and my position on gay rights and my position on what was the third thing? Anyway every time and you know this is such a conservative – I won by 120 votes and he hadn’t spent one cent. So when I ran for re-election, my son said – well when I ended he said you know mother they didn’t know how liberal that you were when they voted for you in the first place and of course when they saw my record. I thought it was a good record, but they didn’t think it was – they didn’t think I was patriotic enough cause I voted against saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day. Cause I said we already have a prayer and I don’t think that makes you any more patriotic to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And my knowledgeable Democratic friends came up to me and said Katie you should change your vote. I said why? Well you’re going to get crucified in the valley and I said well, so be it. I’m not changing my vote when I believe what I said cause I don’t. And when you watch people saying it like that it is just like so many words. And they used it, not publicly but whispering type of thing. They didn’t attack me publicly on it so.

It really was fate because I developed cancer that next year and I would never have paid attention to my own health like I did because of what I was doing so. And I caught it. It was not a mammogram that caught it. I’d had mammograms. I discovered the lump myself and so I always said that it was fate that I should not have had that career.

Credits:
Recorded February 4, 2004, at Katie Hurley’s home in Wasilla. .
Conducted by Dr. Terrence Cole, UAF Office of Public History

Full interview transcript

Katie Hurley
Interviewed by Dr. Terrence ColeTerence: Okay, so today is February 4th, is it 4th? I’m pretty sure it’s the 4th, yeah, 2004 and we’re really proud, pleased to be at Katie Hurley’s house right off of Lake Wasilla. Is it Lake Wasilla?

Hurley: Yes. Lake Wasilla.

Terence: Okay. And so Katie, thanks for letting us come in here and take over your life here for a day. So actually let’s talk a little bit about that Constitutional Convention. Let’s just like – what was your role at the Constitutional Convention? What did you do there?

Hurley: I was the Chief Clerk. And that meant that I was the person who took the minutes of the Plenary Sessions. Plenary I guess everybody knows that that is when everyone was together and all 55 delegates were there. And I had been the secretary of the senate in the 1955 legislature and had a similar role of taking action minutes and I worked 12 years for Ernest – territorial Governor Ernest Gruening. And I had – I was in charge was what they call the boiler room which was where the stenographers and typists took care of committee reports and so forth, but we had a very small staff I think of about six people. I think I have a picture of that maybe they could take a look at.

Terence: Who were the people on the staff? Do you remember everybody’s name?

Hurley: My assistant was – oh, I should have written these down.

Terence: Well is D.A.

Hurley: No Doris Ann was a historian. Doris Ann Bartlett and she wasn’t ever – she was up in the library taking care of the delegates questions and so forth. And a black woman, wonderful smart, was my assistant and we became great friends and I still communicate with her although her health isn’t very good now. And then the other people were typists. And those people all came from Fairbanks and I hadn’t known them before, but we found them. And some days they you know they were long days at the end. And I had an apartment in Northward Building and they provided me a typewriter there because there was only one bus a day out and one bus a day back and I didn’t have a car and we all rode out most – a lot of people didn’t have cars. So I would bring my notes back that I wasn’t able to do while we were still at the University back to my room and type away. And sometimes until four o’clock in the morning towards the end, but I was always up and ready to go at eight o’clock.

Terence: Oh, man –

Hurley: We had to be out there by eight o’clock so.

Terence: So you went out well with –

Hurley: With the bus. I didn’t have any extra time because of the transportation thing and there was no way to stay late because the buses didn’t run except that one special bus for the delegates. And it was really tough when the weather was cold. It was 60 below day after day in January. I think even in December. It was one of the coldest winters Fairbanks had had.

Terence: Was that a manual typewriter or an electric?

Hurley: Oh, yeah, it was a Royal. In fact I have one down in my basement. It is exactly like the typewriter that I had when I was working for Ernest Gruening and when they had a surplus sale I got one of them and I have kept it all these years. Every once in a while I’ll go back, but it’s hard to type on a regular one after you’ve been typing on an electric you know, but yeah that is what it was.

And then the minutes were – I just did a rough draft and then I brought it in the next morning to the staff and then they cut stencils. Do you know what that is?

Terence: No, how does that work?

Hurley: Well in order – they had mimeograph machines and in order to print the stuff on the mimeograph to make more than one copy. They were blue and you had to readjust the typewriter so it didn’t – there was a lever on the typewriter where it would not be ribbon typing and it would set the thing down and then they would type up and then they had to run the copies off on a mimeograph machine. Sort of like – oh it’s so different it’s hard. I like to every once in a while some of the kids at school and trying to explain to them what a mimeograph machine is or a Royal typewriter cause everybody now is on computers.

Terence: Yeah, they might know what a Xerox machine is but they don’t know what a mimeograph machine is right?

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: And so in essence did everything have to be typed twice?

Hurley: Yeah. Well, I just – mine was a rough draft. I mean I typed off from my shorthand and they had to cut the stencils and those stencils were destroyed after the copies were run off. And I have the copies that you could take a look at of those journals. Then the delegates checked it over and corrected by giving the wrong motion to somebody and so forth, but there were not very many mistakes that were substantive, but maybe somebody wanted a comma some place that I hadn’t put in.

Terence: And you sat right below the president. Where did you sit?

Hurley: There was all of the people were in the hall that is now called Constitution Hall and at that time it was the what do you call a gathering place? They ate there and –

Terence: Like the Commons?

Hurley: Commons. It was the Commons. It was a very new building. And the bookstore was there and they just gave the bottom part over to the delegates. And they had made a stage so that Bill Egan was one level above, but he was the only person up on that level and I was right below him. I have a picture. It is very primitive. It is not fancy. It is just this table and everybody smoked who smoked. Can you believe it? You can see everybody smoking during the session. Bill Egan was a chain smoker and I never smoked, but I certainly breathed enough smoke during that convention.

Terence: Did – so your clothes must have smelled like cigarette – well in those days you didn’t notice that so much.

Hurley: I don’t know. It was pretty big room and I know a lot of the people who smoked sat in the back and Bill was right behind me and I think there might have been Bob McNeely smoked, but there were not too many of them. There were only six women and I think – I don’t remember them smoking during the session, although I know Kathryn smoked but I don’t think she did during the session.

Terence: Did you know in a way you must have had to concentrate?

Hurley: Oh, yes because one thing that I had an advantage that I had met or knew of all but one of the delegates before I got there. And also Bill Egan was a very good chair and he would call them by name and so I could you know get that down fast, but also, yes, it was – I had to concentrate. But I was only let me see 34 years old, but I had had several years of experience of working for Ernest Gruening was an education in itself because I had only had one year of business college and I had a wonderful high school education. My son said that after he went to college and he learned what I had taken in high school he said you had the equivalent of two years of college in that high school course that you took.

Terence: Well, let’s talk about that. Where did you go to high school, where was that?

Hurley: In Juneau.

Terence: Okay, so –

Hurley: It was about – it was a very I think there were only 35 in my graduating class, but my sister who was just a year behind me there were 70 in hers. That happened to be a big class. So there were only about 150 to 200 in the whole high school.

Terence: Now you were born in Juneau, right?

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: And did your parents work for the mine or the government or what was that?

Hurley: My parents were Norwegian immigrants who met in Juneau and my father was a fisherman and a carpenter. He had worked in the AJ Treadwell Mine as a carpenter, but he had fished – I think he was fishing when I was born, but he – halibut fishing. And he died when I was only a freshman in high school. But he had been working for the city when he died. He was – they were very education was utmost and we couldn’t goof off at all, my sisters and I, had to toe the line. I came home with a C in citizenship and my mother had a fit. She didn’t look at all those other grades. She wanted to know why? And I had told her I had talked too much. And I think that was true.

Terence: Okay, right.

Hurley: Somebody was always turning around whispering and the teacher was always having to call me down. That was when I was in the early grades not so much in high school. They had music and art and chorus and four years of English with Shakespeare and very – languages. We had French and Spanish.

Terence: Now that’s in high school?

Hurley: Yeah, in high school and then because my father had died and my mother said well wouldn’t be any money to go more than one year so I’d go to business college and I would have done better to have just had one year of college, but that was the way she figured it out. It was to help my sister because my sister was married to a medical student and so I had to live with them so that my mother paid them and that was a big help for them. It was not very good for me, but living with your older sister isn’t the greatest.

Terence: Now you and you had two, what your sisters’ names?

Hurley: My oldest sister was Helen and my youngest sister was Ruth. And my mother named me Kathryn, but my first name was Olga. And I don’t know how come I had enough sense when I went to school to say my name was Kathryn. Olga, and I was Olga until I started school and there are some of my contemporaries who used to give me – tease me by calling me Olga in school.

Terence: How do you spell Olga?

Hurley: O-L-G-A. And I think that my mother named me that because my father’s name was Olof and I think that was the closest she could get to that.

Terence: And what was your dad’s last name?

Hurley: Torgelson.

Terence: That’s not Norwegian.

Hurley: Torgelson, no.

Terence: Hardly, right.

Hurley: He was –

Terence: Olof Torgelson.

Hurley: Olof Torgelson, right. And one of my grandsons is Jewish and my daughter named him Jacob Olof. It is like greatest – I just love it of the David, the Rabbi was going to do the (inaudible) and he gave the history of the names. It was like everybody was just tickled to death. And my other grandson is named Adan Torgel. So they’re blessed with the Norwegian names.

– Break –

Terence: Okay, so. Let’s see where were we?

Hurley: Too much personal stuff.

Terence: No, no, that’s okay. So you went to after graduating from high school you went to business college out –

Hurley: In Portland, Oregon.

Terence: What was the name of the school?

Hurley: Bakke Walker Business College and it is defunct now. But I made some wonderful friends and loved living in Portland. In fact I had a job that my mother was very strong-willed and I didn’t dare go against what she wanted me to do. And she insisted I came back – come back to Alaska, which I blessed her for because in Portland I was going to work in an insurance office, which it certainly would have been a dead end.

But when I came back to Juneau, why it was 1940 and there was the beginning the build-up of not in Juneau but around the state for like Fort Richardson and they were building something over in Sitka. And there was a lot of activity, but there weren’t very many jobs for secretaries. So I went through the employment service and I got a temporary job working in the Game Commission, cause my eighth grade teacher was working in the Game Commission then and he gave me a good job referral. And then they ran out of money or I would have stayed there. It was just amazing how things worked out.

– Break –

Terence: Where were we? Oh, Gruening, so Gruening.

Hurley: So I got the job –

Terence: And whose the –

Hurley: And the first day –

Terence: Who was his secretary?

Hurley: Her name was Estella Draper. And she was from Maine and she was a pistol. She liked off-color jokes and I’ll tell you people would come in to tell her these jokes and I was sitting across the desk from her and I just laughed you know with her and then afterwards I’d say, what was that all about? Then she would tell me and so I got quite an education. My mother was not very keen on my working there. She thought she was a little fast, you know, that was a good word in the 40’s.

Terence: Racy or fast.

Hurley: Yeah, fast, yeah. But she taught me a lot and she was very clear as to you know how I should stand up for myself, that Ernest Gruening was very – he was not easy to work for she said because he had such an education he expected everybody else to be up to that level. And she said whenever he says something you don’t understand just stop and ask him. Well that was kind of scary you know. Here he was Governor of Alaska, graduated from Harvard, medical doctor.

Terence: Do you remember any words that he said that you couldn’t figure out, I mean like you say?

Hurley: Oh, this one word that I thought I’d never forget it.

Terence: Well when he talked with his accent like what did he say?

Hurley: Oh one time when he was dictating to me, this has nothing to do with his accent I don’t think, I think it was just me and my typewriter, but he was talking about muskeg, the muskeg in Petersburg or something and it came out musket. And he laughed about it, but the “t” and “g” you know it is just not too, you know they’re – one is on the third level and one is on the middle level and it was just I think I thought I heard him say musket but it didn’t make any sense. But he got a big charge out of that telling me about that. But I had to really listen to get to be sure that he – I can’t think of the word, any words that I had – I wish I had kept a journal of those years because every day.

I do remember that I had a list of words when I came out that I wrote down and looked up in the dictionary for their meaning. Every you know words that I would spell out in your shorthand. You know you can do with all the characters and so forth. But I would look them up to get the meaning and it was a real education.

Terence: I mean cause he had – so you took shorthand right?

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: And then you did the typing?

Hurley: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Terence: Or did Estella do the typing at all or did you?

Hurley: No, she looked over my letters before she took them in and if she saw something that she thought I might have, she would help me that way. But he very often just changed his mind and wanted to emphasize something. It wasn’t necessarily that I had made a mistake. He was very wonderful cause I would stop him a lot of the times and ask him what the word meant and he would take the time and it was like I was his daughter. He had just three sons and I was kind of that age and he was so patient with me. And I think it was because I was so enthusiastic about everything. I knew it was a big adventure you know every day was not like going to work.

And we got the New York Times by mail and there would be a whole week of the New York Times that would come in on the boat. I knew the next day that I would have letters cause he knew so many people and he would come in and I’d have my notebook would be just filled and it would take me the whole day to type up all those letters that he had. People – somebody who had died that he knew or somebody was you know there wasn’t much direct radio at that time. You know you had to have a short-wave radio to get really much news, national news and it cost a lot to talk on the telephone. So we were pretty isolated. Took a couple of weeks or 10 days at least for a letter. There wasn’t airmail service then. So you’re kind of isolated and he had been working in the Interior Department and he was I think when he first came here felt pretty isolated and that is when he – Bob Bartlett was the Secretary of Alaska, which is like the Lieutenant Governor when Gruening came. He was a holdover. And they became good friends because of this bond of both having been newspapermen before they went into governmental service.

Terence: But Gruening must have been an intimidating guy for somebody don’t you think for –

Hurley: Oh, in the beginning he you know to me, but it was so amazing after about a year how I could think of him as more of a friend. But I’ll tell you for those first six months it was and I would on all of the women in the office were about twice, not twice, but they were in their 40’s and I was like 20 years old with very little life experiences. But we had lots of fun.

Terence: Did he have – I mean what the hardest thing about working with him would you say? You know did he have like a big temper?

Hurley: No.

Terence: Was he somehow not explaining things I mean what was –

Hurley: No, he was – to other people he seemed that way but that was the thing that was so amazing was how patient he was with me and I think it was because he – I really realized that I was making history, that I was part of history and that this was. And I also you know the legislature was so anti. It was – they didn’t want me to be governor in the first place and then he had all these ideas about taxation and making the fishing industry pay more taxes and the gold mine industry pay more taxes and they would – but there were a few people who realized how good he was going to be for Alaska and they – he made good friends with them. But he was fixated. If he got something in his head and he kept going and no matter if he had maybe only one vote that for him he wouldn’t give up with it you know.

He had an income tax bill introduced in that 1941 session and it failed and it was the last, almost the last week in the session it had gotten through. And they killed it in the senate and so he decided to introduce it in the other house and I had to type that bill and I had to stay there all night long typing the bill because it had to be typed in a way that they could make – it would match their typewriters. We had elite type and they had pica type and so I had to and the other women in the office fixed all. We had carbon paper. I had to make three copies and it was all numbered paper. They had to set up these sheets of paper and I had to remember to be sure to put it in the typewriter the right way.

Terence: Was that the third –

Hurley: That was the 1941 session.

Terence: What floor of the –

Hurley: We’re on the third floor and the legislature was on the second. And there was a watchman in the place, but that was. session.

Terence: What floor of the –

Hurley: We’re on the third floor and the legislature was on the second. And there was a watchman in the place, but that was.

Terence: But it is still the same spot where it is today?

Hurley: Yeah. Uh-huh. Governor’s office suite, well it is very much more grand than it is now, but that was how determined he was about and there was no hope that he was going to get that bill passed but he was not going to let it go by without another chance at it.

Terence: Do you know – do you remember if he got any votes at all in the house or the other body, whichever one that you know did it ever –

Hurley: Oh, this is senate that was he – the house was very good. It was Democratic and there were 16 members, but there were only eight senators and so it only took to stop something it only took four people.

Terence: So that was it? It was just a –

Hurley: And there were two – there were equal representation from each of the – there were four divisions, the judicial districts and you know the people in Nome had as much representation as the people in Juneau in the senate. There were two senators from the Nome area, two senators from the Anchorage area, two senators from Fairbanks, and two senators from Southeast and that was it. And after the 41st session he started working with Tony Dimond to see if they couldn’t increase the size of the legislature and that bill passed so that in 1944 there were six – they doubled the size of the senate and there were 24 in the house and I think it was 16 in the senate. And that’s when change came. In 1945 session was like night and day between ’43.

Terence: Yeah, because I mean –

Hurley: Because they were –

Terence: One was only just four – two people from Nome and two people from Fairbanks could block anything, right?

Hurley: Yeah. Uh-huh. And so anybody, so this way there was more chance for the legislature to get through.

Terence: But what do you think about Gruening cause that was the issue right if Gruening felt someone wasn’t with him I mean that’s the difference isn’t it? Do you know what I mean for the people he thought like Judge Arnold or? Do you remember Judge Arnold?

Hurley: Oh, yes, he was a good friend. He became a very good friend and you know the thing about Judge Arnold is that people we liked him because you always knew exactly where he was and he would come up to the Governor’s office. But then and he would tell you know where he was going to be, but some of these other lobbyists would just you know pretend to your face that they were and they would be working against you. And we found out who those people were. But Judge Arnold was – he was very powerful, but it wasn’t as if you didn’t know it ahead of time.

Terence: I mean Gruening sort of said somewhere maybe it is in one of the messages to the people that you know – it must be in like the autobiography you know that basically Arnold would tell the legislature how much the salmon industry would –

Hurley: Oh, that was –

Terence: Was it – go ahead take drink.

Hurley: That was in his first I think he was speaking about that the first session, 1941 session, that he – they didn’t become friends that early. But there were certain group of legislators who were like Stan McCutcheon was always somebody that you could count on and also Bill Egan and oh, he was a graduate of the University of Alaska in Mining, oh why I can’t say his name. He became Commissioner of –

Terence: Oh, Chuck –

Hurley: Chuck Herbert. Chuck Herbert was sent down to Juneau. He told me this story himself that he was sent down to Juneau by the people in Fairbanks to fight Gruening. And when he came down and met him and talked with him he realized that they were all wrong. That this person was somebody who could make Alaskan’s realize that they had a voice and he became very supportive of his program. And I guess he got, I don’t know what happened to him when he got back home, but they probably, I think he tried very hard to convince them otherwise, you know the people, the chambers – the Chambers of Commerce were notoriously against taxation and they were against EG’s program but it was – he just never gave up.

Terence: What did – did you call him in his office, Gruening, I think that was a clock, Tim, that was just striking.

Tim: I heard a little, yeah, okay.

Terence: Did you call EG?

Hurley: Yes, I called him EG. Uh-huh.

Terence: How did that start? What was the –

Hurley: I don’t – I guess I started calling him Governor you know and then other people called him Ernest, but I told him I couldn’t I didn’t think that was – I just couldn’t call him that so I – he always signed his personal notes EG and that’s how I – it just kind of – I never asked him. I just started, but mostly I referred to him that way when I was talking to people – EG.

Terence: Did – so he arrives and Gruening’s wife was –

Hurley: Dorothy.

Terence: Dorothy, what was she like?

Hurley: Well she was pretty New England – Boston proper and she had ideas of her own, but she wasn’t too politically astute and she would kind of – I remember sometimes people telling about how he – she would start talking about something and he would have to tell her that – he would just tell her that she better change the subject that she didn’t know much about that. But they had a very – he had to order and he was very proud of her painting and so forth and they had a very – he worried that she spoiled the children cause he would talk to me later on about that because I was close to the age of his youngest son who was a problem because he was not adherent to some of – he didn’t take care of his money and was quite spoiled. And he would talk to me about that later on you know how would I react to something like that.

But I said I can’t tell you that because I didn’t have the kind of background that he had. He went to a private school and he was away from home at a young age and it taught me a lot about that I didn’t want to do that with my children, just send them, no matter what the education was I certainly didn’t want to send them away from parental guidance. Cause I had a daughter that school was quite elementary here, wasn’t very challenging and my husband wanted to send her out to a private school and I talked to some of the teachers and I didn’t want to do it. But this one teacher who had gone to Marquette and had studied for the priesthood and was really a highly educated, he said to me, what she has living here and in this family is way more important than what she might learn for college prep. And he said she’ll do okay. She’ll get to college and she will catch up on the things that she missed and she did.

Terence: Now on Gruening’s – so that had a big impact on you, seeing that with Gruening’s kids and the boarding school?

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: And his kids were Huntington?

Hurley: Huntington. Well his first child died and his first child was Ernest, Jr. and he was at prep school and got an infection. It was mastoid and he died before and the irony was that his father was – Ernest Gruening’s father was a specialist in Ear, Nose & Throat in New York City. But it was before the use of –

Terence: Penicillin.

Hurley: Penicillin, which of course if they had it. That was a great tragedy for Ernest Gruening. He was 15 years old. And as a result he wrote absolutely the most sensitive beautiful letters to people who lost children. I remember my sister’s oldest boy was killed when he was 18 and Ernest Gruening was no longer – he was a senator but he heard about it and he remembered my sister and he wrote her a beautiful letter because he would empathize but he had such a wonderful gift of using words, as you know. That what was so exciting about when I finally got over my nervousness was just the way – just taking his dictation was a pleasure because he knew exactly how he wanted to say something. And he oftentimes would walk around and when especially he was writing speeches. He smoked cigars and he’d walk around smoking a cigar. And when I became pregnant with my son while I was working, my husband was in the service, and he said well how long can you work? I said I have to work. And I worked up until the day before my son was born which was unheard of because you weren’t supposed to be in public when you were showing. I hope I’m not moving around too much, I just realized.

Terence: You’re doing great Katie. Well that’s so interesting. So when he dictated he’d pace back and forth. Did he move his arms around? How – what did he look like?

Hurley: Well he would kind of just think – you could tell that he was you know in deep thought but he would move – no he wouldn’t move his arms, but he would – and then he would sometimes it would be a story you know and then he’d kind of explain to me what – why you know the background of something. Of course that was always fun when he took that time to tell me why he was writing or talking about this particular issue.

Terence: So in a way for you that was kind of like your college, right?

Hurley: Right. Bob Bartlett said I had a Ph.D. at the College of Ernest Gruening. He wrote me that when we were all going out of office.

Terence: Cause I think some of that session was particularly bad, the ’53 session, do you remember that one?

Hurley: Oh, yeah, it was.

Terence: What was wrong with it?

Hurley: The leadership. I think – I can’t remember. I have books to tell me that.

Terence: There was a lot of drinking and you know, I heard it, alleged, I don’t know if this is true that they never actually adjourned when things came to an end. Do you know that story that the speaker might have gotten a little drunk?

Hurley: Oh, I was gone. I don’t know that was.

Terence: That was maybe after you left?

Hurley: Yes, see I was in town but I wasn’t around the halls you know because we were persona non grata, you know, they didn’t want any of us around there.

Terence: So you worked for Gruening I think from December of 1940 to April 195 –

Hurley: 1953.

Terence: 3 – 53.

Hurley: And then I typed his book. I worked for him personally his history of –

Terence: The state of Alaska.

Hurley: The state of Alaska. I typed those chapters and sent them to the – worked at home and did those and he was living out at his cabin. And then he – and then it was during the Constitutional Convention that his son committed suicide.

Terence: What impact did that have? I mean that must have been awful.

Hurley: Oh, it was very hard and especially hard because he was in a down time in his career. There was nothing going on. He had – of course he was – how old – he was in his 60’s cause he was 50 when he became governor in 1939. I think he was born in 1887 and so in ’56 he would have been close to 70. Cause I think he was in his 70’s when he ran the first time for the senate. I mean those facts, I mean if I did my subtraction I could figure it out right now, but.

Terence: So he was at least – he was over 80 by 1968, I remember that. So he was over 80 by then, so you’re right. So he is in his high 60’s or low 70’s for sure.

Hurley: Uh-huh. I know he was 70 the first, past 70 when he first ran in 1959.

Terence: ’59.

Hurley: ’58.

Terence: ’58 I guess.

Hurley: I think he would have been just 71.

Terence: You know I think you’re right. I think he was born in 1887, I think you’re right. Well, but so do you remember when – was he in Fairbanks when he got the news about the suicide or where did you hear about that? Do you remember where you were, you may not?

Hurley: I think it was –

Terence: Was it during the time of the convention?

Hurley: I think it was during the convention cause or else it was during the Democratic Convention because I think it was in the spring, but I remember that he didn’t go down there. He sent his son Huntington down to take care of things cause he didn’t want to leave Dorothy because it was very devastating. But he had been having – he knew that Peter was having problems. He had a marriage that hadn’t worked out and he had gotten this job I think he was working for United Press or something. And yeah, it was very tough. And I know that EG wanted to be the National Committeeman for the Democratic Party and he was very upset with me because I didn’t support him for that because –

Hurley: – was doing a good job. I mean that’s the kind of a person you need in that job and it was very upsetting to him and it was just sort – it was doubly bad for me because he had this tragedy of Peter. And so, but I just – it was hard for him to understand why I didn’t think that he would be and I think that’s part of the reason why he hung around the convention quite a bit too. He was just at loose ends.

Terence: He would have a terrible.

– Break –

Hurley: No, he was – but Kathryn was a National Committeewoman I think after the Constitutional Convention, but she might have been one during that time, but I don’t think so. You know, the bios are in the Dick Fisher book)

Terence: That’s okay. Here.

Hurley: No, I don’t need to go and get it. I was just going to show you something.

Terence: Well, what’s that, pictures or the?

Hurley: In – oh, the book, up on the top shelf there, there’s a book, paperback that says Dick Fisher State of Alaska Constitutional Convention.

Terence: Oh, yeah, right here.

Hurley: It has got a whole bunch of papers in it, yeah, bring me that. This is what I use to check up on people. I think – I must have just done this a few years ago because this book was published in the fall of 1954.

My autographed copy was presented to me by the author Ernest Gruening, November 29th 1954. My son was eight years old. The following year on Alaska Day, October 18, 1955 I sent him to school with the book. The passage marked which relates what happened in Sitka, October 18, 1867, he was to read it to his class. He was eager to share the story. He had a keen interest in history and Ernest Gruening was not only the Governor of Alaska, he was my boss and friend. I had typed the manuscript at home the summer and fall of 1953. We had also visited Washington, DC the summer of 1955.

I would send the book with him each year. It was a different story when I told my oldest daughter, Susan, she was to read the passage on Alaska Day in 1967, but I also made them take it every day and I told them that they better read it because I was going to call the teacher and check on whether they did it or not. Oh, they would just roll their eyes when I did that but it is a very short paragraph because there is still ignorance as to the difference between Seward’s Day and Alaska Day and I find even reporters calling Seward’s Day, Alaska Day and otherwise. And so I thought well this is my chance to educate a few kids.

Terence: What was the passage?

Hurley: It’s right in the first part of Russian occupation. I can’t believe I don’t have it marked.

Terence: Especially if you have to read it every year.

Hurley: Here it is.

Terence: Mom, –

Hurley: I don’t have my glasses on. I think.

The ceremonies attending the formal transfer of Russia America to the United States took place on October 18, 1867. Sitka Harbor, beautiful with its backdrop of steep forested mountains, was crowded with shipping, which had ridden patiently at anchor for 10 days. On the morning of the 18th the USS Ossopy arrived with Brigadier General Lowell H. Rossaw, United States Commissioner, aboard. At mid-afternoon of a “bright and beautiful day” the Russian troops numbering a hundred formed in front of the house of the governor.

I don’t where he found all this but anyway this I don’t need to read all of that.

Terence: That’s okay. Just that tape of it that’s the idea. What page is that on?

Hurley: It’s on page 25.

Terence: Oh, that’s great.

Hurley: But you could almost picture it from his description and of course there are some paintings and so forth of that, but my son was really interested in history. And he had gotten to go to the Constitutional Convention too when he was nine, ten, I brought him up for a visit and he loved it.

Terence: Well we’ll talk about that in a second. Let me just finish one thing with Gruening. When you said about that he – just went out of my head now, oh, the first message to the – remember after the 1941 session.

Hurley: He sent a message to the people. I have a copy of that.

Terence: Right.

Hurley: Right up there on the shelf and that he couldn’t get it. The Chamber of Commerce in Fairbanks refused to – I guess the News-Miner refused to print it. The only way the message got out was Senator, oh he had a dress shop, I can’t think of his name.

Terence: Nerland.

Hurley: Huh?

Terence: Was it – not Nerland?

Hurley: No, no.

Terence: Nerland?

Hurley: No. He was a Democrat and he took the speech to the Chamber of Commerce and read it and that’s the only way that the people in Fairbanks heard about that. And of course we did mail it out, but that was the first release. And there is a wonderful alliteration in there that I use all the time. Penny pitching pretended patriots. That is what he referred to the people who wouldn’t support having a National Guard Building built. He loved alliterations, but that one I have never forgotten.

Terence: And did – do you remember anything about Gruening’s relationship with Lathrop cause obviously he was running the –

Hurley: Oh, he hated – Cap Lathrop hated him and Murium, his secretary.

Terence: Dickey, Murium Dickey.

Hurley: And Murium Dickey, she was not – we didn’t care much about her either. I learned about – I mean it was so – I mean some people I found out you know later on they were really quite nice people, but EG – they were the enemy because they didn’t support his programs. Or they influenced people in the legislature to oppose, but Cap Lathrop was oh, my he used the power of his newspapers to – and he still owned the News-Miner. But of course when Snedden, he – it was a different story because he really cared about statehood.

Terence: I mean that changed dramatically when Snedden came in, right?

Hurley: Oh, Fairbanks.

Terence: Was that important when Snedden sort of shifted the paper’s politics?

Hurley: Oh that was – because it was a very popular newspaper. It was one of the best papers in the – it was a much better paper than the Juneau Empire and it was bigger than the Anchorage Times until Bob Atwood took over that paper.

Terence: Yeah, and that –

Hurley: And actually it wasn’t until Bob Atwood came into money that they really did a lot more than what – well I guess he got some help from Elmer when he –

Terence: Oh, from Elmer’s dad, E. A.

Hurley: Elmer’s dad, yes.

Terence: Did you ever meet E. A. Rasmuson? Do you remember Elmer’s father or you never met him?

Hurley: I knew of him when he was a figure in southeast Alaska from Skagway when I was a child, but I never – I think I met him when he came to the office because I think he was still alive when Ernest Gruening became governor and I think he had served on the Board of Regents or else – I know that –

Terence: Well he was on the regents, but he was the Republican Committeeman a long time.

Hurley: He was a big, yeah. I know that one of the things that the Democrats were very upset with Ernest Gruening when he appointed Elmer Rasmuson to the Board of Regents and because he was a Republican and the Democrats were furious with him that he couldn’t find a good, but EG knew what he was doing because Elmer, huh, just think of what he did. And he knew that he would because of his background would be what the University needed. And he also tried to appoint Louise Kellogg from here to the Board of Regents and the Democrats turned her down. And then of course she became a Regent for the Pacific Alaska Methodist University and gave all of her – I mean the University could have had because she would have done that if she had serving on the Board of Regents. So they were not very practical in that, but there were too many Democrats that wanted to be on the Board of Regents.

Terence: You know did you – did Lathrop ever come down to the governor’s office? I don’t know if you ever seen him down there, did he ever –

Hurley: I don’t recall that he ever, but it was a very – we had all of the you know everybody when they came through town on those early 40’s it was – the boat would be in town for a short time and people from up North would always come to the governor’s office. It was a busy place and that’s how I got to know so many people around the state that when I went to the convention I knew almost all of the delegates.

Terence: Now you said you had either known or heard of everyone except one. Who was the one that you –

Hurley: Tommy Harris from Valdez, who was elected by having only – I think he only needed – he was 29 votes or something is all he had and he was elected, but I hadn’t heard of him. I think he was – is it all right for my kitty to be here?

Terence: Is that okay for the camera?

Terence: She’s cute, yeah.

Hurley: She can go down. Kitty, you don’t need to be up here now. Go down, okay.

Terence: How come he only had 29 – he only had 29 votes total or?

Hurley: I think, well that’s another thing that we can check that right in here, but the legislature when they drafted that bill they wanted to have as wide a representation as possible and so they set up election districts that were so that all areas would be represented and that was before the one man, one vote. Nowadays it is not possible, which is why they could never have the same makeup in the constitution and that’s why it would never be brought forward because of the fact that was so representative. And some people you know who ran statewide they had to have over I think 7,000 votes is what elected Ralph Rivers and so it was when you look at the – there was an imbalance in that – in the number of votes, but for dividing up representation it – but it didn’t work out in the villages and that was too bad and they thought that it would. But the people who were in – very few people you know Natives got elected. Lonborg was from Unalakleet and he got elected whereas a Native Alaskan or Eskimo. One of the things that I want to do is to look at in hindsight to look at who actually was running and have to get those from the archives to see how many people filed for those particular out of the way places. Cause Frank Peranovich was the only Alaska Native and he had been a Senator so he had name recognition.

Terence: But there were some other former Native legislators that could have been I mean like from – I forget now. Weren’t there some from Nome or –

Hurley: Oh, yes, Bill Beltz for instance. And I don’t know whether I think he had run, but you know I think that was Bill got a brain tumor and was not able to run and died very young from that. But I was going to check to see whether he had even tried because he certainly had been in the legislature already.

Terence: Well you know Katie let me double back to one thing. One thing that I wanted to ask you about with message to the people.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: From Gruening, that was kind of radical thing that he did, wasn’t it?

Hurley: Oh, yes. He was so angry about the way the legislature had acted and he – and there had been very little coverage of the session because in those days they didn’t send reporters down to cover and the Juneau Empire was so anti-Gruening that they wouldn’t print – you know they’d just print the negative stuff. And he realized that was the only way he was going to let the people know what had happened.

Terence: Lou Williams I think said that at some time Helen Monson stopped using Gruening’s name and would refuse to use his name, do you remember that – the stories just said the governor and they would never mention Gruening’s name?

Hurley: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They – well they had –

Terence: Why did she hate him so much?

Hurley: When he – when there was the – when his term was up and President Truman had taken over and his – there was such a movement to not have him re-appointed that a special plane was – Steve, I mean Steve and Stanley, I think Stanley McCutcheon was behind it and people paid their own way to go to Washington, DC to a hearing to be sure that he was re-appointed.

Terence: That’s okay. Because there was that big effort to blocking him, right?

Hurley: Oh, yes.

Terence: Because they thought first of all Dewey was –

Hurley: Go home, get, oh, the negative editorials were terrible. They were just. It was hard to think that people could be so mean. I mean they were on him. They were just – they were really – even when he first came up here there was a lot of anti-Semitic approach you know. Jew from New York and I didn’t even know what that there were what Jews were when I was growing up in Juneau. My father was working with the Mayor of Juneau, who was a Jew, but nobody ever talked about it in a negative way. We knew that – I knew that – I guess I realized that there was any religious – there were no synagogues or religious Jews in Juneau at that time.

Terence: And did that – what was Gruening’s response to these like if he got the News-Miner and would come down in the mail I guess and how would that be? Would he read the newspaper? Would he read a lot of the paper?

Hurley: Oh yes, we got all the papers. That was one of my jobs was clipping those newspapers and my kids thinks that’s my fixation. I’m still doing it. Because I had to – Estella would mark the stories. He had kept wonderful scrapbooks. They must be up in the archives up there because all that stuff was put in a scrapbook and you know the pros and the cons. Oh, yeah, he – it was – it sort of rubbed off, but I know it couldn’t help but get to him you know when everybody would be so negative.

Terence: Now did he ever say anything or do you remember when – so would he read the paper and then mark the articles or would Estella do that or would he?

Hurley: Oh sometimes he marked them and sometimes she marked them and took them in to him so that he would haven’t peruse the whole paper and I think that was why she marked them and then they would come to me, passed on to me to clip.

Terence: But you think – was Lathrop – it seemed to me it was – got quite personal between – I mean that it was really awful between Gruening and Lathrop, don’t you think?

Hurley: Oh, yes, it was.

Terence: Lathrop was so –

Hurley: Oh, yes, he was, very – he was so powerful and he didn’t take any you know – took – he had the power of the press and he used it very well, very well. Because, as I said, when Chuck Herbert came down he had no idea you know until he talked with him what a person of vision he was and depth as far as knowledge of government. And but that was what everybody had been fed. And I mean they had nasty editorials even when it was at the end you know.

Terence: Do you remember –

Hurley: Thanks, good-bye, good riddance or something like that you know. We’re glad you’re going. But Bob Atwood they raised a fund and bought him a car. I remember when that happened, that was very moving cause EG was hard for him to – for – to show emotion. He was always – I always thought it was because he was born in a very – I think his father must have been terribly cold and he had four sisters and they – he was the youngest. I think they gave him a lot of attention and encouragement, but he didn’t have – his father gave him a lot of wonderful attributes but I think the one thing that he never had was real love shown cause he was – never was demonstrative at all in any way.

Terence: Was it hard for him even you know with his kids I mean to show it – I mean it probably – I guess it was hard for him?

Hurley: Yes it was and you know I thought that – and I think I helped him you know because I would tell him you know after I – after all I had been with him several years and became in 19 – let’s see it was – I was just a clerk stenographer a couple of years and then I was the assistant secretary and then I became his secretary, which was like chief of staff when it was the same in 1945. It was in May of 1945 that I became his secretary. By that time you know we had been through a lot of battles. And that was when I – he would talk to me about Peter you know. And you know I told him that you know I thought it was hard for kids to be so far away from home at such a young age and that it was trusting in them to have – cause of the lack of even telephone service you know. And he never went to school in Alaska. They left him in a private school back when he came here.

And we talked about stuff and I’ll never forget when I told him that I was pregnant and I said you know I really hadn’t planned to get pregnant you know. I wasn’t exactly ready for that but anyway I said I was pregnant and he said, was it the Immaculate Conception? And that’s the first time that’s – but it was just blew me away you know. I thought what do I say now you now, but he realized that – and he had this twinkle in his eye you know. And that was in the next breath he said, how long can you work? And then he said does this cigar bother you, you know? And I said oh, no, I wasn’t having any problems like that. But he was and that was the thing that always made me so unhappy when people criticized him as not being very human, but it was just his way he had been raised you know. And he just couldn’t it was hard for him to be – show his emotions.

Terence: Did you think – some people said that he was really good you know like a lot of people – loving the people in the abstract? I mean you know as far as good causes. Cause you know he was on the right side of a lot of –

Hurley: Oh, yes.

Terence: But that it was difficult for him as far as even a politician taking care of individual people sometime or maybe that’s not –

Hurley: No, I don’t – yes, I think that’s true and you know I never got to see him much in Washington, DC. I always wondered how you know because so much of that constituent work is you know taking time to see people when they come back there. But he had a lot of staff, a lot more staff than Bob Bartlett because I think Bob Bartlett liked – he was a real people person.

Terence: Bob was and not Gruening. I mean Ernest, Bob was. Bob was people.

Hurley: Bob was, yeah, right, yeah.

Terence: Well, so let’s go to the or DA was telling us the other day a little bit about Bob and you know the family and all those family problems you know. The uncles and her dad or the uncle who murders the – do you remember the story? The Molly Walsh story. I don’t know if you know that Bob’s uncle.

Hurley: I don’t.

Terence: Do you guys remember that?

Hurley: I don’t remember that story at all.

Terence: The famous story of Molly. It’s in the thing that was –

Hurley: Is that –

Terence: Bob Dunkel murders –

Hurley: Is that in what’s his name’s book?

Terence: It’s in by P. R. Burton, the Klondike Fever.

Hurley: Oh, is it. I’ve read that book, but I don’t remember.

Terence: Well then Mike Bartlett in there is Bob’s uncle.

Hurley: Oh, really.

Terence: And anyway, so when DA was a kid, Mary told us this and so we brought it up to DA and she explained how Bob never told them the story. They didn’t know that. And this was a very famous story I guess in Alaska during the Gold Rush Days cause the uncle had killed this Molly Walsh. It is a very, you know, murdered her in a state of heat I guess.

Hurley: Up in the Klondike?

Terence: It was in Seattle. She had been with this other guy and then anyway he was then found innocent by version of insanity and went six months in the pen and Morningside or maybe it was pre-Morningside. And then he later committed suicide. So there were all kinds of bad things and then DA said when Bob went to the senate he refused to have a genealogy done because he didn’t want them you know.

Hurley: That he –

Terence: Right and the whole and all the uncles cause apparently all the brothers at one time or another served time or were committed to the insane asylum even his dad Ed Bartlett, briefly. I don’t know if he ever went, but I think he was you know back in those days of course they sent everybody to the insane asylum. So what do you think about sort of his, Bob, and kind of his you know his personality, his makeup you know, what was he like? Cause you saw him sometimes in DC right I guess, right?

Hurley: Yes, I lived with them when in 1948 I went back with Ernest Gruening and there was only money for plane fare and so I had to – I lived with Mary Lee and her mother for part of the time and then I stayed with Bob and Vie. They had – Doris Ann was in college I think. So I was able to have her room so anyway I stayed with them.

Terence: Now was that the 19 – that was the time when he was battling for re-appointment in ’48, was that when you went back or was that after? Had he already been re-appointed, do you remember?

Hurley: ’48 –

Terence: Cause he was re-appointed.

Hurley: Well it must have been – he had been re-appointed by Roosevelt cause he was appointed in – he came to Alaska in ’39 and four years would have been ’43 and or ’44 and Roosevelt was still alive. So it was in Truman’s sort of end of Truman’s term the second time. And I think it was ’49 when they went back for my memory is, but it might have been.

Terence: I think it was ’48, cause by ’49 was the income tax. It might have been. I can’t –

Hurley: ’49 was the legislature, yeah, it would have been ’48 and it was in ’48 in the spring so.

Terence: Probably (inaudible) or something.

Hurley: All I know is that –

Terence: Well how did you go back, Katie? Did you guys drive?

Hurley: Oh, no, flew. I flew in a plane where you had to stop in Nebraska and get out and buy your own lunch you know. They didn’t – it was like a DC3 or something that went across country. It was a long trip I remember that. And see what were we talking about.

Terence: You were going back to DC.

Hurley: Oh, I was going and he –

Terence: And –

Hurley: Had trouble having secretaries back there. I think the new director of the Division of Territories wasn’t very cooperative and so he wanted me to – he just felt that he just needed to have somebody there to do his work. While it was the easiest job I ever had it was nothing like working in Alaska. Because he would be up on the hill and then he would be in the office a short time, so I didn’t have much to do and it was a chance for me to really see and learn about the city. It was very – I had a great time, but I was so shocked at the way the place was run. Ichy’s blew whistles or bells went off when you were supposed to be at your desk and bells went off when it was time to quit. Wouldn’t dare be in the hallway or you might be knocked down. And I had to stay until the governor got back from the hill so I didn’t have very regular hours, but it was very educational.

Terence: Now that –

– Break –

Terence: Oh, it’s beautiful. I love it. Well DA said that you drove back across country. Do you remember that? It was a trip I think right before the convention. Was there a trip that you –

Hurley: It was in –

Terence: ’53 maybe, ’54.

Hurley: Fifty, it was after – it was like ’54 because – no, it was between I think it was the summer of the ’55. I had worked in the legislature and they took my son and Biddy had invited me to come and drive cross-country with her. It was a fabulous trip because we went to see some of his relatives in Wisconsin, who lived on a farm and David, my son, was just fascinated with them because they had interesting names. He can still – I can’t remember them now, but –

Terence: These are Biddy’s relatives?

Hurley: No, they were Bob’s aunts and they were sisters of his mother, on his mother’s side of the family, but it was quite a trip with Susie and Doris Ann and David and Biddy and me. And we drove up the highway and went to Juneau first and then later that summer I worked for Bob. I went up there and worked for him part of that summer.

Terence: Was that the first time you had driven on the highway that trip?

Hurley: No, my husband and I, first husband and I had taken a trip to Seattle and had bought a car and had come back up the – just as far as Juneau, but that was not – I had never done it from the back East and we came up through Montana, I think, where we went across. No we went clear to Spokane before we went – yeah we stopped in Spokane to see some relatives. And then we came up to you know – went into the Alaska Highway. It was pretty primitive still then, not many places to stop I remember.

Terence: Did you have – so you went – after you left Gruening left office, April of ’53, and then at that time had he already started working on the State of Alaska?

Hurley: Oh yeah he started working on it while he was in the – still governor. He was writing some things and I worked on it at home.

Terence: Did he ever talk about it much about what he was doing and –

Hurley: Oh, yeah.

Terence: What did he – what was his you know –

Hurley: He was reading a lot of stuff doing research in all that time and getting stuff from the library there in Juneau and you know he told me that he was going to call it the State of Alaska. He was very –

Terence: Did he say why – what was his – how did he –

Hurley: He was thinking of it you know he was oh, something that I wanted to find to show you was this letterhead of – while he was governor he formed the Statehood Committee you know in 1949. And then he got a national honorary Statehood Committee of 100 people from Hollywood and writers and so – have you ever seen that stationery that has all those names in red, white, and blue’s letterhead? Well I had one of those and I was going to show it to you, but there should be some of it in the papers up there in the statehood stuff.

Terence: Yeah.

Hurley: But he didn’t have any – you know he could write Al Jolson and tell him all about it and everybody was eager to join and that was one of and of course he was doing lecturing across country. I don’t how he got away with that because he accepted fees and maybe he took leave. I don’t remember the details of that, but some people criticized him for that, but he loved doing it.

Terence: What was he like as a speaker – Gruening? I mean when you hear him give a speech, was he – how effective was he?

Hurley: Well he was so eloquent and he never had a note and people would just you know to me it was amazing that – tell him anything and he could give a whole speech on you know whatever without writing it down, although when he did the messages to the legislature he wanted so many facts that he had to. But he had a very quick mind for remembering statistics once he had written facts that he didn’t need them when he was lecturing across country about Alaska. And he had slides too I think sometimes. He had taken a lot of you know kind of slides that 35mm and he used those I think on when he was lecturing. I never saw him but I had a lot of people – my husband Jim Hurley had aunts who went to his lectures at Berkeley and were just fascinated by his eloquence.

Terence: So but did you ever help he had to give a speech locally – did he ever speak in Juneau?

Hurley: Oh yeah, but he never wrote those out, no. He did very little – seldom did he have to write those kind of speeches. It was mostly when he was going to be giving his address to the legislature that I remember now.

Terence: They had to be printed too.

Hurley: Yeah, right.

Terence: But in a way he really did this policy of trying to bypass the legislature, didn’t he? Cause when the program was stymied in the legislature in a way wasn’t this addressed to the people sort of a way of putting pressure on them to change their ways? Is that a fair characterization, would you say?

Hurley: Oh, yeah, that was certainly calculated that he would and he would go well for instance when the legislature in ’48 I think it was ’49, no it wasn’t ’49, must have been ’47. Yeah, it was ’47 they did away with the Development Board. And George Sonborg had been the Director of the Development Board. So what does he do? He gets a position in our office. It was open, somebody had left and he hires George Sonborg to be there. But George Sonborg was doing the work of the Development Board. I mean that’s the way he carried on the work of the Development Board was he just moved it to our office and was doing that same thing in the office, but that kept that space because it was under the governor’s office.

Terence: You know if how would you characterize Bartlett as a speaker? What was he like? We were talking a little bit about him when you first heard him in the –

Hurley: Oh, well, when he ran you know it was Ernest Gruening who pushed him to – encouraged him to run for delegate the first time. Vie was not crazy about that. I don’t if Doris Ann said that, but she wasn’t crazy about going to Washington, DC at first. And – but his first speech when we heard him on the radio and everybody was cringing because it was so bad. And yet it was beautifully written, but nobody would pay you know you have to able to project and so it was really great when he could send speeches and they were printed and people could read them. But I don’t think he ever really – I think he had to me he had a slight speech impediment and it got in the way. But he was not – he was very even. He wasn’t – he didn’t project like EG just had a natural talent for it. I think just because of his education. And the fact that he had just been – I mean he had you know seen and gone to the theater for years and had that probably had taken what they call elocution lessons even. I’m sure his father saw to that.

Terence: And Bob didn’t have those advantages.

Hurley: And he didn’t have those advantage – he went to the University of Washington, but he didn’t ever grad – I don’t think he graduated but he didn’t have that background, but he certainly wrote very well and in a way that he got his points across very well. And on the floor he – I think he was very good in the congress.

And he had such a personality with people that – it is something that I told Mary that we really should try to do something about for his 100th birthday because he was able to get bills passed and get money for Alaska and he had nothing to trade. He was a vote less delegate you know. And it was all because of the great friendships that he had with the leaders.

I mean he was very close to Lyndon Johnson for instance and he was very close to the senator from Montana who was a powerhouse – Mike Mansfield. They were personal family. You know the wives and you know they had dinners together and you know. Washington wasn’t as social, high social in those early days during the war.

I don’t know if this cat is bothering this wire. Is it?

Terence: She’s okay.

Hurley: Kitty, kitty.

Terence: You know if and he ended up on the Appropriations Committee.

Hurley: Bob.

Terence: Bob.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: Which was pretty amazing for being on the appropriations.

Hurley: But that’s because he was so close to the power you know and Ernest Gruening was not Lyndon Johnson’s friend after the Tonkin Resolution.

Terence: What about Gruening and the Tonkin Gulf? Did you ever talk to him about that or hear him talk about that? I know you weren’t working for him.

Hurley: Oh, yes, he talked about, yes. When years later, but you know the interesting thing to me is that he doesn’t – they mostly mention the senator from Oregon. They don’t mention Ernest Gruening very much in connection with that.

Terence: Morris.

Hurley: Wayne Morris. And I don’t know why that is but he wasn’t Mr. –

Terence: Congeniality.

Hurley: Yeah. He knew what he wanted to do and he did it and he – I think he stepped on a lot – he wasn’t very good at going through the steps that you’re supposed to. He saw the target and he went there and he didn’t want to go around it like in the real true political way and made I think you know I’m sure he was a thorn in Bob’s side a lot of the time because of that. And yet it was just his – I think it was he couldn’t help it. It was just his personality and he was – he was so eager that he could see that it could be done and he just wanted to get it done.

Terence: You know and if it is something that I guess with Gruening’s this thing of his personality, could he ever have been elected governor of Alaska in the 40’s do you think? Would he ever – if there had been an elected governor you know was that something that would ever have been possible do you think or given the you know –

Hurley: I don’t know because the way he enjoyed you know when he was out in the Bush those Native people just adored him because he really was very much down to earth with them and he was the one who to me brought this message back about how well educated – I mean they just had education from within and some of their talents that they could – I remember his first tale saying how they could take motors apart and put them back together and make them go and no one else could. And he was so fascinated by the people out there that –

Terence: But they –

Hurley: I think that they would have voted – they called him the Great White Father or something like that you know because of the fact that he had gotten – well first place the discrimination law that he put forth the first session in 1941 and you know Elizabeth Pradovich gets a lot of credit for passing it, but it was – he had put it in in ’41 and in ’43 and that was a plan. I mean we all knew that she was going to be there and he had worked behind the scenes to be sure that she would be recognized so that she could do that. But he was very generous in his book to give her credit too so I have soft pedal my feeling about the fact that he didn’t really get the recognition for having fought for that.

And he went over to the bar – I remember him going over to the bar in Douglas and talking to the guy there and he was Italian and he said how would you like it if somebody put up a sign and said No Italians Allowed. And he did it with a Greek restaurateur in Anchorage the same thing. And he was not afraid to call it to their attention, how wrong that was. But it was a different era. But it was at such a different kind of campaigning that you know there wasn’t the money being thrown around like it is today. It was a pretty much one on one and I’m sure but what they would have used that against him that he was too sophisticated too much from New York.

Terence: And it really was something that with the anti-discrimination act that he was passionate about that, wasn’t he?

Hurley: Oh, he was. He was absolutely. He was just stunned that people had signs up. Oh the one that got him the most was No Dogs or Natives you know. That really – when he saw those he’d go in and shake it at the – but it was pretty sad commentary on Alaska still.

Terence: And it really was like you say an orchestrated campaign by him with the Alberta Shink, the woman in Nome. I don’t know if you remember that in the movie theater.

Hurley: Well no I remember the telegram when it came in that day.

Terence: What was – what happened?

Hurley: Well you know we knew – you didn’t get telegrams all the time you know and it was very expensive –

Hurley: – and well he got the details from the mayor. I think it was Ed Anderson at the time, who was not exactly fighting for – I think he was discriminated himself but he was outraged at that girl. It was wonderful that she had the guts to send him the telegram. I don’t know who was behind that but he was very moved by it and he did. We had a hot line to – a direct line to General Buckner during the war and he really read him out about that they ought better do something about it.

Terence: Do you remember – did the telegram was brought up and you brought it in to him or how did that work? Do you remember and if not, that’s okay?

Hurley: I saw the telegram and I do think I took it right in to him because it was – no, I wasn’t in that position yet I don’t think. But I remember taking the – cause he wrote several letters about it that it was –

Terence: But I think –

Hurley: But it was happening right in Juneau too you know, but the discrimination.

Terence: It was just that this case in Nome was so stark and then she went to jail.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: And that was the whole deal refusing to move and stuff so.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: It was a perfect case for him to make.

Hurley: Well he was –

Terence: It wasn’t Elizabeth Peratrovich in a way I mean you know. It doesn’t seem to me – she’s important but it is mostly symbolic.

Hurley: No, yeah, that but it’s – I don’t ever talk you know I don’t ever say anything because –

Terence: No, I’m just saying that. No, because I think it is absolutely true. If you look at the record it’s a little bit –

Hurley: It would never have happened if it hadn’t have been for her to scream.

Terence: It wasn’t because she was in the audience that day and stood up and he set the whole thing up.

Hurley: Oh, yeah.

Terence: And he was in a sense –

Hurley: But I think that they knew that Mr. Shaddock would probably get up and be – I don’t know that they thought it would be about her wonderful response was terrific. But she was ready for it you know. They knew –

Terence: Were you going to say you didn’t know quite so dumb.

Hurley: Yeah, that would be so stupid as to get up and say what he said, but not surprising.

Terence: Do you remember – ask one more question and then let’s talk about the convention specifically, but you know who was the Democratic senator that Gruening felt so betrayed by I can’t remember the guy’s name? I think it begins with a “D”, Norm. No, not Norm.

Hurley: Where was he from?

Terence: I don’t remember. Had to have been from Nome or the west some place. No, no, it begins with a “D” his last name I think, is there –

Hurley: There’s a Democrat Ed Coffey.

Terence: No, it wasn’t Coffey.

Hurley: Because he wasn’t any special friend. He was a Democrat.

Terence: Doc somebody?

Hurley: Oh Doc Walker.

Terence: Doc Walker.

Hurley: From Ketchikan.

Terence: Yeah, yeah, okay, he’s from Ketchikan, yeah. What about – I mean cause they seemed to have a really bad relationship with him, right or maybe am I mis-remembering?

Hurley: Well I think it’s because he had promised something and then he voted the other way because he got money or something you know. Nobody knows what people do. In those days they could promise him – I think he had a drinking problem – Doc Walker and whether somebody took advantage of him when he was in his cups and he made some kind of a commitment, but anyway I know EG didn’t trust him any more after that.

Terence: Yeah, and he –

Hurley: And I guess he was a pharmacist is where he got his nickname Doc. I think he ran a – but I think it was maybe he hadn’t really been a friend all along you know it’s hard to say. But I think he was counting on him and then –

Terence: Is there something can you sort of summarize why was the fishing – why did Gruening sort of target the fishing interests as kind of his – is it safe to say – fair to say that they were kind of his main antagonists in a way or –

Hurley: Well he was outraged that they didn’t pay – that it was a resource that was you know a renewable resource but that they weren’t paying their fair share. It was you know something like the constitution says it belonged to all the people of Alaska and they were getting by with very little taxation on the crop you know the canned salmon and the fact that they were also handpicking legislators and financing them to elect and be there so that – it was really his taxation plan I think that made him and then after Bill Arnold retired from lobbying. There was Pete, he was from Ketchikan also, and his brother was a lawyer and old family in Ketchikan. I can’t say it right now; the name doesn’t come forward. I can just him but he was not like Bill Arnold. He was sneaking around you know making all of his moves behind the scenes and EG didn’t cotton to him very well. He was also he didn’t like Ernest Gruening either. He was part of the friendly with the Empire.

Terence: So Arnold – does he represent the canned salmon industry, right?

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: So how did he I mean you know did he come by often to talk to Gruening in the office?

Hurley: Oh, yeah, he’d come up to the office and they’d chat and so forth, in fact –

Terence: Sort of measure each other up, is that –

Hurley: Yeah. I think that he enjoyed sparring with him you know, Arnold did with – I think he recognized his ability and I think given you know he was being paid and he couldn’t very well be a supporter and being paid by the canned salmon industry, but I think he respected him, a lot more than people thought.

Terence: Maybe we can use the voice over, we don’t have to use that picture. So that’s good. So I think that so that the fishing industry are really the core, right?

Hurley: Well it was the fish traps.

Terence: Why were the fish traps such a big problem? Why were they such you know –

Hurley: Because it was the big industry people owned most of the fish traps and it was taking some of the biologists and so forth didn’t think it was – I believe that they didn’t think it was very good for sustaining yield to have them because there wasn’t much monitoring of them. And sometimes they would put them right close to creeks and by the time they found out about that they were there there would have been no escapement and that was one thing I believe. But the other thing was that it was taking jobs away from people who had individual boats. It was a wonderful way to get a lot of fish and I think that that was a very, very, very clever thing that the constitutional delegates did was to make that an ordnance to go on the ballot at the same time that the constitution was to be voted on because it was a very, very popular issue and would get out the vote, which it did. And of course it was they were dead as soon as the day that we became a state because they didn’t have to wait for the legislature to meet.

Terence: I mean it’s fair to say isn’t it that that was probably the most popular. I mean that approach is like people’s love of the dividend today, the hatred of fish traps, don’t you think?

Hurley: Oh, yeah. I think so. Oh, yes, it was and my friend who I went to school with was a delegate from Petersburg, Elder Lee, was a very quiet person and did not get the credit that he should have for his presenting that to the convention and arguing for it and then the going along with the – cause he was a fisherman, long time father before him. And then the genius of Buckalou and Burke Riley and a couple of others in not having it in the constitution but having the ordinance so that it would – that they would be able to – the public would be able to vote on it and also read – take more interest in the constitution itself.

Terence: Why though not have it in the constitution? I guess I don’t understand that. Why not have it cause they’re voting on the constitution as well?

Hurley: Cause one of the things that they had decided in the beginning was that they – the constitution was to be broad concepts and not legislation. And that’s one criticism that – he wasn’t my husband then, but Jim Hurley said of the resources article the day that they voted on it he pointed out that he thought that there was – that just because there were so many issues that people couldn’t get together on that there is more language in the resources article that should really have been legislation, but he said he was not going to vote against it at – because of the it was too late. It had just come to him in studying it that he felt basically that they should have taken some of the language out and left it for legislation.

Terence: So the idea –

Hurley: And I think that he thought that there were certain things that were going to make it difficult as the years go on.

Terence: Let’s wait – stop right there to change his tapes.

Hurley: Excuse me.

Terence: That’s okay.

– Break –

Hurley: They have no vision.

Terence: Yeah, right, yeah.

Hurley: They just are seeing today and maybe tomorrow.

Terence: No, the distant horizon is the next election. That’s it, you know. Of course, the national scene isn’t any different. We were talking as we grew up –

Hurley: Oh, golly, I hope I live long enough to see change.

Hurley: God, isn’t it sick. You know what before you start – I want to say –

Man: It was a perfectly dry all the way out –

Hurley: That day George Sonborg was the editor.

Terence: The day the bill was passed. Let’s do that story. You were (inaudible) right. Your son was fishing.

Hurley: My son, my son was what 1957 – he was born in 46.

Terence: So it was ’58.

Hurley: ’58, he was like 12 years old and he wanted to go fishing and this friend of mine liked to fish and she had promised to take him fishing. And so I knew that it was Bob Bartlett had called to let me know that this was going to be the day, some time that day he was sure it was going to be the vote cause they had been arguing it and he was quite sure. And so I had called Bill and said I want to come by and we had connected and I volunteered during election to help with counting and stuff. So we were out there and it came on and we – I think I was even driving and Thane it was about three or four miles and we dashed in. I parked the car and ran up the steps, two at a time, I was so excited to get up there. Cause I knew I wouldn’t see all of it but David was so excited to about it. And we got up there and saw the – to me that was the day that we became a state because there had been no much work and we had been so long. I had been in Washington in 1950 when the house had passed the state – I was in the gallery. I was with Mary Lee Council. Bob had seen to it that we were there when they passed the statehood bill in 1950. So this is like eight years later. So that was very exciting to be there.

Terence: And did you see it come over the Teletype?

Hurley: I was it coming over the Teletype. They were calling the role. I still – by the time we got there I guess there was some argument I knew I was able to get there cause you know in the senate they still – they don’t use automatic they still call the role and it takes a while to call. At that time of course there were 98, no 96 senators because Hawaii came in after us.

But you know it was so exciting because there hadn’t been since 1912 you know and during the convention I don’t think anyone had any conception that it would happen so quickly. Looking back it is amazing the it was just two years and they thought – that’s why hardly anybody of the lobbyists came to the convention. They thought it was an exercise in futility. To bad those guys are so carried away that they are spending all that time writing it – the constitution. But it was I think because it was such a good constitution and the planning had been so good and having those consultants who were so well established too that – and yet they didn’t write it but they got into it too I think. I think they didn’t realize how emotional it would be for people to recognize that what they were doing was once in a lifetime.

Terence: It was a pretty emotional experience for everybody wasn’t it? Was it for you I mean how you know –

Hurley: Oh I knew it was all those years that I worked with Gruening as I said I never felt I was going to work. I thought I was the luckiest person alive to be there and that was the way I felt every day and I never was – I never was tired. I mean I must have been but I don’t have any memory of it getting to me and I just had a lot of energy and knew what – and the fact that they got it done and so well. But those – they worked not just when they were out there. Some people I guess didn’t but I know a lot of them when they went home at night were reviewing what they had done and what was going to be coming on and studying those – I have the copies of those work pages that the Statehood Committee had done.

And it was such – the other thing I think about having another convention that is that nobody was there thinking that they were going to be making a big career from having been there or it was – and they had such respect for each other, even though there were lots of Republicans and although there were more Democrats in nominally at least then, but even the people who had served in the legislature I think acted different.

– Break, phone rings –

Terence: That’s right, exactly, and worrying. Let’s see; cause you thought nobody was anticipating a career out of it.

Hurley: No, I never got the feeling about it, although I think that you know there was the election of the president was pretty – there was one person who really wanted it badly, Vic Rivers, and he had been a very good legislator and he would have been an adequate chair but he would not have been the kind of chair that Bill Egan was and really bringing people together. And that was so amazing how people – they may have come there some of them with an agenda. But they certainly – they never showed because it was just so much – but there were some real healthy debates and it good to see and good that it was cause the results were much more effective because they had debated them so heartedly.

Terence: Why was Egan good at you know at chairing?

Hurley: It was just a gift. You know I had seen him as speaker of the house but I hadn’t been in the room. I mean he was speaker of the house when I was still in the governor’s office I believe or else he was when I was in the senate, but I think it was before that. But he was – he wasn’t – he didn’t care about being a star himself I guess is the best – the reason why he – and he was so willing to look at people individually and not be judgmental. And yet you know there were people who he had worked with and I think were on opposite sides but he saw his role, just did it, and much more – much better than anyone could have imagined that he had a very you know just a gentle way.

Hurley: Was a largely forgotten Democratic senator from Alaska named Ernest Gruening, whom I came to know not by covering his campaigns but by the accident of living next door to him when I first moved to Washington in the early 1960’s. He was already in his late 70’s, a small man, pot-bellied, slightly stooped, and appearing myopic. He had been sent to the senate by the voters of Alaska in 1958 as the final stop of a long career in public service that had included a significant role in achieving statehood.

He had a remarkable history. The son of a Jewish physician. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1911, but decided he didn’t want to practice medicine after all. He had too many other interests he once told me and he needed more time to pursue them then a career in medicine would allow. So he went into journalism starting out as a reporter in Boston and eventually serving at different times as editor of several of the many newspapers then published in Boston and New York. He was twice editor of The Nation, once running it by himself and at another time as a member of a board of directors and he wrote what for years was considered the definitive archeological history of Mexico.

But he turned from writing and public service when President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose him in 1934 to be Director of Territories, a post that put him into continuing conflict with notoriously testy Secretary of the Interior Harold Ichies.

One of Gruening’s claims to fame or at least notoriety was his policy of preaching birth control to Puerto Ricans as a first step in having themselves out of poverty. That initiative evoked such a stern reaction from the Roman Catholic hierarchy that Jim Farley, the Democratic National Chairman, asked FDR to call off Gruening or risk losing the Catholic vote in 1936.

Did you know all this?

Ernest’s commitment to birth control continued throughout his public service – public career producing one memorable press photo of him holding up a birth control coil during a senate hearing in an era when the topic was rarely discussed in public. When I came to know him, Ernest’s distinction was as one of the two maverick liberals in the senate. The other was Wayne Morris of Oregon, who were the first to oppose President Lyndon B. Johnson on the war in Vietnam. Because the president wanted unanimity behind the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution the pressure on Gruening was intense, but he seemed to accept it with equanimity that comes from genuine self-confidence. I would be cutting the grass on a hot day in the summer of 1964 when Ernest would appear in his back yard in shorts and sandals balancing precariously on his stringy legs.

I can imagine what he looked like.

That looks like hot work he would call out, time to take a break. So I would abandon the mower and accept a cold beer, then listen for an hour while Gruening brought me up to date on LBJ’s attempt to change his mind on Vietnam. What we are doing is worthwhile Ernest would say because as long as there are even a few dissenters he will feel some restraints on his freedom of action. I liked Lyndon he would say, but he tends to get stubborn about things like this. Eventually he would say the whole country will realize this war is a mistake.

Ernest Gruening wasn’t short of serious politician acting on his convictions, not only on Vietnam but on a whole list of issues on which he became a leading spokesman for the left. He didn’t last long in the senate, however. In 1968, after 10 years he was defeated on a Democratic primary by a younger, slicker candidate who ran clever commercials and once elected was never heard from again. It might have been the beginning of a trend.

Gruening was not silence by defeat. He continued to take a prominent role on liberal issues and he was particularly outraged by Richard Nixon. Campaigning for George McGovern in 1972 when he was 85 years old and assailing Nixon on matters as diverse as his Supreme Court appointments and his attempts to intimidate the press. What made him special was that he cared about getting something done, not just getting elected. There isn’t enough of that going around.

And I was there the night he died. I went with him to the – I was visiting Washington, DC and I’d called on him and while I was there he’d say –

– Break, phone rings –
–
Hurley: Even writes a column any more does he?

Terence: I don’t think – I think he is retired, yeah.

Hurley: I was so stunned when I was reading this book and I came to that point. I couldn’t believe it.

Terence: Is that a pretty good estimate do you think of what you admired about Gruening?

Hurley: Uh-huh. Yeah. I think it’s amazing that he – that as a newspaper person that he recognized those things in him. Yeah, that was – they called the ambulance and –

Terence: Yeah, you said you were that night.

Hurley: I was there in Washington and had gone over to see him and while I was there or when I had called ahead of time and someone said that he wasn’t doing well, but for me to come on out. And Mrs. Gruening was there and so I went in the ambulance with him and she went in a car. And we got over there and who should be there but George McGovern. And then I stayed a little while and then I left, but he died that night. But he was in terrible pain and cause he had – I forget what his cancer was, but he was on – and he was ranting – he was just raling against all the powers that be. And you know Nixon he had been the impeachment came shortly after he died and all I could think of was that oh, if EG had only lived that long so he could see that he was right. He called him a crook you know when he was campaigning for McGovern when he was up here in Alaska. Never could see Nixon.

Terence: What was he railing in the ambulance?

Hurley: Yeah, he was railing in the ambulance. It didn’t make any sense but he was on very high pain Morphine and it was – but he knew me when I came there. Mrs. Gruening said this was the governor’s – she was telling everybody I was the governor’s secretary.

Terence: And so he was just like saying things but it was like complaining about stuff right?

Hurley: Yeah, just – he was shouting you know I can’t remember exactly but it seemed to me he was saying Nixon’s name or something. Yeah, it was quite a trip. I just didn’t – it was quite by accident that I happened to be when I was on the State Board of Education and I think I was at a meeting there.

Terence: Did you go back when they dedicated this stature in the Statuary Hall? Were you there that time or?

Hurley: That was something that my brother-in-law – I was very upset. My sister was having heart surgery in Boston and my mother had given me a ticket to go back there to be with her and she had had the surgery and my son was in Washington, DC and he had worked – he had been working for one of the – he had been working on the program for that and he told me when it was. I wanted to go down and my brother-in-law said he needed me there and my sister you know wasn’t in very good shape and so. But I thought I could go down and come back but I stayed and I resented it for the rest of his life that he did that to me cause he didn’t need me any more than he needed anybody you know. It was a crutch and made me miss and I think he did it deliberately because he never thought Gruening was very great. But I would have loved to have been there.

Terence: Did you think that when he was defeated in ’68 about the write-in, what did you think about – what were you doing in ’68, Katie, and were you at that time?

Hurley: I was here. Oh, I went out and I knew he couldn’t make it, but I went with, I went – I met with a whole lot of good people that day because I had to sign – we went to the ballot box and I knew it was futile but of course I had to do it and we had a lot of fun. It was a cold day, but he was pretty crushed by Bob Bartlett’s endorsement of Gravel. And I was shocked and I think that Bob was not well. He was dying you know and I think he was on drugs and so forth. I don’t think he would have done that if it hadn’t been because I remember hearing it. His voice was not very strong but it was hard for EG because he talked to me – he did talk to me about that.

Terence: What did he say? Do you remember what he said?

Hurley: He just you know couldn’t understand why he did and I just – I really told him that I just thought that Bob was not in his right senses when he did it. I thought he needed to have some closure to it because it really had bothered him. What did I do you know? Well I knew what he had done. It was just his – there were plenty of times that he certainly got in the way of Bob and he was just because of his personality and I don’t think he realized how hurtful that was for Bob you know so. Gravel – I mean it was – for me it was because it was Gravel who I knew was a real jerk. I guess he’s still living, but he didn’t do much for Alaska while he was there.

Terence: And you know –

Hurley: And then the tragedy that Clark ran such a good campaign, but didn’t make it.

Terence: Yeah, in 1980.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: Or won the primary.

Hurley: The primary, well he won the primary.

Terence: Primary but lost the general to Murkowski.

Hurley: Yeah, gee how history might have been different. I think somebody had mentioned that, was in this morning’s paper, yeah, I think it was. It was talking about Anchorage News talking about the conference and what a smart decision that was for Murkowski to appoint Clark to that committee.

Terence: Yeah, he’s a sharp guy.

Hurley: Yeah. Complimentary.

Terence: But do you think that Gravel – wasn’t Bartlett worried that Rasmuson might win the election, wasn’t it that a Republican might win I mean don’t you think that’s?

Hurley: Oh, I’d forgot that Rasmuson was.

Terence: Remember he was the nominee you know and I mean I had just had the idea. I mean it shows how loyal you were really were loyal to Ernest, I mean weren’t you?

Hurley: Oh, yeah.

Terence: I mean.

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: But Bartlett I looked in this correspondence he was furious that Ernest did it you know, ran the campaign you know – or ran the write-in I mean to say.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: Cause of his age and all that other stuff I guess.

Hurley: Uh-huh. Well I didn’t think he would you know he should have either but I didn’t think he’d win either and write-ins are almost impossible to win and but that film was such a bunch of false information.

Terence: What film was that, what was that about?

Hurley: The film that is what he alludes to in the story about the Gravel and the primary had this – that was the first time that anyone had done a very elaborate television campaign and he had a film produced of his life and it looked like he had been in the underground during World War II and all kinds of pictures that couldn’t possibly have been true because he was too young. And you know films can – and that’s the beginning of what you can do with a good film to make a candidate look entirely different from what they are. It can just depend on and that is what has been happening with a lot of campaign since then but that was the first one and boy did it pay off. Because people did think he was too old.

Terence: That Gruening was too old?

Hurley: Gruening was too old and he was old, but he was how old – 80.

Terence: He was above 80.

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: Ted Stevens is now –

– Break –

Hurley: He had got sick during the nomination – during that convention and they took him to – and he had what they talked about was a blocked intestine, but that’s when they discovered the cancer and he made a last trip up here after many battles as – and he knew that he didn’t have much more time. And you could tell from his demeanor that he went around to see everybody. Came out here to see me and you know spent time and he was very mellow and reminiscing and that was at Christmas time and then he died in June I think it was.

Terence: That was ’74, right?

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: Yeah, that’s the only time I ever saw him. I saw him in April that year at the University. I remember he came in and he was – I thought he was a great guy.

Hurley: Well that was in –

Terence: A young guy was shepherding him around. I don’t know who that was.

Hurley: That was when he made that trip I think it was maybe. I had the feeling that he had been here in the winter, but it might have been April, but.

Terence: He was complaining about the D-2 lands and he was campaigning against you know Andrews and stuff. What did – did he ever mention anything what he thought of Gravel giving that speech at the convention in ’72? Do you remember? You didn’t go to the convention that year though?

Hurley: No. No.

Terence: But remember when Gravel –

Hurley: Oh, I know everybody was so embarrassed. Gravel reading the Pentagon Papers kind of acting – I mean somebody had already revealed them you know and it was just – it was I think everybody just thought it was poor taste, but I don’t –

Terence: You mean the nominating themselves or the Pentagon Papers?

Hurley: Oh, nominating himself and yeah.

Terence: Remember he nominated himself as president.

Hurley: Oh, I forgot about that too, yeah. He had a great ego.

Terence: But I wonder cause Gruening would have been at that convention so I wonder – if you probably didn’t see him though, but that –

Hurley: But that convention, was that in –

Terence: ’72.

Hurley: ’72, yeah that was down in Florida and I’m sure I don’t know it could have happened when – cause he got ill during the convention, so I don’t know how much he saw you know, but.

Terence: That would have surely made him sick. Since he compared Gravel to Joe McCarthy you know in the memoir you know so. But okay so –

Hurley: We left the conv – we were at the convention and now we are –

Terence: You said one thing I thought this was a very good point, you said that many of the people, even the legislators, acted differently in Fairbanks, is that – do you know what I mean? They didn’t act quite the same as they did in Juneau that they were acting on a different –

Hurley: To me there was such camaraderie you know that oh when they disagreed they disagreed you know not personally at all and seemed to me that there was such a high level of states – I called them all statesmen as far as to me. You know I was talking with someone or writing something the other day that I said that I felt that I had witnessed statesmanship that I’ve never seen since.

Terence: Yeah, how do you rank being there at that convention for all those months and –

Hurley: Just the other day I said it was the biggest thrill of my life looking back to have had that opportunity to be there in that capacity because holding that position was way better than what – in my book – then what Tom Stewart was because he wasn’t present on the floor but rarely and then he had – he was gone during some of the most exciting debates in December when they were debating the judicial article and so forth.

And oh, yeah, one of my little pet peeves is with the Rules Committee that adopted that the – my minutes would be – I wouldn’t get to sign my minutes. They were signed by Tom Stewart as the Secretary and he wasn’t even there. They were my – but that’s the difference I mean as a woman now I would have screamed my head off, but then I was just so glad to be there that wasn’t important but historically it is important. But the minutes then when he was out of town I got to sign the minutes as the Chief Clerk, so.

– Break –

Terence: This is so much fun. I mean I think this is just I’ve just enjoyed this whole project so much just cause I learned so much and it’s so fascinating.

Hurley: Oh, it’s so good to get this – people – it’s so sad that it wasn’t started a long time ago.

Terence: I know.

Hurley: Cause you know my friend Burke Riley has Alzheimer’s and it is just killing me. I went to see him when I was there. God, it’s so hard because he was so sharp and he just was that resources articles and working with that. He was up here and he was so upset that he couldn’t see Burke too and talk with him.

Terence: Oh, Ostrem?

Hurley: Yeah, Ostrem. You ought to get him.

Terence: We’re going to try to get him, yeah.

Hurley: Oh, he’s fabulous. He is just –

Terence: He is really the key sort of the –

Hurley: Yeah and the funny thing is that he was a replacement that the guy that was first to be – was first – Burke told me this some time ago. That the guy who was the first consultant for the resources didn’t work out. He was just – anyway they had to get rid of him. He just wasn’t up to what they had expected. And it was just by accident that Ostrem was somebody they had heard about but he was in between jobs or something and was able to get up and oh he feels that you know what – how wonderful those people were and he had worked with Burke so closely to help. Burke would call him and send his drafts and so forth so he had a chance to really help them come to a good decision. So I hope you do get a chance to talk with him.

Terence: Well you know I’ve seen –

Hurley: He’s very sharp.

Terence: I’ve seen sort of memoir or compilation of things that he compiled for that conference when he was up here I guess Ostrem, just recent, last year or last summer before – last summer I guess it was and it is clear in there that Riley and Ostrem were corresponding and that they gave Bartlett the idea for that keynote address that he gave about natural resources.

Hurley: Yes.

Terence: So anyway we talked though to Wally Hickel, who didn’t remember it quite that way, so surprisingly.

Hurley: Oh, Wally Hickel was the National Committeeman at that time and I don’t think he was paying that much attention to the convention. He came up there once and there is a picture I have that have him with Alex Miller and so forth. But I never saw him around the convention very much at all and whether he was following it you know that was – well it was soon after that that he did run for office for governor, but I can’t remember.

Terence: Well he was in the running for territorial governor but then it was passed over in favor of Heintzleman.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: But and Burke Riley, I worked with him in 1979. I never asked him about any – I never even knew about any of this though I was a kid and I didn’t – worked in this Division of Forest –

Hurley: Oh, really.

Terence: With him, yeah –

Hurley: When he was –

Terence: Must have been his last job you know I don’t know.

Hurley: When he was with the Field Committee.

Terence: No, this is after he worked for the state and I didn’t even know who he was. I mean I knew he was –

Hurley: Oh, he was working – I think he was working –

Terence: In DNR. It was a DNR job.

Hurley: And the limited – he was on the Limited Entry Commission.

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: But and I never really –

Hurley: Well it’s too bad.

Terence: Yeah.

Hurley: Yeah, that you didn’t have that.

Terence: I didn’t know who he was – I was –

Hurley: And he would never ever have tooted his own horn. Burke was so modest about everything.

Terence: Yeah.

Hurley: He knew Gregg shorthand and he – when his first job in Alaska was working for the Clerk of the Court in Fairbanks in the 30’s when he came here out of college and he wrote so perfect characters just like the Gregg shorthand textbook that I could read his shorthand better than my own. And he still sends notes to me – even in his condition he can still write the shorthand. It is fascinating.

Terence: Even with Alzheimer’s?

Hurley: Yes.

Terence: Isn’t that something.

Hurley: Well he’s in the past and he has some days that he is you know just sharp as can be and then other days he calls me and he calls a lot and – cause he relates me to the past I think and he wants to remember something. And last time it was his kids phone numbers and I said I don’t even know their names you know, but.

Terence: Do you think we could talk to him or not? Would it be I don’t know – I don’t want to embarrass him or record anything –

Hurley: I would talk with his daughter. He has a daughter or I’ll talk to her and ask her if there would be some short – if there would be a possibility of something that would be – cause I think his memory of the convention is still great. But he looks you know he was always so proper about the way he dressed and that is the thing that is –

Terence: So maybe –

Hurley: People have seen him downtown unshaven and walking around and I just hate seeing – for people to remember him that way and I wanted him to go to the Pioneer’s Home where I thought he would be protected a little bit but he doesn’t want to go. He has that much sense.

Terence: So he’s staying at home is that right?

Hurley: He lives by himself and his daughter lives in Juneau and she was staying with him, but she was – she needed – she had done it for a year and needed a relief. She is living and taking care of somebody’s house, but she goes over there every day, but he doesn’t – he’s looking for everybody. He needs to have somebody live – he has a big enough house, but to find somebody it is really hard.

Terence: Well you can have the daughter call us that would be –

Hurley: Yes.

Terence: If you could talk to her and maybe –

Hurley: Yeah, I’ll talk to her and ask her if you could call her and talk to her.

Terence: That would be great.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: That would be wonderful.

Hurley: Cause I’d like to give her some background about who you are and so forth. She is Doris Ann’s daughter.

Terence: Okay, okay. Doris Ann’s daughter.

Hurley: And she is very – she is just doing great with him but it is so sad. Are we taping all this?

Terence: This is all right.

Hurley: That’s okay.

Terence: That’s not for – we won’t use that for anything, but just for information for me cause I do want to talk to him, so. Let’s see, so we were talking about natural resources.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: And you know so why was this an emotional thing for you? Were you there at the day of the signing of the thing? Do you remember that day, the signing?

Hurley: You should listen to the tape of that. The signing, oh, yeah, I was there until the very end and during the signing everything was – it wasn’t you know it wasn’t – it was exciting, but it wasn’t as emotional as after that they went back over to close the thing and (inaudible) and that when I called the roll the last time I got so choked up saying their names that when I looked up there are these guys that I never would think that they had tears in their eyes, the ones that were sitting like Steve McCutcheon and Herb Hillshire. I mean those are hard-nosed guys and I had – oh, it was – it’s on the tape, the official tape and somebody sent me that from I couldn’t believe how choked up I was, but it was – we had been together and been – it was like Jim Hurley gave the presentation. He was just a very outstanding delegate at that time. I had not ever dreamed that I would be married to him, but he gave this little talk of giving – honoring Bill Egan and he said it was something like being in a battle with your fellow soldiers and having one that you always would be close because of having done that. Only he did a better job of the words but it is in the those volumes too how he – how everybody that this very wonderful warm feeling about Bill as a person. And it was really hard for Bill and he Irish as Irish you know and could I’m sure but he only could say a few words and that was it because it was so emotional at the end.

Because it was like we had been through – I mean starting out with 55 different individuals who had such – so many of them such wide backgrounds and that they could – they did come together so well. And there were some funny nights when they got a little hot and that story is in Fisher’s book.

Terence: What was that?

Hurley: The – it was on the Bill of Rights one of the – they had drafted it in the committee and I think that was the committee on – oh, it had gone to Style and Drafting, which is the last place. And Style and Drafting had the authority to you know make the English flow better or make changes and this particular article is the one – oh, dear I should just stop for a minute so that I could get – because it would be a better story if I could tell you which one. Can you stop for just a minute?

Man: Sure.

– Break –

Hurley: Anyway – it was like 60 below that – it was a late session and they had been going all day. And the Style and Drafting had made a lot of changes and people were getting a little irritated because they thought they had already done all of the work and they thought they were doing too much. And Helenthal, who was a lawyer from Anchorage, John Helenthal, and Buckalew, who was Judge Buckalew Seaborn. He was a young – he was like in his early 40’s, one of the younger member’s maybe late 30’s. Oh, he was more like 35 and he had been on the ordinance and what do you call – the Bill of Rights only they had a another name – he had been on that committee and anyway, they thought you know they had used basically the language of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. Well they got so agitated between the lawyers and it is the first time that all the lawyers were arguing and so forth about these changes.

And Ed Davis, who was a lawyer, was on the Style and Drafting Committee and he was ready to throw in the sponge and resign because people were getting so upset. And John Helenthal and Buckalew had a wonderful sense of humor and he liked to needle Helenthal and this happened quite a bit during the convention and it was kind of good because it would sort of take away from the tenseness and everybody would have a good laugh. And Bill Egan didn’t ever stop that sort of thing. He let it go and then he’d call them to order you know but he was grinning at the same time.

Well, this night it got so hot that Bill hit the gavel and said it is so cold out the temperature has fallen so badly that people better get out and put in their headbolt heaters. Only the language is fantastic because it has to do to the tempers in the hall too. But so they took a recess and came back and everybody was cooled off and making – but they were just mad because they wanted that special language the same and Helenthal and some of them and so Buckalew comes back and he gets up and he makes a motion to change – to go back to the original language and he said and then Mr. Helenthal can read that to his son with the background of the – I missed the punch line – oh –

Terence: That’s all right.

Hurley: No the song that – Battle Hymn of the Republic and everybody exploded in laughter and –

Terence: Say that again, so he said Mr. –

Hurley: Mr. Helenthal, who had been complaining the most about wanting to keep this original language, he moved that we go back to – that they amend the Style and Drafting to go back to the original language so that Mr. Helenthal could read it to his son to the tune of – to the strains of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. And everybody just cracked up and that was – but it was a tense night.

But there were several tense things like that, but Bill had the – he could – he would call a recess when he thought that people just needed to cool off and but Style and Drafting Committee was getting very irritated that their work was being – like they had lost – that the members had – were so critical of their changes and what they were doing was trying to make the language simple and straightforward and it turn out that it is, but they had to go through some battles like that, but and they were – in fact Mr. Davis did resign. Nobody would like him go I mean he was ready to walk away, but so –

Hurley: What I mean about the fact that they you know did overcome those is that they could work those things through and you never could do that in the legislature. It was because of Bill’s handling and 55 people is a lot more than – I mean it was before statehood it was like 24 and 16 you know and in those – so it could be more personal too maybe. But they were so differential to people who had, except for – well they were even differential to him but they gripe out you know afterwards. The guy from Homer Yul Kilcher, cause he liked to talk and sometimes he’d talk things to death, but Bill was – he would somehow get him to move on in a very gentle way cause time was important towards the end. It was really – they were working long hours and you know we had just the basic things that we still had to do and there was no way that you could rush just typing and that kind of thing. It takes so much time to do certain things.

Terence: What impact did it have when what’s his name resigned, you know?

Hurley: Beg pardon.

Terence: When what’s his name resigned –

Hurley: Oh, well, they called a recess and talked to him and –

Terence: Oh, you mean Davis?

Hurley: Davis.

Terence: No, I mean the guy at the end who refused – Robertson?

Hurley: He didn’t –

Terence: Okay, one thing I want to ask you about the ’78 campaign but seeing that picture of Gruening in that party. Why don’t you describe that part, what was that party – it was a party in –

Hurley: Oh, it – you know there was a newspaper called the Independent that struggled to compete with the Empire and after we were out of office. Hugh Wade and Kathryn and I, we would go down and help get the paper out, just for free and we’d have – it was so much fun, lots of laughs and struggle and then afterwards we’d go to dinner. And this was celebrating that – somebody was leaving. I think it was the editor who was kind of in the center of the paper – Jack – he went to Kodiak. He got – the poor paper was just you know it was really good. George was writing. Nobody was getting paid hardly anything to keep it going, but we had such fun and it was between – before 19 – it was after the convention I think. Could have been ’55, but it was after ’53. It was like ’54 and in the summer we had this celebration out there at Gruening’s cabin and kind of a potluck dinner or something.

Terence: Those were all Gruening loyalists in that picture, right? Isn’t that fair to say the photograph of the party?

Hurley: It was Bartlett – it could have been Bartlett’s campaign for the congress cause he isn’t in the picture and Hugh had lost out you know he lost an election too because of Republicans. And that was in the summer of I think ’55.

Terence: You know Tim’s dad, BG Olson, ran the Independent.

Tim: Briefly.

Terence: Briefly after George Sonborg left.

Hurley: Who?

Terence: His father was BG Olson, who worked – he worked for the University then later.

Hurley: Oh, really.

Terence: He –

Hurley: Did he run – did he take over the –

Terence: Yeah, for about –

Hurley: Last – not very much longer?

Terence: Right, exactly, yeah.

Hurley: Cause George took it over from Jack –

Terence: Wasn’t Pegkeys?

Hurley: Jack, Jack, Jack – huh?

Terence: Wasn’t Jack Pegkey?

Hurley: No. Uh-uh. No. It was – he went to Kodiak and I think his son – I think I saw his – I think his son has been mayor of Kodiak. I mean he was born in Juneau. I mean that makes sense. It is just hard to believe that his son would be old enough to be mayor. But we had – it was a party you know. We just had lots of laughs and Bob would come by when he was in town and have coffee. And it was one of those but we had to get the paper out. We had to stamp you know addresses on those for the mail and –

Terence: What was the theme of the Juneau Independent? What was the whole idea? It was independent of what? What’s the –

Hurley: Well I think it was just to give a political picture that wasn’t absent you know like the Empire you know.

Terence: And what did the Empire sort of stand for? I mean what would you say you know – what’s the –

Hurley: Well the Empire when Mr. Troy had it was a very – it was a Democratic philosophy and caring about all of Alaska and development and everything and the Empire just became because of the daughter who she was so possessed with hate that you know because Gruening was partly responsible for her father having to resign from the governorship and it wasn’t the governor’s fault but it was his staff person who didn’t watch out for you know you had to sign a waive if you accepted a contract or you had to explain it and they hadn’t done that and so you know the government in those days complained. You know somebody found out and – but Bartlett, I mean Gruening was the head of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions and he wasn’t – didn’t do it expecting it to be governor of Alaska.

That was the last thing actually Roosevelt appointed him without even checking with Ichies and so to answer to question directly I don’t know why – I just know that the paper was started to get another voice in and a lot of people in Juneau you know who cared. You know gave some money to get it going but they didn’t much advertising and you know that is what it takes is advertising to keep a paper going. But they had – they covered the legislature better because George Sonborg was writing for them for nothing. And a lot of people were working there and not getting paid.

Terence: Cause it really was like a part of the cause of the statehood –

Hurley: Yeah, exactly.

Terence: Combination of the statehood cause, right?

Hurley: Yeah, right, it was. That was I think that kept it going.

Terence: And did they see the Empire as a mouthpiece of the absentee interests sort of –

Hurley: Yes.

Terence: – is that fair to say?

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: I mean.

Hurley: We always thought that they spoke for canned salmon. Outside interest was mostly Alaska Steamship and canned salmon in Seattle actually was the Seattle interests, but that’s people – a lot of people in Juneau you know in the olden days before they changed the times so that we had that they adhered to. The fact that there was a different time zone. Juneau used to keep – to be always on Seattle time. When I was a kid we had our clocks set to deal with Seattle not to deal with the rest of Alaska and it was always an hour’s difference between Anchorage and Juneau, even when I was in the governor’s office and we were still on Seattle time.

Terence: You mean just –

– Break –

Hurley: But when I started working in the governor’s office before the war and I was in charge of – I remember that the population of Anchorage was like 3,500 before the war – before World War II. And then the war came and it really increased because of the military buildup and construction. And then in the 50’s you know they had that homesteading in this area in ’51 and that brought a lot of people here, but it was mostly the soldiers who served here –

Terence: The day of Pearl Harbor – cause that was Gruening tells that story of him –

Hurley: Oh, this is a great story because I was organist at the Lutheran Church and I was the person who was in charge of the code – military code that we had to send messages with and I was the only person in the office who coded and decoded. We had somebody from the Base had come down and trained me and I had to be – do it in a secret place. And I was playing and I heard the phone ringing in the office during church, which was very unusual that the phone would ring and I didn’t think anything of it until after church somebody came up to me and said Estella called and said for you to call the office right away.

So I went to the – this little Lutheran Church and the office was all part of the – where the church was open. Went in there and called her and she said, as I told you, she used pretty rough language sometimes and she said get your up here. We’re at war and I said I thought – I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I said what do you mean? Get up here, you’ve got to send a telegram and get up here. And so I went up there and she told me that Pearl Harbor – you know that they had gotten the message, even though we had a direct line to Buckner, he hadn’t called to let us know. And he – somebody called the – somebody who had a short wave radio had called the governor on Sunday morning. See it was about eight o’clock, no, noon here. It was eight o’clock – there was a big time change because of our being on Seattle time. And I know that Pearl Harbor was at eight o’clock in the morning and I know it must have been – well church started at 11 and it was in the middle of the ser – must have been you know like 11:30 when she got the message. And I didn’t get until it was close to noon when I got it.

And the church was just a block away from the capitol building so I went up there and spent – I don’t know when I went home because there was all kinds of stuff that we had to do and we had black outs and everything else started then.

Terence: Were you – was there ever any – you weren’t asked to leave because you had a job I mean during the war?

Hurley: Well, I was – the only people who were asked to leave were wives of military and I wasn’t married then. And – but they immediately – they had had practice for some reason there had been some talk about you know not like what they call homeland but they had a citizens –

Terence: Militia?

Hurley: Militia type of thing. And I know my stepfather was called upon to go down and guard the cold storage and they called it some kind of guard, civilian guard I guess it was. And so they had known enough or were organized enough that they had people out right away and everybody was pulled their shades and got all – but it was – it was unbelievable you know until you know we didn’t have – unless you had short-wave you didn’t get direct broadcasts. And so we didn’t know too much but of course the paper had news the next day. But we were – governor was in daily touch with Buckner.

Terence: I think I remember reading his diary. He was on his way outside. He was taking a ship outside and then he stopped because of the news or something. I remember something like that. Cause it occurred to me you know did you traveled to Anchorage – did you ever during the war did you ever leave Juneau with the governor?

Hurley: Oh, I went on – I had planned a vacation for the summer of ’42. I was going to visit a friend of mine who was in college and I got to go, but I couldn’t – almost couldn’t get back in. I had – they weren’t going to let me back in when we went to get on the ship or called to check our reservations. And I had to call the governor’s office and they had to you know give me clearance and I was a resident because nobody – women were not allowed into the territory – even if we were resident and I was a resident. And yet because of the war and actually it was when I came back it was – they had bombed Dutch Harbor just a few days before. And I think that was why they were just being so careful then, but the governor had to call – they called and got clearance and we got home.

Terence: Now you never traveled out to the Aleutians with him did you?

Hurley: No. I never traveled around at all, except to Anchorage one time. It was a free trip. We flew in a CAA plane, jump seats, that was in ’47, during the war.

Terence: Was that your first time?

Hurley: To Anchorage.

Terence: So that was your first trip to Anchorage right ’47?

Hurley: Yes.

Terence: So what was that – cause Anchorage was still of course you had never seen it before the war – that was your first trip to the Westward, right?

Hurley: To the Westward right.

Terence: So what was that –

Hurley: Oh, it was very exciting because they were – Bob Atwood was wanting to impress anybody who came up here from Juneau you know and of course he knew that I was such a Juneau – he and Fred Axford who was the president of the Chamber of Commerce took me on a tour and showed me all the stuff. This is where they are going to have a new federal building and there – and oh, and out here they’re going to build this University and you know there was only one paved street still you know and out of town Stanley McCutchen took and his wife took me out to Fort Starns. I don’t know why all these names I can remember when I can’t remember something else, but that was outside of the city limits and so there were all night bars and go-go girls and all real night life like I’d never seen and. But he was – they were both working during the day. They were – the Chamber of Commerce really telling me how much more progressive they were. And of course they were and Ernest Gruening loved going to Anchorage because Evangeline and she always loved having him and showing him off and had parties and they were living then on L Street. It was just a little cottage. I remember that, but she had a great party and everybody dressed up. I didn’t even know I was supposed to bring a formal to come up here but I didn’t have one so I just had to go. But she always liked everybody to wear long dresses.

Terence: Is that right a formal dress is that right, no kidding.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: That’s what all the other women had those on except you?

Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Every time she’d – and especially when she moved to that bigger house they – she had a party when they dedicated the house and I was living here then. That was in the 60’s and she invited Jim and me and you had to wear – the women all had to wear black dresses. Nobody could wear anything but black. I remember I had to make something to wear because I didn’t have an appropriate dress. I think the reason for that is that she was wearing a white, gorgeous white dress. But all the men were to wear tux and it was a black and white party she called it. It was a wonderful evening I mean. But people – she had so many guests that they were having to set up tables in the bedrooms even you know. It was quite a party.

Terence: Now that was the house that went down in the earthquake?

Hurley: Yeah, that’s –

Terence: That was the log cabin – log house?

Hurley: The log house.

Terence: That must have been like the fence. Is the log cabin ever built –

Hurley: No it wasn’t in the log house that she had the black and white party was dedicating their new house.

Terence: Oh, after the earthquake.

Hurley: After the earthquake.

Terence: Oh, with the circular staircase?

Hurley: Yeah. Uh-huh. Oh, yeah.

Terence: That was like quite a house.

Hurley: Oh, wow, that was fun. And one night we were – there was – every year there was – she was in charge or was very active in a – they had a ball and I can’t think of the name of it. Oh, it was the World Affairs Ball. It was a big money raiser and the first time that we were invited to go and be in their party I wore my Norwegian costume. My Norwegian country dress and we – it snowed that night and they closed the road to Wasilla and Palmer. We were living in Palmer then.

So she invited us to spend the night and the next day she was having a fancy brunch and I didn’t have anything to wear except that Norwegian dress I was still wearing. And Jim was in his tux and nobody around I think Bob Atwood he was a lot slighter guy than – I think Bob Atwood gave him a shirt or something anyway. At least he didn’t have to wear coat, but she was very nice to me and surprisingly that she was pretty high society. But she was somewhat part of it she never talked much about being Swedish but I think she kind of liked that I was Norwegian or something that she could.

But Elmer, I always thought he was such a stuffed shirt, but you know when I think of what he has done for this state was amazing how lucky the University is to have had him on that Regent Board to do what he did. I guess they just – did they pay for the renovations and so forth of the library or was that local.

Terence: No, but they made big contributions of millions of dollars you know and they put five million into that new museum.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: Up there.

Hurley: Is the museum finished?

Terence: Under construction now still so. But yeah, so that was probably the best appointment Gruening ever made I suppose with him to the Board of Regents. And like you said the Democrats got really upset about it right. I mean they –

Hurley: Oh, yeah. He was – oh, yeah, they really were. There was no excuse for doing that in their book and especially then – but he got confirmed you know but one of Louise Kellogg, which was a terrible mistake.

Terence: Yeah, the partisanship on the Board of Regents in the 50’s, remember, weren’t there some Democrat nominees that the legislature refused to.

Hurley: Oh, yeah.

Terence: I forget who that was now, but there were some other Democratic – right that –

Hurley: I think one of them was a woman who had been serving and she was up for re-appointment – Etta, she had a clothing store I think. She was a real heavyset gal, woman.

Terence: I don’t remember her. Well, but so that little bit of that first trip do you think Gruening feel more at home in Anchorage because Juneau was so relatively anti-statehood, was that – I mean.

Hurley: I was so – there was always – there was such camaraderie for him with Bob Atwood you know and he was so supportive and pushing all at that time because of the statehood and there were a lot of other people here. And there were more people here and it was – there was more social things than in Juneau wasn’t very formal and they didn’t have too big a budget, but they did do a lot of entertaining.

Terence: The Gruening’s did?

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: What about you know we talked a little bit to Bob D’Armand you know who worked for Heintzleman.

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: And didn’t you know he said so let me ask you about this is what he said that he thought that Gruening might have done more to hinder statehood than to bring it along so.

Hurley: Oh, there are a lot of people that think that and I don’t know what he based that on because in the beginning certainly he was the one who knew the people outside of Washington, DC who were – who he got to support which was part of the movement that they wanted to get people writing letters from small towns and to get their congressmen and senators in the fold. But all I remember about Bob D’Armand is that he was going to take over my job and the day after I was up in the halls and outside they had thrown out all of the governor’s annual reports and all of the messages to the legislature from the past years. They were in the trash and I remember grabbing a few of them to take home. They couldn’t throw away files because we had to send those to the archives and I had done a lot of that but I thought that was pretty chintzy because those were public documents too and people still would write and ask for old reports, but they threw them all out.

Terence: Well it sort of signified the change of regime I guess.

Hurley: This is it. We don’t want anything that has Ernest Gruening’s name on it in this office. That’s what I felt it said.

Terence: Because you know Heintzleman really was either opposed to statehood, lukewarm to statehood, what would you – what’s the you know – the people say I mean I heard statement people –

Hurley: Oh, I think it was really bothered people that he got to make an address at the Constitutional Convention cause he had not been supportive of statehood, but after all he was the governor and I think he signed the bill in ’55.

Terence: That’s right –

Hurley: That created the convention.

Terence: Now D’Armand didn’t come up though with him did he? I don’t –

Hurley: I never saw him there.

Terence: Yeah.

Hurley: But I don’t think Bob traveled very much with him. He’s you know he’s a very good historian and has done and when I’m in Sitka I go and see him and his wife because and he has softened in his old age too and –

Terence: Well he was a pretty tough customer?

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: The guy was going to get rid of you know the Gruening’s appointees or weed them out or something.

Hurley: Beg your pardon?

Terence: What they said was that he would get rid of the Gruening appointees or weed them out or at least that is what I’ve heard alleged you know that he was really you know –

Hurley: Oh. There’s a lot of that going on right now.

Terence: But I think if – so let’s talk a little about after you –

Hurley: After I left the governor’s office?

Terence: Well after you –

Hurley: The convention.

Terence: And then you were back in the legislature in the staff. How long did you?

Hurley: Well I served through the first state legislature and then I married Jim Hurley and moved here in 1960 – in the summer of 1960. So I got out of things sort of cause I had a couple of young kids.

Terence: What was that – say in that first session – what was the financial state of the state in that very first session? What was that like? You know the first session.

Hurley: Well I tell you one thing that the people who were elected they didn’t have any staff. There was no staff for the members cause and if they wanted to write letters, if they couldn’t do it themselves, they had to pay somebody and get a private secretary to come up and do any secretarial work. There was no – and well you saw the staff. There wasn’t much staff either for to run the senate. And it wasn’t any bigger than it had been under territorial days.

Terence: It was like ten people or so?

Hurley: Yeah. I think there was maybe ten on that –

Terence: On that photograph.

Hurley: On that photograph and some of those were pages. I mean they were not secretarial staff. And – but it was also the first time and you could people to come and work because it was an adventure and even those first legislators they didn’t mind having to do that but and they set the salary at $2,500 a year and all – and the per diem wasn’t much more than it had been and of course there wasn’t a lot of money. Everybody felt that they wanted to balance the budget and get things going but and they had the holdover of the income tax you know that had been passed in ’49 so that there was income but there hadn’t been a big jump in the population or in development at the beginning of statehood. There was lots of people coming up here as a result. A lot of good young people came to Alaska at that time.

Terence: And the costs were –

Hurley: Beg your pardon?

Terence: The costs were rising weren’t they/

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: Because the state was going to cost a lot more than the territory?

Hurley: Yeah. We were taking over a lot more functions that the federal government had taken but there – you know they got – Bob Bartlett got a very good bill through so that we got that land, but it wasn’t too long before – well they had discovered oil I think in ’58, wasn’t it?

Terence: ’57.

Hurley: ’57, so they knew there was something you know some of the development would eventually pay off but –

Terence: So, Katie, so then you and you settled then here and a couple of young kids here?

Hurley: Yeah. Uh-huh. And I didn’t ask – everybody always wanted to know why I didn’t go to Washington with Gruening. Well I didn’t want to leave Alaska then and so I didn’t want to go with him and anyway I was going to marry Jim and moved up here. And he was on the Central Committee and doing things and I was just taking care of kids. And you know we were living on a farm and I loved it. It was such a change from Juneau. My friends in Juneau couldn’t believe that I was living on a farm and we had a cow and I had a vegetable garden. I didn’t milk the cow. I said I’m not doing that. But then I got you know I was doing things with PTA and things like that with my school.

But in ’71 when or ’70 when Bill was elected again, I said to my friend Alex Miller I said you know how come Bill hasn’t appointed me to anything? I thought he would think of me and he said have you asked? And I said no, I didn’t know I had to ask. I thought he’d think of me. So I told him I wanted to be on the State Board of Education and so I got appointed to the State Board of Education. So then I said to Alex I said well you know I think the best thing to do is to be the president. I said how do you do that? He said you have to ask. You have to do your ward. You have to go and call all those people and tell them you want to be the president. Well that was a new role for me. I’d never – everything had been handed to me before. I never had to have an interview you know for to go to work at the senate or to do any of that stuff. So I – anyway I got to be the president of the State Board of Education and I did that for eight years. And they never had an election so after I got – I don’t know how come we never had an election but anyway I just continued to be the president.

And then in ’78 –

Terence: Well what made you decide to run –

Hurley: That’s – then I had – so my husband said to me you know he said you ought to run for lieutenant governor and I said I’ve always been a king maker. I’ve never been – I’ve always been behind the scenes. He said well you got the experience I think he had another reason for wanting me to run, but and the –

Terence: What was that?

Hurley: I think he wanted to get rid of me. I think – he was beginning to be called Mr. Katie Hurley and he didn’t like that. And it was very sad in a lot of ways because he was – I still loved him and it was hard, but anyway some of the teachers asked me you know would I – that they looking for somebody to run and I said, oh, I don’t have any money so what am I going to do? Oh, we’ll get the money and so forth. Anyway I decided to file and Jim was very supportive. In fact we had to mortgage our house to get some money cause they weren’t giving women candidates much money in those days.

Terence: This house –

Hurley: This house.

Terence: – you lived in this house, yeah?

Hurley: Uh-huh.

Terence: Okay. So you mortgaged and then you ran –

Hurley: And I ran and –

Terence: Who did you –

Hurley: Against seven men.

Terence: And you came in last, right?

Hurley: I came in first.

Terence: Oh, first.

Hurley: The worst thing that happened to me was that I got more votes in the primary than the three candidates for governor because that was that election with Wally Hickel ran against –

Terence: Hammond.

Hurley: Yeah, Hammond.

Terence: I think Hammond was –

Hurley: And he only lost by 100 votes so he had that write-in in the general and it was downhill after the primary. I had my glory day at the night of the – oh, it was so much fun. My mother was still living and she was like – oh, she must have been close to 90. And there was this one candidate who was from Haines I think and he came door to door in Juneau and my mother let him in. And he sat there at the dining room table and was handing her the literature and she said, well my daughter is running for this same job. And he tried to grab the literature back and she wouldn’t give it back to him when she told the story. And boy was he embarrassed – you know of course he was out of there like a flash she said. But she just loved that story. Of course I loved it too.

My mother was very much interested in politics from the time that I started working for Gruening and she loved Bill Egan and she got really involved in you know doing the kind of things that were so surprising to me like really watching how and she’d watch the TV and she would tell me what she thought of the candidates and she was always right. She didn’t know much about it, but she always – she had a good sense of people.

Terence: So what was it like for you making speeches and stuff, cause you were the first woman –

Hurley: I wasn’t very good in the beginning I know that. It was tough for me to have make speeches and as I said I really felt like I was you know over my head for a while until I met some of the other candidates and watched them.

Terence: Who were the other candidates, I forget?

Hurley: Oh –

Terence: Was Red Swanson?

Hurley: Red Swanson was one and Bob, the young fellow. He had been in the legislature – Bob – but there were some that were more credible. Well Red Swanson I think had been in the legislature at least, but I had done you know I hadn’t been elected to office before. And I really think that it was just because of – it wasn’t – I think most people didn’t think that I had a chance and so they voted for me you know. And as it turned out you know there were so many people that got into the other race. You know we didn’t have the open primary then. You had to vote on one side or the other I think.

Terence: I can’t remember. I remember – I think maybe we might have –

Hurley: Oh, I think it had changed, yeah, I know it had changed because it turned out that several of the people that worked in the – told me that there were a lot of ballots that said Hammond – Hurley. They voted for Hammond and they voted for me. So you know it was – if it had been a straight party ballot I probably wouldn’t have made it because you know a woman. It was – I – they didn’t hold that against me. At least it didn’t show that in the – but it was really hard for me.

What really was hard was that there was a recount by Ed Merdes and Ed Merdes called for a recount because he was close to Croft. And during that time I had to go around and make speeches and Croft hadn’t told me you know they hadn’t had much connection with me to tell me you know his positions or anything and I had to wing it and that was so embarrassing. I was so mad at them for not giving me the information. At one time I had to go to Sitka with the Chamber of Commerce and be on the podium with –

Terence: Terry Miller?

Hurley: Hammond – oh, what was that?

Terence: Terry Miller, wasn’t it him?

Hurley: No, Terry Miller wasn’t there, but he was – it was all the governor candidates, except me. It was Hammond and the guy the Independent –

Terence: Joe Vogler?

Hurley: Huh?

Terence: Joe Vogler?

Hurley: No, he was a very handsome guy from Kelly – what’s his name – his name was Kelly?

Terence: Tim, no not Tim.

Hurley: No. No.

Terence: I don’t –

Hurley: But there was a woman running on the Republican ticket too and she was a friend of mine. She had been a Democrat but she ran on that Independent ticket with Kelly. She was from Kodiak and now I can’t say her name. And there was a woman running – Mike Dalton was running on the Republican ticket, but Terry Miller of course got way more votes than anybody.

Terence: But you were the first woman to –

– Break –

Hurley: Partisan.

Terence: Partisan election.

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: Yeah, but not in the convention, I mean.

Hurley: Because the convention had women and that was a nonpartisan and also there had been a woman who ran but it was not a contested election, who ran against –

Terence: So Katie, so you were the first woman to a contested statewide election is that it?

Hurley: Partisan, yeah.

Terence: Contested –

Hurley: Partisan.

Terence: So you must be proud of that?

Hurley: Oh I am. It was – and it was so much fun as I said. I didn’t have much money so I wasn’t able to travel to as many villages, but I had those seven years on the State Board of Education and I had no idea that so many people knew me. And the other – what was the governor – he was in the legislature and he ran for congress – he was – then he ran for governor and made it. He had been in the legislature.

Terence: Oh, Cowper.

Hurley: Cowper. And he – when I filed, he told me that I should have a poster that was in color cause he said it will stand out. Everybody just has black and white and that was the best advice. And I went up to Fairbanks and had my poster made and the picture taken. I took it up there and they did such a good job in the News-Miner.

Terence: Commercial Printing, yeah.

Hurley: Yeah, Commercial Printing. And it did and the people out in the villages they loved having that poster and they were up for a long time afterwards and some of them they were just – but they you know when they saw my picture they knew me more than my name. And so that was a very big help for and with so many men it stood out too. And the picture that I had was taken right out here in my yard by one of the birch trees and I was – but –

Terence: So were you disappointed –

Hurley: But it was –

Terence: – did you expect to win the general, what did you think? I mean I guess –

Hurley: I – it was downhill – it was just terrible because there were so many, the write-ins started and I – there was no way we were going to win I could see that, but had to be a good soldier and act like we were going to win, but it was pretty much of a disaster.

Terence: Because you guys came in third, right. Didn’t you come in third?

Hurley: Yeah, yeah. I believe so.

Terence: Well I voted for you. It’s all right.

Hurley: Were you voting then?

Terence: Oh, yeah, I voted for you, but I think that was such a seesaw election – Hammond, then squeaked it out, right. That was the –

Hurley: He just squeaked out by a hundred votes.

Terence: Yeah.

Hurley: And then Wally – then Wally immediately started talking about the write-in and actually what happened in Juneau the Democrats there they were more afraid of Wally Hickel then they were of you know Hammond was very popular and even though they were loyal to the party, they – we got word the night before that they were – that the Democrats had decided that they were afraid that Hickel was going to win and so they – so it was pretty sad results. And – but I – it was even though I spent a lot of time paying off the debt, but it was worth it. I mean I really did have fun. And I learned a lot too. It was good experience.

So anyway I – somebody said there was going to be an open seat here in the valley. So I decided to file and I had just token competition so it wasn’t so difficult, but I was running against a Republican who didn’t spend one cent and he didn’t do very much, but – except he was at all of the places nettling me about my position on abortion and my position on gay rights and my position on what was the third thing? Anyway every time and you know this is such a conservative – I won by 120 votes and he hadn’t spent one cent. So when I ran for re-election, my son said – well when I ended he said you know mother they didn’t know how liberal that you were when they voted for you in the first place and of course when they saw my record. I thought it was a good record, but they didn’t think it was – they didn’t think I was (inaudible) enough cause I voted against saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day. Cause I said we already have a prayer and I don’t think that makes you any more patriotic to say the Pledge of Allegiance. And my knowledgeable Democratic friends came up to me and said Katie you should change your vote. I said why? Well you’re going to get crucified in the valley and I said well, so be it. I’m not changing my vote when I believe what I said cause I don’t. And when you watch people saying it like that it is just like so many words. And they used not publicly but whispering type of thing. They didn’t attack me publicly on it so. And then I voted – and my opponent also was handicapped and he was a young man and I was getting older then, not feeling older, but I was.

Terence: Who were you running against?

Hurley: Dr. Menard. He was a dentist and he had lost his hand by a foolish climbing up – anyway, caused – he was doing something without turning off the power. And he lost his hand and so he used – you know he was always running and showing that he could still – and he went back to dentistry and so forth. And then he was in there a year and then he became a Democrat. He ran as a Republican and was elected as a Republican. Then he changed his party and he served a few years after that, but it was the greatest – it really was fate because I developed cancer that next year and I would never have paid attention to my own health like I did because of what I was doing so. And I caught it. It was not a mammogram that caught it. I’d had mammograms. I discovered the lump myself and so I always said that it was fate that I should not have had that career.

Terence: We have a great attitude for all these things that people – you know what I mean, I just think there’s something that when people you know expect good things sometimes good things happen. You know what I mean you know.

Hurley: Uh-huh. Well I had my music and that was a greatest gift my mother gave me.

Terence: So what’s your –

Hurley: Piano. Well I play the piano and I play the organ and it was my mother who we didn’t have much money but she saw to it that we all had piano lessons and it has filled a big – whenever – it is just so much for my life just that love of being able to be not a performer but just what it does for me inside and I volunteer at the Episcopal Church now and I’ve done it for 20 years. My only caveat is that when I’m gone I don’t get to substitute, they have to find a substitute because it is too hard to find them and I don’t want that responsibility. But I do it now because it is good for my mind and it is good for my hands and it is just – I just like the music that much, doing it and feeling like it keeps me going every day.

Terence: Do you play still now?

Hurley: Oh, yeah.

Terence: Every day?

Hurley: Oh, yeah. I always have music on the piano and I just play for my own enjoyment, old songs. One of the things that we did at the Constitutional Convention was not much entertainment cause everybody was you know pretty pooped out and there weren’t – it wasn’t a real partying crowd like at legislative sessions. Because they had to come into town and everybody lived around, but frequently I would have a potluck at my apartment. People would bring or I’d cook and it wasn’t a very big apartment. But Bill would always come and we would end up singing, you know, just old songs and he had a very good voice and he knew all the words. I was – I thought I knew all the words to the songs, but you know more than I do. And we had – that was just fun thing that we did.

Terence: Was there a piano in your apartment?

Hurley: No, there was no accompaniment. No, I didn’t have a piano. That was what was so amazing is that Bill would be the one who would lead off. He’d think of some song and then he would start singing. We didn’t have any words so you had to have known the songs, but –

Terence: Do you remember any particular that he particularly liked? Was there any particular song or anything? If not, that’s okay.

Hurley: Oh, I can’t think of them now, but it was like songs from the 40’s you know – 30’s mostly. I think those good old songs from musicals and things that we had heard in the theater. But not necessarily barber shop type. They were just popular songs. You know Sweet Adeline or Goodnight Sweetheart or you know, mostly those.

My class is having – the Juneau High School is having 100 years of Juneau High School, because the first class graduated in 1904. So I’m in the group of the 30’s class because I graduated in ’39. So I’ve been looking through my music for the songs that were popular. They’re in the 30’s and I’m realizing now that some of the songs that we thought were so popular were even older than the 30’s.

Terence: At the convention did they play the Alaska Flag Song? Did they or sing it or sing the flag song, what was the –

Hurley: The choir at the college sang it at the graduation – at the graduation – at the signing and there was a very fine artist who was in charge of the – and she played a little kind of a portable keyboard it seemed to me. It was a very small looking piano that she directed from. It was in the old gym. It was not much place for very many people either. They were hanging from the rafters. Cause a lot of the families came up and – of the delegates and their kids and –

Terence: Now you said that your child – your son had come up.

Hurley: I had him come up a couple of times. I think he came up at Thanksgiving and then he came up – his birthday was in February and so I – I think he came up for the signing because he was very interested in history and he had a very good time.

Terence: And did he –

Hurley: He was very precocious. He was going around getting autographs and talking to everybody. He was not shy at all.

Terence: And he walked around among the desks?

Hurley: Oh, yeah. Well they didn’t have desks. You know they just had those tables and so forth and well he had to – no, I made him stay in the visitor’s room. I didn’t want him to be a brat, but he was very good.

Terence: You know you said one thing at the luncheon at the Chancellor’s house about Dennis Egan?

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: So that song – do you know what the song was?

Hurley: Yeah.

Terence: Can you sing some part of that song – Constitution Hall?

Hurley: Let’s see how was that melody?

Terence: Constitution Hall –

Hurley: Constitution Hall. Constitution Hall. All the people talk too much in Constitution Hall. Something like – he had – it was just a melody he made up. And I – the other verses are some place, but I can’t remember them but I do remember and he waved – he was – he moved his body, I mean he was kicking and you know he was about two years younger than David and I remember him just – Bob was just – get that cat down. Kitty.

– Break, cat walking through –

Hurley: Yeah that was – but I think he did right in the – I think we got him to sing it right in the hall and we were so amazed. You know Neva hardly had a chance to come up because she was running the store and you know it was really hard time for them. And she did come up that one time and he was there and I thought it was such a great observance for a kid you know because everybody was – he was there during some of that hot time when people were really vying for position and trying to get the president’s attention and – the other verses I was wondering where they were. Neva said she doesn’t have a copy of it and I said I can’t believe that it must be on the tape someplace because I know he sang it. And I think during a session one time.

Terence: Did you say or someone – maybe Neva said that maybe he actually participated in some of the votes?

Hurley: Oh, he might have – voice votes – I wouldn’t be a bit surprised because he was pretty – he was quite – I wouldn’t have let my kid behave at all like that, but he was –

Terence: He was the president’s son so –

Hurley: So I guess everybody, but he was pretty much of a little devil.

Terence: Because in voice votes you just go yay or nay, is that right, so is that what the voice vote is if you had a voice vote?

Hurley: Voice vote is just yeah.

Terence: Yay or nay.

Hurley: Yay or nay. They don’t call the roll on a voice vote so, yeah. He probably did cause he would be that you know he wouldn’t even think about it that it would be illegal.

Hurley: Really cause the voice – see finish up.

Terence: Something else, right. I had – just give me a second, wasn’t about that.

Hurley: Well you know the 55 Club –

Terence: Don’t film me.

Hurley: The 55 Club was something that was kind of a surprise.

Terence: Now what is that all about? What’s that?

Hurley: Well when they finished you know and ended somebody said well, you know maybe someday we should have a reunion you know. And everybody sort of rolled their eyes you know about that because after all they were pretty mature people and reunion, not like college. And then they decided to have a pin made with 55 on it and they all put in some money for the pin and I don’t know whatever happened to the money, whether that – I think they found it some place in some bank that the treasurer was this guy named W. W. Laws, Chief Laws was his name and he was – they all thought that he ran off with the money cause he never made any accounting when they had a reunion a few years later. But the but – pin is a jade – it’s a small lapel and it has 55 in the center of it and I think George Sundborg had his on when he was there cause he is one that he didn’t – my husband lost his so he didn’t have it. There is a picture of Jim signing the constitution, my daughter got it for me from the museum not long ago.

Terence: But did –

Hurley: One thing I wanted to tell you that really just really amused me is that the oldest person at the Constitutional Convention was E. B. Collins and he was 82 years old. And I thought he was so old and this year when I turned 82 I thought, ah, I don’t feel old at all. I wonder if E. B. Collins felt like I do. What a disgrace that I thought that he was so old, but –

Terence: That’s right, because he was a member of the first –

Hurley: First territorial legislature in 1913 and he was a lawyer and he was still sharp, but he was kind of – he didn’t get around too well, but he was the oldest and the youngest was 27 I think.

Terence: Who was –

Hurley: No, I think the next to the youngest was Jack Coghill and the youngest was Tommy Harris.

Terence: The guy – 29?

Hurley: He was the one who got in about 29 or maybe it was 45, but it was a very small number.

Terence: I know what I wanted to do. I wanted to ask you and I don’t know if you guys can do this but to play something on the piano for us? Could you do that? Could we shoot something?

Man: Sure.

Terence: That is what I wanted to ask you. I kept thinking now wait, wait.

Hurley: Oh, sure. I don’t want to play Alaska’s Flag Song.

Terence: No, no, you can play whatever you want.

Hurley: Play something that I like.

Terence: Absolutely.

Hurley: I used to be able to sing with it you know and now it makes me so mad that I didn’t make some tapes for fun for my kids because my singing voice is getting scratchy. That’s one thing about aging it does not do well for your vocal cords. Neva Egan used to sing the Alaska Flag Song wherever we went you know when she was and at the reunion or with the 25 years of statehood somebody was supposed to from the University was coming up and was supposed to play for her, but I used to play for her. She’d have the music folded up in her purse cause she knew somebody was going to ask her and she knew I couldn’t play without music. And that night when that person didn’t show up they came to me and I said well I can’t – I don’t – I haven’t memorized it. I can’t play it. Neva comes she has got the music in her purse. And so she sang it that night but that’s about the last time that she sang it cause she said she didn’t want to sing when she couldn’t be up to par.

Terence: Well I can –

Hurley: But we had such a good time.

Terence: Cause you love to sing though too, right?

Hurley: Oh, yeah. I love that. Oh, yeah, the singing part you know those old songs.

Terence: So just what kind of music was your favorite? What was your favorite kind of music for you, you know, Katie, from you what music?

Hurley: Oh, playing, you know playing or popular songs?

Terence: Playing or listening?

Hurley: Oh, I got them right out there. I was playing them last night. How deep is the ocean, Irving Berlin I think wrote that.

Terence: But I mean you have a lot of opera here, so you enjoy opera?

Hurley: Oh, I listen to opera. I don’t ever sing opera.

Terence: Do you listen to the Saturday – the Texaco?

Hurley: Yeah, I used to – I think that’s where I got it was as a child listening to the Saturday when we finally got radio and I listened to that. I love going to the symphony and the Judicial Council I was on, they gave me a gift of season tickets to symphony this year and they gave me two tickets, which I thought was so nice and so each time I take one of my grandchildren with me cause they’re getting into music and I want them to love it and appreciate it and I don’t care what they do with it, but just for themselves.

My son is so upset because I quit – I got too tired of making them practice and so he quit piano lessons. He said why did you let me do that? I said you remember how you were about it? I didn’t have the patience and I was tired of arguing with you. He said well some day I’m going to have piano, cause he remembers enough of it. He had enough lessons, but my daughters, one of them really continued with it and she now has a daughter who is – because she works with her, is just doing wonderful things. And that’s one of the great things that I finally got to be a grandmother when I was 71. And now I’m so glad that I’m able to you know still be active so I can enjoy them.

Terence: And share it with them, how wonderful thing.

Hurley: Yeah. I’m aiming to live as long as my mother did at least, so hopefully my health will stay with me.

Terence: You know okay I got to ask you one more question. This goes back hours ago. Was there anybody else in Juneau besides Ernest Gruening who got a subscription to the New York Times? You said Ernest Gruening got the New York Times.

Hurley: Oh, yeah. No I doubt it.

Terence: Did anyone else ever read the New York Times I mean – had you ever seen the New York times before that?

Hurley: No, no, no, no. That’s one of the things I remember telling – that’s one of the things that Estella Draper taught me was the New York Times and do you know my daughter tells a story or my son – I love getting the New York Times and there was a time when they actually delivered the Daily out here in the valley. Can you believe that? Well they don’t do it anymore, but I can get the Sunday New York Times without going to Anchorage, but before that my daughter said that I on the snowiest day of the year I drove into Anchorage to get the – they were furriest with me because it was so chancy but I wanted to get the Sunday New York Times on the day but they expanded – and he also the Nation Magazine of course I learned about that and the Progressive and all of those. And I became a member of the ACLU because one of the things he was attacked by – when he came up here was he was a card-carrying member of the ACLU and that was – you were almost a communist, you know, in the 30’s you know to be carrying – being a member of the ACLU.

Terence: Especially in the 50’s, right with the –

Hurley: Yeah, in the 50’s it was really bad.

Terence: Well, Katie I’m so – thank you very much and we will close this up and I would like you to play us something – you want –

Alaska Statehood Pioneers: In Their Own Words

Episode 8: George Sundborg

Episode transcript

George Sundborg: It was true, it was a great time to be in Alaska. Things were improving. Statehood was coming, it was in sight you know. We were winning.

Opening Titles.

Narrator: George Sundborg was an Alaska Constitutional Convention delegate who chaired the the style and drafting committee. His professional life meandered in and out of civil service, politics and journalism for decades. He was a longtime ally of renowned Territorial Governor and U.S. Senator Ernest Gruening.

George Sundborg: Well I was born in the great city of San Francisco in 1913 and lived there for a few years and then we moved in 1914 to Berkeley, California, which is famous as the site of University of California main campus. And when I was 10 years old my father and mother with their two children, the older of whom was I, moved to Seattle. He was a salesman for United States Glass Company …
I lived here for – through the last two years of grade school and through the high school, Queen Ann High School here and through the University of Washington

Oh, it was a deep depression, yes. I had had all kinds of short-term jobs you know just to try to keep alive. I had been a logger and I had gone to sea on a ship, and I had worked in a print shop and that kind of stuff, but they were just – they were never considered career moves.

I was an usher at the Paramount Theater for about a year for one thing I did. I worked in a super market called Piggly Wiggly and as you say we did anything that we were – we felt very lucky to get any kind of a job.

Intertitle: Journalism

George Sundborg: Now you started to ask me well how did you happen to get a journalism career. My mother was I think largely responsible for that. She said, “Oh George you write so well, you would write, you should be a writer you know. And got that in my head when I was very little. And so I always had only that in mind and I did get a degree with a major in journalism from the University of Washington.

And the University was very useful to its graduates in finding jobs for them. That is how I got my job on the Gray’s Harbor Daily Washingtonian at Hoquiam and I became – I had an employee there – I became the city editor and I had an employee named Murray Morgan, who had just graduated from the University and he became quite a famous author here as you know.

In 1938 I was contacted by the owner of the Daily Alaska Empire in Juneau. The owner of the newspaper at that time was the governor, John W. Troy and the paper was in the hands of his daughter, Helen Troy.
He was ill and he was far past his prime. He had been a very active publisher and he had been a very active politician. And Franklin Roosevelt had appointed him governor on the recommendation of the Democratic Party in Alaska. But he was an invalid.

And they decided for some reason to employ me. I don’t know whether it was a really great move at the time. I had been making $80 a month working for the Washingtonian and I was able to go to Alaska because they offered the magnificent salary of $50 a week, you know, and that was a big step up in the world. And so I went to Juneau and worked on that newspaper for several years.

Anyway Helen was sort of running things and it became obvious and a point was made of it that John Troy every time he took an oath or signed anything he had to sign a statement that he would not benefit individually from whatever the contract was. And the fact was that all of the printing of the territory of Alaska was being done by the Daily Alaska Empire, which he owned. And so Harold Ickes made a point of this and was going to fire him and they were going to prosecute him. And Ernest Gruening at that time was the Director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions in the Interior Department. And he intervened on behalf of Troy and said just why don’t we just let him retire. Don’t make a big fuss about it. Well they did that. It was good advice and then Harold Ickes who didn’t get along with Gruening and vice versa thought oh I know what I’ll do with Gruening. I’ll send him to Alaska to be governor and that is how Gruening arrived there in December of 1938.

Well I met him right at the gangplank of the ship he came to Alaska on. I think it was the Baranoff. He and Dorothy arrived one evening in December of 1939. And I interviewed him briefly as he stepped off the boat. And then I saw him daily thereafter. He was on my beat for the Empire.

I stayed there until September of 1941. That was a period of about three years. Why did I leave? Well again I was offered an increase in salary and my whole career has been sort of an upper, upper spiral from job to job, each one a little better. But there was a deeper reason and that was that I found that the Empire was then, I don’t think it is anymore, but it was very much a tool of the vested interests and I’m talking about mostly nonresident interests, the so-called Alaska Salmon Industry, which was consisted of a lot of men who lived here in Seattle and in Bellington and in Astoria. And the mining interests, the Alaska Juneau Mine, which was a big mine in Juneau. And the Alaska Steamship Company, which had very high rates and so on. Well I became fed up with the way the economy was going and I was told by Helen [Troy] Monson at the time she notified me that I was to be the man that they wanted up there that if I ever had any kind of a question or a problem about affairs in Juneau or Alaska, I should just go to the office of H. L. Faulkner, Bert Faulkner, who was the most powerful lawyer in Alaska I would say in those days and he would straighten me out on things you know. And what I really found was that he was just an apologist for the status quo and for not changing anything in Alaska, not putting more money into health care and into education and things that Gruening very much championed and felt were necessary. And then that’s why the terrible schism arose. I think the biggest issue in Alaska in all the years I lived there you could say it was Ernest Gruening. There was a pro-Gruening group of people in Alaska and there was an anti-Gruening and he fought in the middle of that. I became involved in it.

The subsequent history showed that the Empire was very anti-Gruening, but became that over a period of time and it was because of his policies and his efforts to change things governmentally in Alaska, which they didn’t think were appropriate.

Intertitle: After the Empire

George Sundborg: The National Resources Planning Board, which was part of the executive office of the President and was run by the uncle of Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to open a regional office in Alaska and they began to set it up and Gruening said well you can’t just send up a bunch of economists here to run this thing. You should have somebody in there that knows something about Alaska. And so he made the case to the Chairman of the National Resources Planning Board and I was appointed as a senior planning technician for them. My first salary was $3,800 a year…

After World War II involved the United States with the attack on Pearl Harbor it was decided by the Alaska War Council, which was mostly a military personnel that federal employees whose work did not require them to physically be in Alaska to do it should be moved outside of Alaska. And that also the families of federal employees ought to be moved out of Alaska. And the reason for that was to lessen the burden on transportation facilities…

By that time I had three children. We lived in Juneau and we were notified that we were going to be moved Outside

Well anyway we were moved to Portland, Oregon. … And at that time the joint – what do they call it, Joint Economic Board of the United States and Canada decided that there should be a study made of problems that were going to arise when the war ended.
I was the assistant director of the United States portion of that board and study. …

One thing that we studied was the feasibility of having a what has since happened a ferry system throughout southeast Alaska where it is really unlikely or almost impossible to build roads to connect the towns. And the territory after it became a state took that in hand and made it happen .

Well the war had just ended and I was in Portland.
And I was working at that time for the Bonneville Power Administration. Our study of postwar needs for Alaska had ended.
I was doing serious work, trying to find a market for the federal dams that were coming on to use. A whole series of them you know. It was called Bonneville, but the big one was Grand Coulee Dam.

… and I had the impulse to write a book that would tell about things that people could do if they wanted to move to Alaska. And I called it Opportunity in Alaska and it is just sort of a – it’s a discussion of the resources there and things about Alaska that are different and so on. … Right after the war there was a great shortage of paper and it was limited by the government how much they could have and so on and so I think they published only 10,000 copies and they sold out right away. And by the time the paper situation eased up the demand for it had evaporated.

Intertitle: Returning to Alaska

George Sundborg: In 1946, the Secretary of the Interior made a trip to Alaska and he had a large group of assistants with him.
…I received a call from Ernest Gruening in Juneau saying that Henry W. Clark, who had been the first General Manager of the Alaska Development Board, had much to Gruening’s dismay resigned.

And they were looking all over for someone to be the general manager. And there weren’t a whole lot of candidates at that time and they offered the job to me and I said well I’ll come up there, but you’re going to have to pay me the same salary that you were paying Henry Clark. Oh boy that was $12,000 a year and they tried to get me to come up for less and I said, well I’m well fixed here and I just don’t feel that I should come up there unless I get the same pay as the man I’m replacing. And so they finally agreed to it. And the result of it was, except for the governor and the four federal judges, I was the highest paid federal employee in Alaska.

I mentioned to you that the biggest problem if you want to put it into just a couple of words for half a dozen years in territorial Alaska was Gruening. Not that he was a problem, but the struggle between Gruening and his ideals and the situation, which preceded Gruening. And he was trying to make a place that – where people would want to live and remain.

Gosh, we only had – when I went to Alaska in 1938 they took a census the next year and they found that Alaska had 72,000 inhabitants. And I remember being at a meeting of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce where this was announced by the director of the census. And there was great applause broke out. That was a big improvement. And you know of those 72,000 an overwhelming majority of them were Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts you know. We hadn’t really done much with settling Alaska.

And of course the real objective was statehood. And the legislature repeatedly defeated efforts by Gruening to do any of these things. It was a long struggle.

Well he was very different. He was – he had a classical education. He was really a very – he was not only a learned man, but he was a man that had a whole lot of get up and go about him you know. And he stirred things up considerably in Alaska.

There was a vote taken among Alaskans, I believe it was in 1946 for the first time they voted on do we want statehood? And the Alaska Statehood Committee, which was not an official body of the territory but was a voluntary committee they employed me for a thousand dollars to write a critique or write a thing that would be called the truth about statehood. And anyway I was supposed to summarize the arguments for and against …

That was published as a supplement of every newspaper in Alaska. And they all agreed to circulate it. It was an insert. You know it was like a tabloid in their papers. And that went out to every subscriber of any newspaper in Alaska. That was in 1946 and the outcome of the vote was in favor of statehood, not overwhelmingly but sufficiently.

Intertitle: New President, New Governor, New Newspaper

George Sundborg: Frank Heintzleman became the governor and he sent down one day a word to my office, which was in the same building, that he wanted to talk to me and I went up there. And he said he was kind of very ill at ease about this, but he said George, “I’m sure you’re going to understand, but I have to have you retire, have to have you resign as General Manager of the Alaska Development Board.” He says, “You can probably understand that. You’re such a well-known Democrat and now we’re in a Republican administration here and I just can’t have you doing that,” you know. I said, “Well I do understand Frank and yeah, I’ll quit.” And I did.

Frank Heintzleman of course when he was governor he was in a very difficult position because there was a large group at Anchorage, which had most of the population of Alaska. It was all for statehood. And they were just beating the drums for it you know. And Frank was trying to soft pedal that. And Eisenhower, the President, came out with a proposal to partition Alaska and only let certain part of Alaska be admitted as a state. And people blamed Heintzleman for this and so on.

There were three other guys who had started a little newspaper called the Juneau Independent. And they had big ideas. They thought they were going to build it into a big newspaper and they did pretty well to get it going well and so one of them dropped out and I joined up.
And not after too long the other two quit.

I had become editor because the other ones that were co-editors with me they all fled because it didn’t make any money and it was costing money you know. And I borrowed on my insurance, maximum I could, and I put it into the paper sort of week by week to keep it going right. And I did that mainly to have a voice in Juneau which would be pro-statehood. Because the Daily Alaska Empire was so bitterly against and the Sitka newspaper was against it. And Sid Charles’ newspaper in Ketchikan was very anti-statehood. And the Anchorage Daily News was very anti-statehood.

Their total circulation was by far … it was larger than those that were for statehood. The three newspapers in Alaska that were most influential for statehood were the Anchorage Times, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, and the Juneau Independent. And their role was critical.

Intertitle: Becoming a Constitutional Convention Delegate

George Sundborg: The opportunity came up to be a delegate to the Constitution Convention. And I eyed that very eagerly and I decided that I could get a whole lot of publicity by being the first one to sign up as a candidate to be a delegate.

I got my papers in and I did get some publicity from the fact that I was the first one.

And I deliberately picked the particular office that I wanted…. They had one group of seven delegates that were elected from the territory as a whole.

I think 53 people ran for one of those seven offices then, but I was one of the ones elected.

My total expenditures were less than $100 you know and nobody runs for anything in Alaska any more for anything like that.

Intertitle: The Constitutional Convention

George Sundborg: We got into the electing of a governor and I didn’t vote for Bill Egan, which I should have done. Bill Egan proved to be a wonderful presiding officer. He was so thoughtful of everybody there and all of his decisions were right and I was so impressed with him. But even though I hadn’t supported him for president, he appointed me chairman of the committee on style and drafting. And I’m sure it was because I’ve had a journalistic background and could put words together. And it proved to be a very enjoyable role. It was hard work that we did. We worked long hours through a very bitter winter and we worked Sundays and holidays and all other times because we were running out of time.

There was a daily what they called a plenary session which is a session where all 55 delegates are together and took up things that were the business of the convention and then they would work as separate committees. …

We had great advisors. We had people who knew about state government and what they ought to provide you know and so anyway the committees that were set up were a committee on the legislature, committee on executive, committee on the judiciary, committee on public lands and so on. And they all met as committees for several months and drew up an article for that part of the constitution. And they would bring it before the plenary session when it was finished and we would discuss it upstairs and downstairs and all around and finally pass it. And we – after we had passed all of the articles. I think there are 12 of them of the constitution, they turned the whole thing over to the committee on style and drafting.

Your assignment is not to just write something that has in provisions of this agency and that agency and so on, but you should make this constitution sing by means of its language. And so we kept that in view and we tried to use straightforward and simple and still elegant language.
2

And it was quite unified. It was like something that had been written by Thomas Jefferson you know?

And we finally succeeded and signed the constitution in February of 1956.

It was very special. And I think everybody who had served as a delegate was emotionally moved by it. We were all crying you know as we went up to sign the constitution. It was a great victory.

There was sort of the leader of the consultant was a man named John Bebout – B-E-B-O-U-T and he was on the staff of the state governors. They have a governor’s council or something that works for all the states and he was great. He made a statement that the Alaska Constitution is by far the best of all state constitutions.

Well the fault of many state constitutions, and they have suffered from this, is that they have locked into place provisions that the people have never been able to change. They say in states – a state constitution is of the quality it is quite as much as from it is left out as for what is left in. And it should be just a basic document for the formation of a state so that the state can change its provisions without having to get a two-thirds vote of the people and so on, as is required in most constitutions to get through an amendment. And so we kept away from all of those traps and it is really just a really great basic document.

One criticism I’ve had of it now is that the amendments which have been made to the constitution. There have been I don’t know how many of them, about twenty or something like that, they are not as well written. They are kind of shaggy, compared to the constitution.

But I believe just on its – the grounds of self-government, statehood was a tremendous worthwhile goal and had they not discovered petroleum up there, we would have made it by somehow.

If we go broke it is going to be our own fault. And that’s very good for a democratic society.

Intertitle: Fairbanks Feud
George Sundborg: You know I had a falling out with the publisher of the News-Miner
I was working for the News-Miner as editor when statehood was voted by the Congress on June 30, 1958.

Well Bill Snedden was a great asset to the cause of statehood. He was a hard-nosed Republican, very party motivated, but he was all for statehood, which many Republicans were not and so the influence of the News-Miner in favor of statehood was great.

Text: Clarence William Snedden was the owner and publisher of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner from 1950 to 1989.

George Sundborg: And Bill telephoned me from Washington, DC, where he was and he said the Senate has just voted for statehood and now we’re going to be a state and so on so you know get it in the paper….
Well we got it in there and all was well.

Well the situation at the time was that the division between the Democrats and the Republicans in the Congress was like today – very close. And here were two new Senators coming in and would they be Republicans or Democrats and not only that but right behind them it is obvious that a Hawaii has got to come in and there will be four more Senators and some more Congressmen. And so it became a matter of great contest between the two parties as to who was going to be elected Senator.

Snedden was well you know you shouldn’t have George Sundborg editing your paper at this time. We want to elect …

Stepovich, yeah and we’re building him up and so on. So anyway Stepovich persuaded and he called me into his office one day and like Heintzleman had done some years earlier, he said George I don’t like the way you’re running the paper. And I want you to resign. This was shocking to me because I didn’t sense anything like that and I had had nothing but praise from him about the way I was running the paper. But he was trying to have a way of getting rid of me and he was very – he said I’ll let you make up the reason that you’re leaving. I’ll let you set the timing for it, but do it within a couple of months….

So I had no choice but to do it and about a week after I had assured Snedden that I was going to leave, Gruening came to town and he said George I wish you would resign from the paper and run my campaign for the U. S. Senate.

And the first time I came to Fairbanks after the election I went up there to attend the graduation ceremonies of high school … And my daughter, who had just moved there within the last year was the number one graduating student in the senior class.

Well I came into the hall at the Lathrop High School and I saw Bill Snedden across the floor and I walked over and I put up my hand to shake with him. He wouldn’t take my hand and then he turned his back on me you know. And that was it and they didn’t mention my name for years in the paper and he was very bitter toward me. He blamed me for having – I think he had a guilty feeling himself for having fired me.

Intertitle: “Garbage Man of the Fourth Estate”

George Sundborg: Before the election where Gruening beat Stepovich, again Snedden was in Washington, DC, and he phoned me one day, another time, and he said, this was before he fired me obviously. And he said I want you to cancel the Drew Pearson column. It used to appear on the front page of the News-Miner every day. And I said well, why do you want to do that? It’s the most popular column nationally from Washington, DC and it is very – it is a great asset to the paper to have it. He said no, I want you to cancel it and I want you to write an editorial which will be headed “Drew Pearson, Garbage Man of the Fourth Estate”.

Yeah, I wrote a column and he had told me what to put in it you know and how to head it and so on and it appeared.

I didn’t know what this was all about. But I looked up the dispatch of Drew Pearson which was going to appear the next day and it was so congrat – it built up Gruening. It says the man who is really – you know responsible for statehood for Alaska which has just been voted by the United States Senate is Ernest Gruening and he has done this and he has done that. Well that was more than Snedden wanted to say on the front page of his paper where he was supporting Stepovich.

After a few years Pearson sued the News-Miner for libel calling him the garbage man of the fourth estate. And so I was working away in Washington, DC as Gruening’s assistant and I had a telephone call from Drew Pearson. And he said we’re subpoenaing you to go up as a witness in this lawsuit.

And I told the story of how we came by that phrase garbage man of the fourth estate and that it was in a telegram to me from Mr. Snedden. And oh he was – he was terribly bitter toward me for that. And they claimed – their side claimed that there never had been any exchange of telegrams. There was no record in the files of the News-Miner of any such telegrams going back and forth between Sonborg and Snedden and they kept that up for days.

They questioned me at length you know about it. And they said isn’t it true that there were no such telegrams and that you’re just making this up for political purposes for an election that is about to occur in which Gruening was running against Stepovich. And I said no that wasn’t true. And so well they had it all over the News-Miner for a week. This stuff kept up about Sonborg’s is lying about this stuff and so I returned to Washington, DC, and went to my job.

And I had another call from Drew Pearson or no, from his lawyer in Juneau and he said isn’t there someone else who could corroborate your story that there were these telegrams. And I said well, yes, there is a young woman who worked on the staff of the News-Miner and she was the one that used to mark up the Pearson column for appearance every day.

They subpoenaed her and when she came into the court and they saw her about to take the stand the lawyer for Snedden popped up and he said we have just found in our files the two telegrams about the garbage man of the fourth estate. And it was Mr. Snedden who sent a telegram to George Sonborg ordering that that be done. And they were very quiet in there you know – they had had columns of stuff about it, my lying, lying, lying.

They found in favor of the News-Miner in the suit on the grounds that Drew Pearson was a man who had made himself a public figure and so he had – there was a right of people to criticize him, which I believe is a good decision. But they said that the News-Miner will not be paid any lawyer’s fees in the suit and the lawyer’s fees must have been terrific because of the matter of the telegrams, which made Bill Snedden even madder at me. Oh, boy.

Intertitle: Working for Senator Gruening

George Sundborg: The statehood act was signed by the President on January 3, 1959 and by that time I was in Washington, DC and we were in business.

There were several questions to be decided. One was which of the two senators from Alaska that had been elected was going to be the senior senator. And Gruening expected that Bartlett would step aside and said well you’re really very much senior to me and you can be the senior. But I suppose Bartlett in his mind thought well Gruening ought to step aside because I’ve been serving here in the house you know for 15 years as delegate and I should be. So anyway they went into a closet, a coat closet, in Gruening’s office, just the two of them, and they drew lots and it turned out that Bartlett was the senior senator.

You know, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed by, every single member of the House voted for it. And 98 senators voted for it. And the only two persons in the world who voted against it were Gruening and Wayne Morse.
Of course he talked on the floor almost everyday about it, floor of the Senate. He and Wayne Morse were, they were deaf on our involvement in Vietnam. And he incurred the wrath of President Johnson, I’ll tell ya. He always thought President Johnson had a hand in his defeat by Mike Gravel. Had some money or something. Could be.

Intertitle: Campaigning with Gruening

George Sundborg: And I ran all three statewide campaigns for Gruening. One in ’58, one in ’62, and one in ’68. And we won the first two of them and we lost the third one in the primary to Mike Gravel.

And I found that I was traveling around with him all over Alaska you know and we would go into a place like Kenai and he’d be invited to a luncheon and he’d give a great speech you know. And I find he was changing the speech at every place we stopped for my sake. He didn’t want to bore me with just giving a set speech you know. And he was able to – he was so good at it that he was able to make it a little different.

…The third campaign of Gruening; he was 81 years old and he was running for a six-year term. And people just wouldn’t go for that. So he was defeated by this young guy in the primary. And he took it very hard. Had he been elected, he would have died in office, which would not be a good thing, you know. Alaska did well by really not electing him again.

And I said I want to call Mike Gravel and congratulate him and tell him we’ll do anything we can to help get him elected in the general election. And Gruening thought it over, and said, “All right, do that George. Go down to Juneau tomorrow.” Gravel was there. And he said, “Call him ahead of time and tell him you’re gonna do it.” I called him and told him…

And then Gruening was persuaded by people, “Well, you ought to run as a write-in.” And I told him, you shouldn’t do that. “You weren’t able to get nominated in the primary, how can you hope to be elected in the write-in, when you’re gonna have two people running against you?” So anyway, he did it. And I said, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. And I didn’t. And he took Herb Beaser, who was his legislative assistant, went to Alaska, and kind of honchoed the write in. But it didn’t get anywhere.

Somebody once said that, “Well George you must realize you’re about the only one in Juneau that Gruening can converse with on his own terms.” I don’t know if that was – it wasn’t a kind thing to say .

Intertitle: Ernest Gruening and Bob Bartlett

George Sundborg: There haven’t been any great heroes as legislators, you know, who are like Gruening or like Bartlett. Who were men who could really stand up and do things.

Well, it was a long relationship. Bartlett was already secretary of Alaska at the time Gruening came as governor in 1939. And they got along swimmingly, they were great buddies and workers together. And Gruening said I’m going to give you real assignments to do, you’re not just going to be somebody who takes a salary here and has a position. I’m gonna build you up. And he did. They worked together on everything. And Gruening was clearly the leader of the two during that time. Well now, after Bartlett had been — Gruening had to talk him into filing for delegate, you know, he didn’t think he could beat Henry Roden who was an opponent of his in the primary. HE thought Roden would wipe him out, and Gruening did everything he could to help Bartlett, and he especially persuaded him to please run, you know? And Bartlett did, he was surprised I suppose he won the primary, and he won the general election.

And from the time he got back to Washington D.C., you know, he began to feel more and more important, as they all do when they get there, and he grew away from Gruening a little bit. And he finally came to resent Gruening. He called me several times to complain about things that Gruening was taking credit for that were something that happened for Alaska, and Gruening had telephoned the newspapers up there with a story about it, and Bartlett felt he should have had the publicity. But they, the two of them agreed they would always give way to the next one who was coming up for election. And Gruening could have all the favorable publicity from federal actions during the time when he was heading into a — but Bartlett broke that agreement and became quite anti-Gruening toward the end. Gruening thought that Bartlett was helping Mike Gravel to some extent, I don’t know that it was true, I hope it wasn’t. Bartlett was a great guy, he was always great with me, he finally broke his pick with me. But it was years later.

He uh, I aspired to be appointed assistant secretary of the interior for Public Land Management late in Gruening’s term. The first one I went to was Bartlett, and I said, “Will you support me in this.” And he said, “Well, do you think there’s any possibility you might be appointed?” He said, “President Johnson who will make the appointment is deaf on Gruening.” I said, “Well, I’ve been told, I have already six senators from the Senate interior committee who are supporting my bid to be appointed to that and I think I can make it.” He said, “Well, I’ll be for you,” he said. And he publicly came out for me. And uh, lo and behold when we got up close to the appointment to be made, I read in all the Alaska newspapers that Gruening was, that Sundborg was aspiring to be appointed to this, but Bartlett said well, also a contender for it and I support them equally for it was Hugh Wade. Hugh Wade was a great personal friend of Bob’s, and he was a nice guy. I went to Bob after that and said, “You said you’d support me, and here you’re, you’re saying you’d be for either one of us. How can you do that?” He kind glossed it over, but I felt he had let me down. But I wasn’t appointed. Instead they fired me!

Intertitle: Closing thoughts

George Sundborg: I’ve had a marvelous life. I’ve had a very busy, successful life. You know, it’s been up up up, pretty much, and my health has been good and I’ve been a very fortunate fellow.

Credits:
Recorded October 7, 2003, at George Sundborg’s home in Seattle, Washington.
Died February 7, 2009

Full interview transcript

George Sundborg
Interviewed by Dr. Terrence Cole

George: All under cover.

Terence: Yeah.

George: Because in public they act like they were best friends.

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

George: And at one time when Gruening and Bartlett were very close and for many years.

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

Terence: I wonder if it is true of all states, George? I mean did you ever notice that with other

Terence: What were we talking about, well anyway, shoot? My memory – I think – so what day is today?

Man: It’s the 7th.

Terence: 7th of October.

George: 2003.

Terence: 2003. The day Arnold is running for governor, so it’s a notable day in American political history. And we’re in Seattle at the home of George and Mary Sonborg out in Magnolia, beautiful sunny day. And George thanks first of all for welcoming us into your home.

George: Thank you.

Terence: And I thought we’d just start about if you just maybe tell us a little bit about your early life, where you were born, and where you went to school and your early experiences.

George: Well I was born in the great city of San Francisco in 1913 and lived there for a few years and then we moved in 1914 to Berkeley, California, which is famous as the site of University of California main campus. And when I was 10 years old my father and mother with their two children, the older of whom was I, moved to Seattle. He was a salesman for United States Glass Company, which didn’t deal with windows, but it dealt with pictures and plates and you know vases and that kind of thing. So anyway I lived here for – through the last two years of grade school and through the high school, Queen Ann High School here and through the University of Washington. And then I lived for four years in Hoquiam, Washington, which is on the coast at Gray’s Harbor, as a reporter on a daily newspaper.

Terence: George, how did you get interested in journalism? What was your start in that –

George: Oh, you know this is garbage pickup day and they have these great big trucks going around and at every house they stop and they have a mechanical thing that lifts up the garbage and dumps it and that has got to be happening.

Terence: George, when the sirens come, the first siren – I never noticed this but there is often a second one cause – there is seldom just one truck you know, so the timing is good. But so how did you – but you went to grade school and University here at Seattle.

George: Yes.

Terence: Grade school, high school, and University of Washington?

George: Yes.

Terence: What year did you graduate, George?

George: From the University?

Terence: Yeah.

George: 1934.

Terence: Okay. Oh right in the middle of the depression.

George: Oh, it was a deep depression, yes. I had had all kinds of short-term jobs you know just to try to keep alive. I had been a logger and I had gone to sea on a ship, and I had worked in a print shop and that kind of stuff, but they were just – they were never considered career moves.

Terence: Where did you go to sea, what was that, what was –

George: I was on the crew of a ship called the Keanni, which was an oil tanker and it went up and down the – it belonged to the Associated Oil Company, which has since been probably bought out by others and it doesn’t exist any more. It was a large one at the time and it – the ship was what they call a product ship. That is it didn’t carry crude. It carried gasoline and kerosene and all kinds of fuels that had been through a – anyway we went up and down the coast and we also went across to Hawaii. And I was in Hawaii and we delivered a whole load of stuff to Pearl Harbor in 1933. That was eight years before Pearl Harbor became a common known name all over every house in the United States.

Terence: Yeah, no kidding, well, so and in the depression you basically had to do anything to survive, that was it right?

George: I was an usher at the Paramount Theater for about a year for one thing I did. I worked in a super market called Piggly Wiggly and as you say we did anything that we were – we felt very lucky to get any kind of a job.

Now you started to ask me well how did you happen to get a journalism career. My mother was I think largely responsible for that. She said oh George you write so well, you would write, you should be a writer you know. And got that in my head when I was very little. And so I always had only that in mind and I did get a degree with a major in journalism from the University of Washington.

But anyway in 1938 I was contacted by the owner of the Daily Alaska Empire in Juneau. The owner of the newspaper at that time was the Governor John W. Troy and the paper was in the hands of his daughter Helen Troy. And she came to Seattle to interview several people who had been recommended to her by the University, which I was one. And they decided for some reason to employ me. I don’t know whether it was a really great move at the time. I had been making $80 a month working for the Washingtonian and I was able to go to Alaska because they offered the magnificent salary of $50 a week you know and that was a big step up in the world. And so I went to Juneau and worked on that newspaper for several years.

Terence: That’s great, yeah, that’s real interesting. So you went from $80 a month to $50 a week, huh?

George: Yeah.

Terence: What was it – did the old governor have any hand at all in the paper when you got there anymore, I mean did he –

George: No. Plain answer is no. He was ill and he was far past his prime. He had been a very active publisher and he had been a very active politician. And Franklin Roosevelt had appointed him governor on the recommendation of the Democratic Party in Alaska. But he was an invalid.

Terence: Was he in a wheelchair, George. I mean in other words did he – was he able to walk around and stuff still? I know he had a drinking problem is what everyone says.

George: Oh I don’t know that. Everybody in Alaska had a drinking problem. John Troy I don’t think he was a lush. Anyway Helen was sort of running things and it became obvious and a point was made of it that John Troy every time he took an oath or signed anything he had to sign a statement that he would not benefit individually from whatever the contract was. And the fact was that all of the printing of the territory of Alaska was being done by the Daily Alaska Empire, which he owned. And so Harold Ichies made a point of this and was going to fire him and they were going to prosecute him. And Ernest Gruening at that time was the Director of the Division of Territories and Island Possessions in the Interior Department. And he intervened on behalf of Troy and said just why don’t we just let him retire. Don’t make a big fuss about it. Well they did that. It was good advice and then Harold Ichies who didn’t get along with Gruening and vice versa thought oh I know what I’ll do with Gruening. I’ll send him to Alaska to be governor and that is how Gruening arrived there in December of 1938.

Terence: ’38 – ’39 you mean or is it ’39?

George: Yeah ’39.

Terence: ’39 I think is right.

George: Yeah ’39, yeah ’39.

Terence: So did the Troy was he, cause he still stayed after – around town I guess did he or did he move outside? I don’t know if you – he had anything?

George: John Troy?

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

George: Well he died soon after.

Terence: He did. Okay. Yeah. No, that’s really amazing George cause actually I didn’t know that Gruening intervened on Troy’s behalf, especially considering –

George: Yes.

Terence: – the way relations went later I guess you know.

George: The subsequent history showed that the Empire was very anti-Gruening, but became that over a period of time and it was because of his policies and his efforts to change things governmentally in Alaska, which they didn’t think were appropriate.

Terence: Do you think – so, we’ll talk more about Gruening in a second, but you – how long did you stay on the Empire then after what happened after?

George: I stayed on the Empire about two years.

Terence: And what kind of things did you cover? We were talking before about Bob Henning – oh, that was it, yeah.

George: All right.

Terence: Yeah, about Bob.

George: The two principal reporters for the Empire were Henning and Sonborg. Bob Henning, who later became publisher you know of note and I. And I covered the what was called then the Federal Building, which is now called the State Capitol. It was transferred to the ownership of the state in the statehood act. I covered –

George: It had all of the government buildings. It had all the federal offices and it had all the territorial offices in it and I made a daily round of all of them and got to know all the people and gathered a lot of stories out of there.

Terence: What was your deadline, George? How did you – what was your –

George: It was a daily paper, an afternoon paper, and the deadline was one o’clock in the afternoon, which was not real handy because you’d have to go out early and find an office that was open and go in and talk awhile with the official in there, get some kind of a story and then you’d have half a dozen of these and you’d have to dash down to the newspaper and put them into print. And so it was difficult.

Terence: Now what was Henning’s beat? You covered the Federal Building, what did Bob Henning cover?

George: He covered the rest of the town. He was in you know with the sawmill and with the hotel and other places that generate news.

Terence: So how long then did you stay at the Empire, George? What was your –

George: I stayed there until September of 1941. That was a period of about three years. Why did I leave? Well again I was offered an increase in salary and my whole career has been sort of an upper, upper spiral from job to job, each one a little better. But there was a deeper reason and that was that I found that the Empire was then, I don’t think it is anymore, but it was very much a tool of the vested interests and I’m talking about mostly nonresident interests, the so-called Alaska Salmon Industry, which was consisted of a lot of men who lived here in Seattle and in Bellington and in Astoria. And the mining interests, the Alaska Juneau Mine, which was a big mine in Juneau. And the Alaska Steamship Company, which had very high rates and so on. Well I became fed up with the way the economy was going and I was told by Helen Monson at the time she notified me that I was to be the man that they wanted up there that if I ever had any kind of a question or a problem about affairs in Juneau or Alaska, I should just go to the office of H. L. Faulkner, Bert Faulkner, who was the most powerful lawyer in Alaska I would say in those days and he would straighten me out on things you know. And what I really found was that he was just an apologist for the status quo and for not changing anything in Alaska, not putting more money into health care and into education and things that Gruening very much championed and felt were necessary. And then that’s why the terrible chiasm arose. I think the biggest issue in Alaska in all the years I lived there you could say it was Ernest Gruening. There was a pro-Gruening group of people in Alaska and there was an anti-Gruening and he fought in the middle of that. I became involved in it.

Terence: Cause he was so – he was a polarizing figure to say the least, right?

George: Yes, he was.

Terence: What was it about him that – well maybe before we get to that maybe we should in September ’41 where did you go from there?

George: All right. The National Resources Planning Board, which was part of the executive office of the President and was run by the uncle of Franklin D. Roosevelt decided to open a regional office in Alaska and they began to set it up and Gruening said well you can’t just send up a bunch of economists here to run this thing. You should have somebody in there that knows something about Alaska. And so he made the case to the Chairman of the National Resources Planning Board and I was appointed as a senior planning technician for them. My first salary was $3,800 a year in the federal. And after that time until my retirement in 1963, could that be right? No.

Terence: ’73.

George: ’73, about half my time was spent on newspapers and the other half of the time was spent in various government offices.

-break-

George: Or we had the same amount of authority and the same amount of salary. It was a very small office. There were only three men in it and a couple of girls you know stenographers. So it wasn’t a big deal.

Terence: About the Natural Resources Planning Board, maybe you could say a little bit about – is it John Reddy, did I see his name?

George: Jim Reddy, yeah. Jim Reddy was a great big fellow, very erudite, fine man, great public servant. And when he left Alaska he eventually was employed at the Interior Department as one of the top men there.

Terence: And did he have an economics background you were saying?

George: Yes. He was an economist. He was – I don’t know what his undergraduate school was, but London School of Economics, where everybody who wanted to be an economist would like to go.

Terence: Okay, we were talking a little bit, George, about the Natural Resources Planning Board.

George: National Resources.

Terence: National Resources Planning Board and your experience with that.

George: Yes, and after World War II involved the United States with the attack on Pearl Harbor it was decided by the Alaska War Council, which was mostly a military personnel that federal employees whose work did not require them to physically be in Alaska to do it should be moved outside of Alaska. And that also the families of federal employees ought to be moved out of Alaska. And the reason for that was to lessen the burden on transportation facilities because in those days at least and very likely still most of what Alaska consumes originates somewhere else and they have to maintain quite a transportation system to get materials and food even to Alaska. And so by that time I had three children. We lived in Juneau and we were notified that we were going to be moved Outside and they didn’t know when, but some day a boat would appear and we’d be taken out. And eventually after a couple of months of being on the hot seat and wondering about it the boat did appear. It was a very ancient wooden Army transport and we went aboard and because of a series of special trips that it had to make between ports in southeast Alaska it took us 10 days to get to Seattle. And we had a little baby, our eldest daughter, was at that time only six months old. She and my wife were the only females aboard. And it was an interesting trip.

Terence: No kidding, on a wooden ship.

George: Yeah, right.

Terence: Little kids.

George: It was very old too. There was no railing around the deck. And so either Mary or I had to mount guard at the door of our stateroom which just opened right out onto the deck, to keep two little boys and a toddler.

Terence: Oh, man, what an exhausting trip.

George: Well anyway we were moved to Portland, Oregon. Reddy and Fisher and the rest of the office were too. And at that time the joint – what do they call it, Joint Economic Board of the United States and Canada decided that there should be a study made of problems that were going to arise when the war ended. And what would we do with the ports that were being built and the Alaska Highway and Canold (?) Pipeline and a string of airports that were taking airplanes from where they were manufactured in the middle of the United States and flying them by stages to Nome from where they were transferred to Russians after – toward the end of the war when they were an ally and they became active on the western front in France.

Terence: So the Joint Economic Committee you were doing the research.

George: Yeah and I was the assistant director of the United States portion of that board and study. And we did a number of reports, some of which I think you have mentioned. We may – one thing that we studied was the feasibility of having a what has since happened a ferry system throughout southeast Alaska where it is really unlikely or almost impossible to build roads to connect the towns. And the territory after it became a state took that in hand and made it happen.

Terence: Did the – so when you went to the National Resources Planning Board, and then those studies and so when did you come back to Alaska or what was the –

George: All right. In 1946, the Secretary of the Interior made a trip to Alaska and he had a large group of assistants with him. And I was working at that time for the Bonneville Power Administration. Our study of postwar needs for Alaska had ended and I was working for the Bonneville Power Administration. I received a call from Ernest Gruening in Juneau saying that Henry W. Clark, who had been the first General Manager of the Alaska Development Board, had much to Gruening’s dismay resigned. And the reason he had is that he had courting a woman who finally agreed to marry him but she said provided that we don’t have to live in Alaska. And so he you know explained that to Gruening and he quit.

But anyway I came up with that and I mentioned to you that the biggest problem if you want to put it into just a couple of words for half a dozen years in territorial Alaska was Gruening. Not that he was a problem, but the struggle between Gruening and his ideals and the situation, which preceded Gruening. And he was trying to make a place that – where people would want to live and remain. It used to have such a turnover of population, almost annually. Most of the people in Alaska, aside from the Eskimos and Indians and Aleuts, used to just go up there and work in the summer and move out. And it didn’t encourage a stable lasting economy, which he knew would be necessary for Alaska, if it were to be a state.

Terence: Did – some people sort of say that the big issue, sort of the resident versus nonresident interests right, could you maybe say something about that George about the –

George: Yes, there was that problem. All – practically all of the employees of the salmon industry were nonresidents. They used to go up to isolated points on Bristol Bay and throughout southeast Alaska where there would be nothing on shore except a cannery. There would be no town there except for that. And all of those people were participating in the work and using the resources of Alaska and not paying any taxes at all.

Terence: What were the taxes that they would have paid?

George: There was a – they called it a school tax. It was $10 a year per person who was employed in Alaska. Well, that didn’t support any kind of programs up there. And that was what the struggle was about mainly.

Terence: And so in a way the struggle was about enacting a tax system?

George: Yeah. And of course the real objective was statehood. And the legislature repeatedly defeated efforts by Gruening to do any of these things. It was a long struggle.

Terence: What was he sort of maybe like we should – we could talk a little bit about Gruening personally – when was the first – you must have met him obviously when you were working on the Empire when he first came I suppose?

George: Well I met him right at the gangplank of the ship he came to Alaska on. I think it was the Baranoff. He and Dorothy arrived one evening in December of 1939. And I interviewed him briefly as he stepped off the boat. And then I saw him daily thereafter. He was on my beat for the Empire. I was still working for the Empire. And it wasn’t until several years after that that I left the Empire.

Terence: Was it clear to you from the start though that he was a you know different kind of guy from you know –

George: Well he was very different. He was – he had a classical education. He was really a very – he was not only a learned man, but he was a man that had a whole lot of get up and go about him you know. And he stirred things up considerably in Alaska.

Terence: And wherever he went.

George: And wherever he went, yeah. I don’t think we would have had statehood as early as we did without him. He just kept plugging away for it.

Terence: George, in your opinion is he – I mean if one imagines that he is not there, would statehood have eventually come, I mean is it possible that we might have never gotten statehood if –

George: It is possible. You know every area of the United States, which once was what they call –

Terence: I know what you’re trying to think of the name.

George: Yeah.

Terence: Go ahead and you can say that again, every area –

George: Every area that was ever an organized territory became a state and so I think it was probably inevitable that Alaska sometime would be a state, but he sure helped it along in the timing. And it became the 49th state, the first state ever since I think 1918 or something like that.

Terence: Maybe like 1912 – I can’t remember. It’s Arizona or New Mexico. I don’t remember what years it is, yeah. That’s right, yeah. So now did you know when you first met him too his newspaper experience was very important to him. Did he talk about that at all or –

George: Well, he did some, yeah, he did. But his – I saw him daily and he became a good friend and he was always very good to me. He did things for me that you just wouldn’t believe. For instance, after I became his assistant when he was senator I went with him and a group of senators on a trip to Europe and we went to Scandinavia –

Man: Can we start this story over, my battery just –

George: I guess he’s happy in his University of Alaska Press position, huh?

Terence: He’s going to step down next year.

George: Is he?

Terence: It’s good for him. Oh, yeah, he has got to get out of there, so he can travel more. They love to travel and he is still healthy enough to do that.

George: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Terence: He’s in good shape you know and he has had those health problems but he is taking care of himself so.

-break-

George: I don’t know where we were.

Terence: Where were we at?

Robert: I don’t know. Talking about Gruening, a lot of get up and go.

Terence: Oh, yeah, okay.

Robert: We would have had statehood soon.

Terence: Without him, okay.

Robert: And it’s possible but it was you think eventually it was inevitable.

Terence: Right, okay. But George let’s talk a little bit about the road to the constitution and – cause we have heard from several people, including Tom Stewart who say that the – speaks very highly of you and the style committee and that in fact it is because of your ability as a wordsmith that the constitution reads as well as it does.

George: Well that’s nice of Tom. I really think Tom Stewart is the guy that ought to have the big credit for the successful Constitutional Convention. He worked for several years to get it set up and get it right you know and have the right people there as advisors and all. So he’s very generous if he gives me much credit, but.

Well I worked hard there in it you know. When I was living in Juneau and I had a small weekly newspaper called the Juneau Independent of which I had become editor because the other ones that were co-editors with me they all fled because it didn’t make any money and it was costing money you know. And I borrowed on my insurance, maximum I could, and I put it into the paper sort of week by week to keep it going right. And I did that mainly to have a voice in Juneau which would be pro-statehood. Because the Daily Alaska Empire was so bitterly against and the Sitka newspaper was against it. And Sid Charles’ newspaper in Ketchikan was very anti-statehood. And the Anchorage Daily News was very anti-statehood. I was almost unbelieving when I heard that the Times was going to give up and retreat from the field you know and that the News would take over. There was a time when that would be just on thought of. The Anchorage Times was so dominant. Well anyway –

Terence: For the whole territory, wasn’t it? I mean it was the dominant paper that’s right, yeah.

George: Yeah. So anyway –

Terence: So you were running the Independent?

George: I was running the Independent and I was doing the whole thing.

Terence: George did that start after Gruening left office cause did you – were you out with the Development Board when Gruening –

George: Oh yeah.

Terence: – was dumped okay or when he was replaced?

George: Frank Heintzleman became the governor and he sent down one day a word to my office, which was in the same building, that he wanted to talk to me and I went up there. And he said he was kind of very ill at ease about this, but he said George, I’m sure you’re going to understand, but I have to have you retire, have to have you resign as General Manager of the Alaska Development Board. He says you can probably understand that. You’re such a well-known Democrat and now we’re in a Republican administration here and I just can’t have you doing that you know. I said well I do understand Frank and yeah, I’ll quit and I did.

Let’s see that was the question you asked?

Terence: Yeah, that was in ’53 or so when –

George: Was that ’53?

Terence: I think so, yeah.

George: Something like that, so anyway there were three other guys who had started a little newspaper called the Juneau Independent. And they had big ideas. They thought they were going to build it into a big newspaper and they did pretty well to get it going well and so one of them dropped out and I joined up. And I became, as I just explained not only active in it but I was practically keeping it going with my money.

Terence: And that was generous of you, George.

George: So eventually and not after too long the other two quit and one of them was Jack Doyle, who was the head of the I don’t know what the agency was called, but it was – well it was the legislative – anyway it was a year round –

Terence: Oh, the Research Council – the Legislative Council, is that what they called it?

George: No, but anyway it had to do with the legislature. Anyway they were all gone and I was there alone and the (phone ringing) opportunity.

Terence: Well, so we were talking about the Independent and the other two so basically you’re funding it out of your savings basically.

George: I had gone into the Independent because I had to have a living from something and I wanted to stay in Juneau and anyway I got into the Independent and I kept it going. And the problem – the opportunity came up to be a delegate to the Constitution Convention. And I eyed that very eagerly and I decided that I could get a whole lot of publicity by being the first one to sign up as a candidate to be a delegate.

And I deliberately picked the particular office that I wanted. As you probably know it was the first time that they had ever had people elected from areas according to the population thereof. But they had one group of seven delegates that were elected from the territory as a whole. There were seven of us elected and I picked that race to be in and I had to get sign up sheets signed by so many people from each of the judicial divisions and so on and anyway I got my papers in and I did get some publicity from the fact that I was the first one.

On that – on the run for that my total expenditures were less than $100 you know and nobody runs for anything in Alaska any more for anything like that. And I bought an ad in the Anchorage Times and I bought an ad in Jessin’s Weekly in Fairbanks and I put a free ad from myself in the Juneau Independent. And that was about the extent of my electioneering. And I was fortunate enough to be one of the seven who were elected. I think something like I think 53 people ran for one of those seven offices then, but I was one of the ones elected. And I went to the convention.

Terence: Do you remember George where you came in –

George: Yeah, I came in sixth.

Terence: Oh that was good. Close enough in horseshoes.

George: The only one who had fewer votes than me was Army Armstrong, who was a Presbyterian minister, who had – he had been a minister at churches in three or four places and that’s how you would get a bigger vote for yourself then if you had just been in Juneau all the time, well –

Terence: But you were a Juneau – mostly you were centered in Juneau so you really hadn’t lived in Anchorage/Fairbanks?

George: No.

Terence: But they probably knew you from the Development Board a little bit I guess?

George: Yeah, I was in the paper quite a bit you know.

Terence: Who were –

George: Usually being cursed or cussed.

Terence: Who were some of the other people who were –

George: Well the people that ran best were – the best one by far was Ralph Rivers. Ralph Rivers was a lawyer in Fairbanks and had lived his whole life in Alaska in various towns with his family and then he ran for Attorney General and became Attorney General of Alaska. So he was well known in Juneau and he had a good following. He was number two.

Number three was Mildred Herman who was a lawyer in Juneau who had been active in women’s clubs throughout the territory. And let me see, I don’t know, well I don’t remember just off hand now who the others were.

Terence: That’s okay. That’s all right. It’s okay.

George: We’re getting down to her.

Terence: Yeah, that’s too specific anyway. So you were elected and were making the preparations. So what happened after the election, what was – well were you surprised at I mean –

George: At being elected?

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

George: No, I was expecting it. Anyway it happened and I was very hard up financially at that time and I had trouble getting somebody to take over the paper while I was going to be out of town for 75 days, but it all worked out and I went to the convention and I was buttoned holed on my arrival by not Ralph Rivers, but his brother Vic, who was an architect who lived in Anchorage. And he said he wanted to be the President of the Constitutional Convention and would I support him? And I said well, yeah, you’ve always been good to me I’ll support you.

So anyway we got into the electing of a governor and I didn’t vote for Bill Egan, which I should have done. Bill Egan proved to be a wonderful presiding officer. He was so thoughtful of everybody there and all of his decisions were right and I was so impressed with him. But even though I hadn’t supported him for president, he appointed me chairman of the committee on style and drafting. And I’m sure it was because I’ve had a journalistic background and could put words together. And it proved to be a very enjoyable role. It was hard work that we did. We worked long hours through a very bitter winter and we worked Sundays and holidays and all other times because we were running out of time. And we finally succeeded and signed the constitution in February of 1956.

Terence: Where were you living that winter George? Where did you stay at?

George: Okay. I was living in the attic of gee I should remember his name better than this. The Democratic chairman of Alaska who was part owner of a hotel right across the street from Wally Hickel’s hotel in Fairbanks. Oh, anyway, it’s terrible to be old.

Terence: Yeah, I can’t remember his name either.

Terence: Alex Miller.

George: Alex Miller.

Terence: Yeah, right, okay, yeah.

George: He had a big family. They had a big house.

Terence: Okay, we’ll do that –

Terence: Where did you live that winter George, where were you staying at?

George: Well I was living in the attic of the home of Alex Miller. Alex Miller was sort of the Democratic boss of Alaska, very influential guy politically. I stayed there rent free, which was practically it had to be because I had no money. And I used to walk over to the Nordale Hotel every morning in order to catch the bus, special bus, which took the delegates from there to the University of Alaska where we met in what they now call Constitution Hall.

Terence: Was there any sort of work done. Did you get together with the delegates after hours and stuff like that? Did you know I mean in hotel rooms or you know –

George: Well the committees had sort of a life of their own and they had to have time to meet as a committee. There was a daily what they called a plenary session which is a session where all 55 delegates are together and took up things that were the business of the convention and then they would work as separate committees and we did a lot of that most of it out on the grounds of the University, but there was some of it done I suppose, yes I know there was. I remember one weekend when our committee met practically night and day to finish up some – on some of the articles of the constitution.

Terence: What was the procedure George a committee would – one of the other committees would draft a proposal and then get it to you – how would they?

George: No. What happened was that there were – we had great advisors. We had people who knew about state government and what they ought to provide you know and so anyway the committees that were set up were a committee on the legislature, committee on executive, committee on the judiciary, committee on public lands and so on. And they all met as committees for several months and drew up an article for that part of the constitution. And they would bring it before the plenary session when it was finished and we would discuss it upstairs and downstairs and all around and finally pass it. And we – after we had passed all of the articles. I think there are 12 of them of the constitution, they turned the whole thing over to the committee on style and drafting and our instructions were to make this a unified document and go through it and improve it but don’t change anything, which a hard task but it can be done you know.

Terence: So you basically didn’t get anything – you didn’t get one article at a time or did you?

George: Well we had already had one article at a time in the plenary session.

Terence: Oh, okay.

George: So we knew what it was going to contain, but then we were handed the whole thing and we just plain – we went through it article by article and we reported it back to the whole group as we finished each one and then we would have plenary session of several days in which I would explain the changes we had made and why we did it and so on and there was a lot of discussion of that. We usually prevailed and eventually they had the whole thing finished up. It was quite unified. It was like something that had been written by Thomas Jefferson you know and it held together and it has served Alaska well.

Terence: George did you – do you think – can you remember any instances where they didn’t go along with the drafting committee and that you know you wish they did or ones where you were particularly delighted that they went along with you either way on that?

George: Well I would say we by the time we had finished with several articles we had whipped them into submission and they realized that what we were doing was a necessary thing and it really did improve the constitution.

Terence: Well that speaks well of the constitution doesn’t it or poorly of the amendments I guess.

George: We were well organized to accomplish that.

Terence: Yeah, cause it is like you said, I mean Tom Stewart was out there beating the bushes at these PAS guys, what was your impression of the – did you have contact with any of those consultants or any of them?

George: Oh, yeah. We had a consultant to our committee who was a wonderful guy named Kim Olin. He lived in New Orleans and he was I guess suggested to the Constitutional Convention by you know the guy who developed or suggested –

Terence: Oh Lehleitner.

George: George Lehleitner.

Terence: Lehleitner, yeah.

George: Who lived in – who lived many years in New Orleans to be a consultant. And he was just a great help, wonderful man. He had worked for several states which had had amending conventions and the poor guy I think it was within a day or two of the ratification of the Alaska Constitution that he was killed in an airplane crash in Louisiana.

Terence: I didn’t know that, huh, well that’s but he did live to see the passage?

George: Oh yeah.

Terence: He did, oh that’s great.

George: I think he was there for the final signing.

Terence: Yeah, did – what was the procedure just take us through when you had either the article or the whole thing – did you use a chalk board, how did you – what did you do this? You know did you just pass out copies?

George: Yeah, oh, yes, we passed out – we did it as I mentioned article by article and we would of course pass out the article showing the amendments that were proposed by the committee on style and drafting to the original language.

Terence: But I mean that when you were in your committee.

George: Oh.

Terence: How did you – I mean was it necessary to use like a blackboard or a chalk board or I was just curious on were you just sitting around a table basically or?

George: Yeah, sitting around a table and we did that not with the whole committee only consisted I think of six or eight people, but we usually worked in groups of about three and we would work it through and all you know discuss it and finally agree on something we would recommend to the plenary session.

Terence: So then when you got to the plenary session you passed out –

George: We passed out and I was on my feet I would say 95 percent of the time of the convention in its less month. You know getting agreement on this language.

Terence: Cause isn’t that – George I can’t remember this now. Is the picture of you when you fell asleep is that – do you know that picture?

George: Yeah, I know it well.

Terence: That’s you.

George: That was –

Terence: They all saw that picture – who took that?

George: Steve McCutcheon, who was a professional photographer and he sat in the front row of delegates there. I was in the front row too. And one lazy afternoon I fell asleep in the chair and he took great delight in standing up and he got everybody’s attention and I kept on slumbering and he took a picture of me sound asleep at the session, but I got even with him. We had several reunions of the Constitutional Convention delegates and at a reunion in Juneau I caught him asleep in the row of delegates that were – was supposedly working on some weighty matter and I sent him a copy of it and he responded with good humor.

Terence: Well, it’s a great pict – cause I think in the background of that picture Egan is also smiling and everybody – it’s a great – I think it’s my favorite photograph of the entire thing.

George: Not mine.

Terence: No I’m sure it’s not yours, but it shows you were working. You know a guy doesn’t fall asleep unless he’s working so – so it’s a pretty – it speaks well for you George not the other way around. So what about the consultants, any of the other ones that you had dealings with or –

George: Oh, yeah. There was sort of the leader of the consultant was a man named John Bebout – B-E-B-O-U-T and he was on the staff of the state governors. They have a governor’s council or something that works for all the states and he was great. He made a statement that the Alaska Constitution is by far the best of all state constitutions and it – for its area and its time it is the greatest state constitution. He died about a year ago.

Almost everybody has died you know. There are still five of our delegates alive. They were among the younger delegates. I was the eldest – I’m the eldest of the five who survive. I’m 90 and a half.

Terence: Who was the – who was the youngest at the time even I don’t know.

George: At the time. I’d have to look at that.

Terence: That’s okay.

George: I know him well and I picture him but I can’t pick up his name, but he was a young guy and he was the first to die. And one of the first to die was a young lawyer in Anchorage who – oh, he was so wonderful in the convention, especially in the development of the article on the judiciary. But they were dying like flies for several years and we have gotten down to where there are only five embittered old men you know. And we have had three meetings within the past year where we got together you know at the request of some – two in Anchorage and one in Juneau.

Terence: Did you go to that thing of Hickel’s?

George: I didn’t go because I had another engagement – I was in New Hampshire at the time and I just sent him my regrets. Did you hear anything about that?

Terence: Heard it was really great and Vince Ostrum was there and we want to talk to him. He’s still alive and he send a nice note to Tom Stewart about you know hoping that Tom would sort of write a mem – and write something to about his thing so.

George: You don’t mean a delegate?

Terence: No, I don’t mean delegate but I mean Stewart was there as he was the secretary.

George: Tom was there of course.

Terence: But who now George who were the delegates still alive are?

George: Okay. There is Judge in Anchorage whose name is – he’s a southerner with a strange name I’ll think of it in a minute. There is pain with palpation

Terence: Vic Fisher.

George: Vic Fisher, who was very influential in the convention. You know it is sort of his field. He was a city planner.

There is a preacher who lives in St. Paul I believe. He’s the only one except – besides me who lives outside of Alaska now.

And there was Seabord J. Bucheleu is the lawyer and the preacher’s name is almost like mine – Londborg – Maynard Londborg. I believe he lives in St. Paul.

Let’s see is there one other.

Terence: Burke –

George: Burke Riley, yeah Burke Riley, who lives in Juneau.

Terence: Oh, and Coghill was –

George: Oh yeah, Coghill.

Terence: Jack.

George: Jack Coghill.

Terence: Yeah.

George: That makes five. He lives now in Fairbanks.

Terence: Yeah.

George. He did live in Nenana at the time.

Terence: Yeah. We’re hoping through the course of the project anyway to interview – obviously we should have done this a long time ago, but we didn’t in a formal way even though there are other –

George: You don’t have any good ones left you know. They’ve all died. Slim pickings.

Terence: That’s not true. That’s not true. Okay and so if – what about Vic Fisher? His role was on the local government article – that’s what he –

George: He was and he was also a member of the style and drafting committee and very active on it. He was a great guy. Mildred Herman –

-break-

George: Go on in our committee. Our cast were numbered to Al Lusana, Judge Davis, I guess that was about it. They were all hard workers.

Terence: Well if we had let’s see – let’s talk a little George about writing the book and the Opportunity in Alaska book anyway. The Hail Columbia that was before or after – which book came first in your –

George: Opportunity in Alaska was –

Terence: Okay. How did you come to write that? What was the –

George: Well the war had just ended and I was in Portland as I mentioned working for the Bonneville Power Administration and I had the impulse to write a book that would tell about things that people could do if they wanted to move to Alaska. And I called it Opportunity in Alaska and it is just sort of a – it’s a discussion of the resources there and things about Alaska that are different and so on. It went very well. It sold out at a time when publishers could not get paper. Right after the war there was a great shortest of paper and it was limited by the government how much they could have and so on and so I think they published only 10,000 copies and they sold out right away. And by the time the paper situation eased up the demand for it had evaporated.

And then I wrote a book about the Columbia Basin Project and the Grand Coulee Dam, called Hail Columbia.

Terence: How did – in writing Opportunity Alaska that was before you became head of the Development Board right?

George: Yes, I had been in Alaska working first for the Empire and then for the National Resources Planning Board. And we were moved outside department I worked for the giant committee United States and Canada and then I looked for employment and I found it with Bonneville. And I was very happy there. I was doing serious work, trying to find a market for the federal dams that were coming on to use. A whole series of them you know. It was called Bonneville, but the big one was Grand Coulee Dam. And then there were others like Hungry Horse Dam up on the Kalis – Kalispell and so on. And I was out trying to develop power markets.

Terence: And during that time you got the idea because obviously you had been captivated by Alaska I mean to write this book.

George: Right. I wrote it evenings and weekends.

Terence: And did it – was it something that you had hoped to even when you were doing it hoped to go back. I mean did you think or did you think you’d stay outside?

George: Oh I thought I’d go back yeah. I always thought that. And I finally did as head of the Development Board. It was sort of a stalking horse for me for the Development Board job because that is what it talks about you know. And it made me a natural candidate to be the general manager.

Terence: And I think as a sort of summary that was really written before the income tax was passed in 1949. So maybe I don’t know if you –

George: No, you mean in Alaska?

Terence: The state income tax – the territorial income tax yeah.

George: In ’49, well –

Terence: I think your book came out in ’46, I’m not sure.

George: Oh did it?

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

George: Okay.

Terence: Well it doesn’t matter George – how about the basic thing I was thinking about the I don’t know if you have any memories from the tax –

George: The tax struggle?

Terence: Fight, yeah.

George: Yes, I do indeed. I was working for the Empire then. And Gruening, Ernest Gruening, he persuaded several experts on taxation to come to Alaska at various times and to meet with the legislature and to urge that Alaska develop some kind of a tax system which would tax people according to their means and so on, get a good system going. And I covered those meetings for the Empire and I was flattered to have one of the experts, the most important one, call me the very day that I wrote the story and it was published about what his suggestions were and he said he had never heard of anybody who was able to put down on paper in a concise way the proposals that he made and get into publication the same day, which was kind of flattering.

Frank Heintzleman, you want me to just – you want to do on with just most anything?

Terence: Frank, yeah, yeah.

George: All right. Frank Heintzleman of course when he was governor he was in a very difficult position because there was a large group at Anchorage, which had most of the population of Alaska. It was all for statehood. And they were just beating the drums for it you know. And Frank was trying to soft pedal that. And Eisenhower, the President, came out with a proposal to partition Alaska and only let certain part of Alaska be admitted as a state. And people blamed Heintzleman for this and so on.

Well the Juneau Independent was deep into these things and we were making fun of Heintzleman and kind of making his life miserable while he was governor. And he had been a bureaucrat all his life. He was a very able man and he ran things well, but he had his own way of doing things. And one day while I was running the Independent my former boss from the Bonneville Power Administration came to Juneau and he – his name was Ivan Block. He was the son of the famous composer named Block, who was probably the greatest composer of modern music of all Americans. But anyway Ivan was a very jolly fellow and very able. He came in and he went to see the governor. And he stayed and talked with Frank until noontime. And Frank said let’s go down to Baranoff Hotel and have lunch. And so they were walking down Seward Street in Juneau and I was walking up toward the Federal Building. And I saw them about a block ahead and I was looking forward to greeting Block when Heintzleman, as reported to me later by Block, who was a great personal friend of mine, Heintzleman said oh there’s that dam George Sonborg coming up the hill, let’s cross the street so we don’t have to encounter him. And they did.

I attended Frank Heintzleman’s funeral. There were only two people there who knew anything about Frank Heintzleman and his career and that was Mary Lee Council, who was the Administrative Assistant of Bob Bartlett and me, Administrative Assistant of Ernest Gruening. And we drove up from Washington, DC, where we were both working then to a part of Pennsylvania which is inhabited by what kind of Dutch do they call them?

Terence: Oh, Memonites or –

Terence: Pennsylvania Dutch?

George: Yeah, Pennsylvania Dutch people, which Frank was from. He was born into a Pennsylvania Dutch family and all the people in charge of his funeral and present there were people who only knew him as a little boy you know many, many years previously. And Mary Lee and I knew what a great influence he had been in Alaska and what he had accomplished. Fired me for instance. One thing in his favor.

Terence: Yeah, everybody has got to do something right, huh?

George: Right.

Terence: Well did – what about the sort of knock on him of being anti – oh, go ahead were you going to say something?

George: I remember what it was we dropped.

Terence: What was that, okay go ahead?

George: I was telling about how Gruening – he was so friendly with me and one time we went with a subcommittee of the senate to Scandinavia and we went all around Norway visiting power plants. And the reason for doing that was that Gruening was proposing the development of a power site at Rampart on the Yukon River. And he thought it would be useful to find out how – what they did in the same latitudes in another continent. And so we were in Stockholm and we’re about to leave to fly. We had an Air Force plane, which was taking the committee around Europe and we were about to fly to Paris and the other senators who were along on the trip. There were about, oh maybe 10 of them, and they could care less about power plant at Rampart in Alaska you know and they used to sort of make fun of Gruening. They said oh, he said Gruening has a funny look on his face, it looks like he has just smelled another fertilizer plant. You know, anyway, their hearts were not very much on the – or their heads on the business. They were in Europe for a good time and boy they were most of all anxious to get to Paris. And the US Embassy in I don’t know maybe it was consulate, it was an embassy in Stockholm who was supposed to pick us up at our respective hotels and take us to the plane. And somehow they overlooked me and I was waiting – I was the only one in the particular hotel where I was staying of the group. And so they all got at the field and they were anxious to get flying to Paris and so Gruening didn’t know why I hadn’t arrived, but I just hadn’t. And so he stood at the bottom of the ladder that you climb to get into the airplane in those times with his foot on the rung of the ladder and he engaged the chairman of the committee who was a tough old guy from Indiana I believe in conversation and kept his foot there so that they couldn’t take the plane away before I got there. And I got there and got aboard and all was well. And he said he would have stood there for a week in order to be sure that I would be taken out of town.

Terence: That’s a great story.

– Break –

George: Committee on Judiciary would read 48 other constitutions, what they said about the legislature or judiciary.

– Break –

George: Experience with him. He was always very supportive and very wonderful to me. Somebody once said that that well George you must realize you’re about the only one in Juneau that Gruening can converse with on his own terms. I don’t know if that was – it wasn’t a kind thing to say.

Terence: Not overloaded with minutia I guess.

George: Oh, yes. We didn’t really get into that did we before we went off?

Terence: No.

George: Well the fault of many state constitutions and they have suffered from this is that they have locked into place provisions that the people have never been able to change. They say in states – a state constitution is of the quality it is quite as much as from it is left out as for what is left in. And it should be just a basic document for the formation of a state so that the state can change its provisions without having to get a two-thirds vote of the people and so on, as is required in most constitutions to get through an amendment. And so we kept away from all of those traps and it is really just a really great basic document.

Terence: George, did – this is switching gears a little bit because that is a very good answer.

Robert: Can I ask one question follow-up? And look at Terrence when you answer because he is the guy that –

George: All right.

Robert: But you know you said something about making it sing. How did you as a writer feel about the final document?

Terence: Now just pretend I asked that question.

George: Yeah, all right. Yes, in fact one of – I mentioned one of our advisors as a young man named Kim Olin, the one who was killed in an airplane accident. And very early on when he was meeting with our committee, he said your assignment is not to just write something that has in provisions of this agency and that agency and so one, but you should make this constitution sing by means of its language. And so we kept that in view and we tried to use straightforward and simple and still elegant language.

Terence: It’s like I heard this old joke one time about John C. Calhoun, you know the great southern orator and he wrote poetry well I mean the joke was and one of his famous poems said whereas, and start whereas you know, that was the poem.

George: There’s the baby.

Terence: There’s the baby.

George: I think he has been exported.

Terence: Yeah, he has been, whereas. Okay, that is what you wanted to get Robert.

Robert: Yeah, yeah, I mean it was just cause you’re a writer and I think you know the chance to work on a document that will stand through time must be really gratifying in a way books don’t, this will be a document that you know.

Terence: Or it is right now.

George: Well it has succeeded up to this time. It has been you know 48 years now and it has proved to be a very workable document. There are many states whose for instance the judges in the states they have told people from Alaska who attend the conventions boy if we only had a state constitution like yours that would make it so much easier to govern and operate.

Terence: Okay, George sort of a general overview of the newspapers and statehood. I know Gruening in his correspondence I don’t know if you ever heard him use this term or if you did, referring to the axis press he used to say in this letter between him and Bartlett about the anti-statehood papers. And the importance of the newspapers in the fight you know the campaign?

George: Well it was very important. I mentioned a number of newspapers that were anti-statehood and they were – their total circulation was by far the larger than that of the newspapers that were – did I say proceeded, anti-statehood, it was larger than those that were for statehood. The three newspapers in Alaska that were most influential for statehood were the Anchorage Times, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, and the Juneau Independent. And their role was critical. There was a vote taken among Alaskans, I believe it was in 1946 for the first time they voted on do we want statehood? And the Alaska Statehood Committee, which was not an official body of the territory but was a voluntary committee they employed me for a thousand dollars to write a critique or write a thing that would be called the truth about statehood. And anyway I was supposed to summarize the arguments for and against and I’ve been told by many people that I was much more eloquent in talking about those that were for than for those that were against. But anyway I worked hard on it and I had the help of Tony Dimond, who was then the delegated congress and others and that was published as a supplement of every newspaper in Alaska. And they all agreed to circulate it. It was an insert. You know it was like a tableau in their papers. And that went out to every subscriber of any newspaper in Alaska. That was in 1946 and the outcome of the vote was in favor of statehood, not overwhelmingly but sufficiently.

Terence: It was like three to two at least.

George: Three to two I think.

Terence: Yeah, that’s right.

George: And then subsequently there have been several other. There was for instance in the ratification we had to approve the constitution and it was approved by a very good vote.

Terence: George what about a little bit like about fish traps? Why were fish traps so – such an issue, such a big –

George: Well everybody who fished for a living on a boat hated fish traps because they were very efficient, cheap method of providing salmon for canning. And so other states do not – of course there are not a lot of states that have salmon but the State of Washington, Oregon, California and so on, they don’t allow fish traps and they never did. Alaska had most of its salmon at the time caught in fish traps and so it became a very sore subject for instance in southeast Alaska and the public was against fish traps because most of them were fisherman or many of them were or they knew fisherman or they knew the effects of the fish traps on the runs. The runs of the salmon were really going down, down, down, down every year in that era. And so this man named George Lehleitner from New Orleans he had the idea and he got it first when he was a Naval officer stationed in Hawaii. And he said you know this territory ought to be a state and he had the idea that first Hawaii and then he got into same thing for Alaska. Should go right ahead and elect two senators and a congressman the way Tennessee when they came in. They did it without any approval by the Congress. And so we adopted as one of the – it is not a part of the constitution but it was voted on at the same election. What we call the Alaska Tennessee Plan where we did that. And we did elect those officials and sent them down there. They were not seated officially but they were able to do a whole lot of talking in favor of statehood in Washington, DC and they were influential.

Terence: What did Bartlett think of the Tennessee Plan, what his view on that, did he see them as a hindrance to his efforts, a help, what do you –

George: Well I can’t really speak for him, but sure he was fearful of it you know. He was Alaska’s man in Washington. What would be the effect of sending down three more you know? Would they be working at cross-purposes and so on and so it is only human to have that fear. But he didn’t make any public criticism of it.

Terence: And it ends up being a Democratic slate anyway I mean.

George: Yeah, it was pure Democratic.

Terence: With Gruening, Egan, and Rivers, right?

George: Rivers, Gruening, and Egan.

Terence: Yeah, what did I say, yeah. Did you know how do you think that they said this I guess a little bit that Egan sort of leadership was so important. And everybody always comments on his phenomenal memory and maybe George you want to make – I don’t know if you have any anecdotes about him or particular memories of him or things that come to mind?

George: Well he was just great. I was told by one of the delegates and I can’t remember now who it was but when they got into something that he was espousing a certain way of doing things that Bill Egan in the chair who didn’t like to speak. He was going to be a presiding officer and not somebody who is speaking on the matters. He recognized that the fellow was getting into territory which was delicate and so he called a – what’s the word I want – to stop the proceedings.

Terence: A recess of –

George: He called for a recess and he talked – he went down and talked with this delegate and told him about the danger of going on with that and the fellow instantly realized that he was right and he changed his direction. But he was just right – he was wonderful in every respect. And he was trying hard to make it be the best constitution there ever was.

Terence: You know one thing just occurred to me too George and anything else, cause I’m going to remind you – you said you were going to tell a story afterwards, but one thing that Lou Williams, Jr. had told me he said and he didn’t remember when this started but that for years Helen Monson refused to mention Gruening’s name in the paper. I don’t know if you – but anyway he said the story would say the governor and wouldn’t even say his name.

George: Oh, yeah, I suppose that happened yeah. Similarly, you know I had a falling out with the publisher of the News-Miner.

Terence: Oh, Snedden.

George: Bill Snedden. After I was long gone and they refused to mention me. I was working at that time for Gruening and they would try very hard to avoid mentioning me.

Terence: Not repeating your name at all huh? Not even mentioning it?

George: No mention.

Robert: Well didn’t you work for the News-Miner though?

George: I was the editor and I got along fine with him, but what happened well it’s an interesting story and I don’t know if you want it.

Terence: Yeah, yeah, cause this is important, yeah. Yeah.

George: Are we on again?

Terence: Yeah.

George: Okay. Came a time a few years after statehood when I’m not getting into this very well, but anyway.

Terence: George about the lawsuit, the Pierson thing or is it not?

George: Well that was one part of it.

Terence: Well I think you went to work for Snedden before statehood though, right or after the constitution?

George: Oh, yeah, before. I was working for him when statehood arrived.

Terence: Okay. So let’s start there maybe in a way if you – because – but he was a Republican. I mean that is part even though you’re both pro-statehood I guess maybe.

George: Yeah.

Terence: You know.

George: Well Bill Snedden was a great asset to the cause of statehood. He was a hard-nosed Republican, very party motivated, but he was all for statehood, which many Republicans were not and so the influence of the News-Miner in favor of statehood was great. I was working for the News-Miner as editor when statehood was voted by the Congress on June 30, 1958. And Bill telephoned me from Washington, DC where he was and he said the Senate has just voted for statehood and now we’re going to be a state and so on so you know get it in the paper. Which we had it, I had it all prepared. I had written and edited a whole section that would be put in the paper of the day that we got statehood and it had the history of Alaska up to that time and something about all of the territorial governors and so on. But we got it in there and all was well.

Terence: Seeton.

George: Eaton.

Terence: Seeton

George: Seeton, Seeton.

Terence: Now you mean Snedden was –

George: Snedden, who did it say?

Terence: You said Gruening.

George: Oh, no, no. Snedden was well you know you shouldn’t have George Sonborg editing your paper at this time. We want to elect what’s his name?

Terence: Stepovich.

George: Huh?

Terence: Stepovich.

George: Stepovich, yeah and we’re building him up and so on. So anyway Stepovich persuaded and he called me into his office one day and like Heintzleman had done some years earlier, he said George I don’t like the way you’re running the paper. And I want you to resign. This was shocking to me because I didn’t sense anything like that and I had had nothing bu praise from him about the way I was running the paper. But he was trying to have a way of getting rid of me and he was very – he said I’ll let you make up the reason that you’re leaving. I’ll let you set the timing for it, but do it within a couple of months and so one.

Well, he was getting ready for a campaign to elect Stepovich at the behest mostly of Seaton and of Ted Stevens, who was an assistant to Seaton. He’s now the senator you know. And so I had no choice but to do it and about a week after I had assured Snedden that I was going to leave, Gruening came to town and he said George I wish you would resign from the paper and run my campaign for the U. S. Senate.

Well that worked out fine you know. And so I did and I went to work and Snedden said to me, oh don’t go to work for Gruening. Gruening is not going to make it you know. He’ll never be elected senator. Why don’t you work for Butrovich, who is running for governor at that time? And I couldn’t see that and I said no, I’m – you’ve told me to leave and I’m going to leave and I’m going to pick whatever job I want and I want to work for Gruening. And that infuriated him. And he thought it was not important really at the time because he didn’t think Gruening had a chance. But when Gruening finally beat Stepovich, he became very bitter toward me personally. And the first time I came to Fairbanks after the election I went up there to attend the graduation ceremonies of high school, what’s the name of it? It’s named for Cap – Lathrop. And my daughter, who had just moved there within the last year was the number one graduating student in the senior class, highest average.

Terence: The valedictorian, right?

George: Valedictorian and I was up there for that purpose. Well I came into the hall at the Lathrop High School and I saw Bill Snedden across the floor and I walked over and I put up my hand to shake with him. He wouldn’t take my hand and then he turned his back on me you know. And that was it and they didn’t mention my name for years in the paper and he was very bitter toward me. He blamed me for having – I think he had a guilty feeling himself for having fired me and having me go over and work for Gruening you know. And that was more than he could stand. Well, but he was great for statehood.

Terence: I mean it meant a lot when he switched the paper’s position, didn’t it? I mean from Fairbanks being a Bastian –

George: Of Cap Lathrop, yeah, which was anti. Yeah, he was good. Eventually got you know into the lawsuit.

Terence: Oh, yeah, we should maybe, well –

Terence: Maybe we should say a little bit about the lawsuit cause that’s pretty important, cause that was the Johnny Come Lately right – it was Drew Pearson, right, wasn’t that it?

George: Drew Pearson, yeah.

Terence: Yeah.

George: Well are we on?

Terence: Yeah.

George: Before the election where Gruening beat Stepovich again Snedden was in Washington, DC and he phoned me one day, another time, and he said this was before he fired me obviously. And he said I want you to cancel the Drew Pearson column. It used to appear on the front page of the News-Miner every day. And I said well, why do you want to do that? It’s the most popular column nationally from Washington, DC and it is very – it is a great asset to the paper to have it. He said no, I want you to cancel it and I want you to write an editorial which will be headed “Drew Pearson, Garbage Man of the Fourth Estate”. And I didn’t know what this was all about. But I looked up the dispatch of Drew Pearson which was going to appear the next day and it was so congrat – it built up Gruening. It says the man who is really – you know responsible for statehood for Alaska which has just been voted by the United States Senate is Ernest Gruening and he has done this and he has done that. Well that was more than Snedden wanted to say on the front page of his paper where he was supporting Stepovich.

So anyway I called him back. Oh, I sent him a telegram. And I said of course I will do what you order Bill, but as a loyal employee I think I should warn you that canceling the Drew Pearson column under those circumstances will have an opposite affect to what you would like and it is going to be a big story that Snedden canceled the Drew Pearson column because he said something nice about Gruening. And Bill thought it over and he sent me a telegram later that day saying all right, but cancel it at the end of the month, which I did.

The – where am I?

Terence: Did you write that column about the garbage man what was the –

George: Yeah, I wrote a column and he had told me what to put in it you know and how to head it and so on and it appeared. And after a few years Pearson sued the News-Miner for liable calling him the garbage man of the fourth estate. And so I was working away in Washington, DC as Gruening’s assistant and I had a telephone call from Drew Pearson. And he said we’re subpoenaing you to go up as a witness in this lawsuit that is going to be held on a certain day and so on. Well I was served with a subpoena and I flew as far as Seattle and they were calling my name in the airport. And again it was Drew Pearson and he said the judge has just postponed the lawsuit for a month or something, so don’t go on to Fairbanks at this time, come back to Washington, DC and I did.

But eventually I did go up there and I was a witness. And I told the story of how we came by that phrase garbage man of the fourth estate and that it was in a telegram to me from Mr. Snedden. And oh he was – he was terribly bitter toward me for that. And they claimed – their side claimed that there never had been any exchange of telegrams. There was no record in the files of the News-Miner of any such telegrams going back and forth between Sonborg and Snedden and they kept that up for days. And Snedden may have really believed that there weren’t telegrams or he persuaded his lawyer that there had not been and they finally said – they questioned me at length you know about it. And they said isn’t it true that there were no such telegrams and that you’re just making this up for political purposes for an election that is about to occur in which Gruening was running against Stepovich. And I said no that wasn’t true. And so well they had it all over the News-Miner for a week. This stuff kept up about Sonborg’s is lying about this stuff and so I returned to Washington, DC and went to my job.

– Break –

George: Bass voice.

Terence: Do you sing George?

George: I try.

Terence: Really.

George: But I’ve never had any training.

Terence: Does Steven sing? I wonder a lot of time priests have to sing, I mean they have to, does he?

George: Yeah, well. Steve has a voice just like mine.

Terence: Does he, yeah.

George: My wife can’t tell which of us is on the telephone for instance.

Terence: Is that right, huh.

Man: We’re ready.

Terence: And we were up to –

Robert: Up to Drew Pearson.

Terence: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, the secretary, the lady who marked up the Pearson column.

George: Yeah, a young woman whose name was – I can’t think of it.

Terence: Okay.

George: Anyway they subpoenaed her and when she came into the court and they saw her about to take the stand the lawyer for Snedden popped up and he said we have just found in our files the two telegrams about the garbage man of the fourth estate. And it was Mr. Snedden who sent a telephone to George Sonborg ordering that be done. And they were very quiet in there you know – they had had columns of stuff about it, my lying, lying, lying. I wrote to the judge about – I wrote to the presiding – the chairman of the state – what’s the high court?

Terence: Oh, Supreme Court.

George: Supreme Court about it and he said that we just have no provision for the protection of witnesses. And that is just something they have to withstand and so on, but anyway.

Terence: Well George how did that I mean you must have been very how did you feel about this whole thing being ensnared with him in these things. That must have been pretty tough.

George: To be honest with you I felt vindicated, which made me feel good. And I was kind and I was mad at Bill Snedden for his attitude toward me because he had been so supportive of me all through my tenure there, poor Bill. There was something else you wanted to get into.

Terence: Yeah, let’s see.

George: Oh, let me say one more thing about the trial. They found in favor of the News-Miner in the suit on the grounds that Drew Pearson was a man who had made himself a public figure and so he had – there was a right of people to criticize him, which I believe is a good decision. But they said that the News-Miner will not be paid any lawyer’s fees in the suit and the lawyer’s fees must have been terrific because of the matter of the telegrams, which made Bill Snedden ever madder at me. Oh, boy.

Terence: Well did he – was Pearson – did he file this suit in a way to help out Gruening I mean is that – did he think this would help Gruening or what was his –

George: This was long after Gruening was serving in the senate. No, I don’t know why he did it. I guess he just wanted to.

Terence: I just wonder if it was the later campaign that was all.

George: No, it wasn’t near a campaign I mean.

Terence: Let’s see we did the paper.

Robert: Resources.

Terence: Oh, yeah, George, the general sort of idea of the – maybe as expressed in the constitution too, the resident versus the nonresident interests of who would gain from the exploitation of Alaska resources. I don’t know if there is anything you could say about that.

George: I’m not up to date on that.

Terence: Okay.

George: I’m not up to speed.

Robert: And you know now we of course enjoy the Permanent Fund Dividend check and I know oil development wasn’t as high a profile resource element as it is today, but would you speculate a little bit on what if statehood had been delayed, what the outcome might have been in terms of our oil and gas resources?

George: It would be hard for me. Of course all of the land, practically all the land in Alaska was federally owned and controlled and there would never have been a North Slope discovery of petroleum had we not obtained statehood and be given the right to select from the federal holdings in Alaska a specified number of acres or townships of land. And so they had a director of resources in the state government named Phil Holzworth and he deliberately picked out areas up there on the North Slope which were oil bearing, he thought, hadn’t been discovered yet. But it has paid the way for statehood you know by the money they get from the pipeline.

Terence: The oil discovery, sure, yeah. I mean even because Alaska it was really a tenuous economic situation in a way wasn’t it I mean?

George: Yes.

Robert: Well people said well when Bob D’Armand was mentioned there were people who at the time said well it’s a broke territory and if we make it a state, it will be a broke state.

George: Yeah. Did you –

Terence: We talked to D’Armand, yeah.

George: That’s interesting.

Terence: Yeah, he’s doing well, you know, Dale, his wife, she has Alzheimer’s so she’s –

George: He’s older than I am I believe.

Terence: Yeah. I think he’s 92.

George: Uh-huh.

Terence: 92 and a half and you know he’s still sort of skeptical about statehood I guess you know.

George: Well it was a fortunate thing that they discovered oil when they did. It has paid the way. Well, –

Terence: George, do you think though it’s a thing that if I guess that’s sort of the question that it was really an act of faith creating this state, wasn’t it?

George: Yes, it was.

Terence: That something was going to happen.

George: Right.

Terence: Even if you couldn’t see it right now, something will happen I mean.

George: Sure.

Terence: So, it was really quite an idealistic the whole act of making the constitution and everything, did you come away – I mean how did you feel like on that date you signed the constitution? That must have been pretty special?

George: It was very special. And I think everybody who had served as a delegate was emotionally moved by it. We were all crying you know as we went up to sign the constitution. It was a great victory. But I believe just on its – the grounds of self-government, statement was a tremendous worthwhile goal and had they not discovered petroleum up there, we would have made it by somehow. We’d be the poorest state but what of it you know. We’d be able to run our own show, which we weren’t able to do under territorialism. It was a big step.

Terence: What – was that meant like cause even in your book I think you talk about that in there at least the problems and you certainly must have faced it as head of the development board the problems of getting development going.

George: Yeah.

Terence: I mean what was – was there any like one or two big real difficulties? I mean what were the biggest obstacles that you faced in running the board, what was the – getting people to invest in Alaska? I don’t know was there any way of summarizing what the biggest issues were?

George: No territory has ever operated successfully. It is only after they became states that they amounted to something. And most of them had very small populations at the time they got statehood and they have all you might say succeeded. We’re going through a hard time now but at least we’re in command of our legislatures and if we go broke it is going to be our own fault. And that’s very good for a democratic society.

So it was a great state and I think statehood has proved itself in Alaska. Gosh, we only had – when I went to Alaska in 1938 they took a census the next year and they found that Alaska had 72,000 inhabitants. And I remember being at a meeting of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce where this was announced by the director of the census. And there was great applause broke out. That was a big improvement. And you know of those 72,000 an overwhelming majority of them were Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts you know. We hadn’t really done much with settling Alaska and that only came with statehood. What do you have now 650,000 or so?

Terence: Yeah between 600 and 700,000 yeah, so it is ten times grown.

George: Yeah.

Terence: Of course the war had a big impact too though didn’t it.

George: Oh, yeah.

Terence: War economically I guess changed a lot of things.

George: Yeah.

Terence: And this outside control of resources that was something that you known was a major issue I suppose?

George: Yes, it was. The fisheries were really hurting and they had been revived quite well. Of course salmon isn’t worth anything any more, but that’s a different – that’s not statehood’s fault.

Terence: That’s right. That’s a different issue. What was the – cause you going to tell – say something else – you were going to say was there something else Robert that we should?

Robert: No, I think we’ve got yeah.

Terence: Okay. Well, George, there was another thing you said you wanted to say and I interrupted you.

George: Yeah. I just wanted to say a few little things.

Terence: Sure.

George: About when I first went to Alaska. I knew Frank Waskey, who was the first delegate in Congress from Alaska. They had an election I think in 1912.

Terence: 1906.

George: 1906 and he ran for what they called the short term, which would just be a matter of several months serving Alaska in the Congress and somebody else ran for the long term and was elected. But Frank Waskey, at the time that I lived in Washington, DC, lived in rural Maryland just out across the DC border and often Gruening or Bartlett wanted to have Waskey come in and have lunch with them. And you know and talk about old times. So I was always the chauffeur. I had a Volkswagen Bug and I ran out into the country and picked up Frank and we’d visit about old times you know all the way both ways. He was a great guy and very old – older than I am now.

I wanted to say when I first went to Alaska one of the first things that happened I was living in the Gastineau Hotel in Juneau. The Baranoff had not yet been built and the Gastineau was the best hotel, it wasn’t very good. I woke up one morning and to my surprise when I got down to the street here was a great commotion and there were fire hoses everywhere and in the night a fire had broken out in the Gold – what was – it was a Jewish name – Charlie Goldsmith – Goldsmith Building.

Terence: Goldsmith or Goldstein?

George: Goldstein – Goldstein Building and it burned it up. You know had destroyed it and all the fire engines had been there all night and I slept soundly. There was this wide-awake reporter, didn’t know anything about it. That was just one little thing.

Terence: That was when you were the reporter?

George: Yeah.

Terence: You were a reporter George with a clear conscience.

George: I got up early to go over to the paper and up to the Federal Building to try to see if I could find some news and here it – any way.

Robert: Burning right behind you.

George: About a year after that something happened that impressed me very much. I was sent an invitation, my wife said it was an engraved invitation. It really wasn’t engraved, it just was fancily printing invitation to be an official witness at the first hanging that had been held in Alaska in a many, many years –

– Break –

George: A Native from Ketchikan named Nelson Charles, who had been tried and found guilty of killing his stepmother – his mother-in-law, his wife’s mother while everybody was drunk. And he was going to be hanged and the Marshall’s office there was – they were, oh, boy, they were greatly upset by the fact that they were going to have to stage a hanging and they didn’t know what to do. And they had to get books out of you know from somewhere and read up on it. And they finally made all the preparations and the day of the hanging I and other witnesses were enclosed below a stairway in the then court building. It was an old wooden building that stood where the state office building is now, across from the library and across from the State Capitol Building as they call it. And they nailed up sides there. They had them all made and they nailed him there and they finally brought in this poor Native and he was duly executed with some difficulty because they couldn’t get the cap to go on over his ears and so on. And it was sort of a mess. But they succeeded in dropping him in a way that it did break his neck and killed him instantly. And when they took off the plywood and we got out into the open air, it was by that time daylight. This was in the winter and the days were short. And to our surprise every point all around the whole area was occupied by Natives who had come there to witness the execution of one of their members. I don’t know why I told that, but anyway.

Terence: No, that’s an interesting story. That’s amazing.

George: And I ran right down to the paper and told the story.

Terence: Told the story, yeah, yeah. Cause I don’t think they – I guess that is a problem sometimes when they would hang people and they wouldn’t die right away or something.

George: That is right. Sometimes they just kind of strangled you know.

Terence: Yeah, yeah, so that’s.

George: And they were very afraid of that. They did a number of tests. They didn’t test it on any living person, but they tested it on sand bags and so on and –

Robert: But they didn’t get any volunteers?

George: No.

Robert: You can test it on me, yeah, that would be fine.

Terence: I think one thing George one thing we haven’t talked about though is working with Gruening as administrative assistant. What were those years like? That was from ’50, well after the election was ’58?

George: ’58 yeah.

Terence: To ’68 basically.

George: The statehood act was signed by the President on January 3, 1959 and by that time I was in Washington, DC and we were in business. It caused quite a disturbance in the senate because there had been only 48 states for all these years since about 1912 when Arizona and New Mexico came in and there were only really office spaces in the building for 48 senators. So what are you going to with the 49th you know? And so they made a kind of a temporary provision for us and we were in very cramped quarters for quite a while.

Terence: You must have been pretty exciting though wasn’t it? I mean.

George: Oh, it was great. It was marvelous. We had a lot of work to do in passing laws to bring all the statutes up to be workable in Alaska, as well as the other 48 states. And this was at a time when they were building a new senate office building and so it was no problem after that.

I’ll tell you another little story that most people don’t know about. Along about the middle of Gruening’s tenure there, two men came up from the State Department and they said we have discovered the desk which William Seward stood at and where he signed the article – the check to Russia for $7,200,000 or whatever it was when we bought Alaska and that it is in some famous painting that was made at the time and here was the very desk and would Senator Gruening like to have that for use as his desk. And I asked Gruening, oh well, by all means you know. So they did send it up and it was a beautiful big old desk. And he coped with it for a few months but he found it wasn’t very modern and useful and it didn’t have quite what he wanted to be able to use nowadays.

So he said well I’m going to send this one down to the whatever the fellow that was in charge of the furnishing of the office buildings and have him send up a modern desk and we did. And so the desk for years stood in a corridor, which was full of old desks, underneath the old Senate Office Building. And about the time that Gruening was leaving there we had a request somebody wanted to get a hold of this desk. And they initiated a search and they were never able to find it. It was somehow discarded and probably taken out to the dump and burned you know. And that was a priceless you know antique, which we should have in Alaska. And I feel very guilty about it myself, although I wasn’t responsible for its destruction.

Terence: Yeah, cause they probably wanted it for the centennial in 1867 you know, somebody was wanted it at the museum or –

George: Sure.

Terence: That painting Voce is very famous, like the guy who did Washington Crossing The Delaware, same guy. Well that’s – so what was it like the first time you went – cause you with Gruening the first time he – when he was sworn in?

George: Oh, yeah.

Terence: What was that day like? Was that right on January 3rd – was it right after?

George: I think it was January 3rd, maybe the night of the 4th. It was the day that Congress convened after the holidays. That was an interesting thing because there were several questions to be decided. One was which of the two senators from Alaska that had been elected was going to be the senior senator. And Gruening expected that Bartlett would step aside and said well you’re really very much senior to me and you can be the senior. But I suppose Bartlett in his mind thought well Gruening ought to step aside because I’ve been serving here in the house you know for 15 years as delegate and I should be. So anyway they went into a closet, a coat closet, in Gruening’s office, just the two of them, and they drew lots and it turned out that Bartlett was the senior senator.

Then on the day that they were, which had happened really before that, the day that it was – they were going to be sworn into the U. S. Senate it turned out – there had been 48 senators –

Terence: Or 96 you mean.

George: 96 senators from 48 states that that’s a number that is divisible by six. So every senator had a six-year term you see and it came out even and they were in three classes. There was a class that would be elected this year, then six years later be another class, or maybe two years later, two years and two years. And they didn’t know which class to put these guys in. So they had a drawing right on the floor of the senate down in the well of the senate where Bartlett and Gruening went and each of them reached into an antique box and pulled out a slip of paper. And Bartlett got into what they call the class of 1962, 72, wait a minute.

Terence: It was ’62 I mean.

George: Yeah ’62, yes.

Terence: When he would come up for re-election you mean?

George: Yeah, yeah.

Terence: Oh, I see.

George: Class of ’62 and Gruening got the slip that said class of ’64. Nobody got the long term of ’66. So in the first election as a result of the first elections, Bartlett served two years, Gruening served four years and then they had to run again. And I ran all three statewide campaigns for Gruening. One in ’58, one in ’62, and one in ’68. And we won the first two of them and we lost the third one in the primary to Mike Gravel.

Terence: What was Gruening like as a campaigner or for you as the guy running the –

George: Well, he was great. He was a very eloquent speaker. I don’t know if you ever heard him. Oh, he was just great. And he was so good at it you know and he would just keep everybody spellbound. And I found that I was traveling around with him all over Alaska you know and we would go into a place like Kenai and he’d be invited to a luncheon and he’d give a great speech you know. And I find he was changing the speech at every place we stopped for my sake. He didn’t want to bore me with just giving a set speech you know. And he was able to – he was so good at it that he was able to make it a little different.

He was a great employer. Never bothered me. Only one time did he criticize me. He went to the Army Hospital in Washington, DC, what’s the name of it? They’re bringing –

Terence: Walter Reed?

George: Walker Reed. And he was going to have an operation. And I had a call from the Washington Post and they said we noticed that Senator Gruening has entered Washington – Walter Reed Hospital. What’s it for? Is he seriously ill? What is it? And I said no, he is just having an operation for correction of a –

Terence: Hernia.

George: Hernia and they published that. Gruening said George you shouldn’t have revealed that. That is personal you know. You just shouldn’t have mentioned it. You should have just said he went in for an operation, that would be all right, but don’t say it was for a hernia. That’s the only time he ever criticized me for anything I did or didn’t do.

But when he ran the third time he was already 81 years old and he was running for a (phone rang).

Alaska Statehood Pioneers: In Their Own Words

Episode 9: Jay Hammond (part 1)

Episode transcript

Jay Hammond: So everything I’ve done in life has not been planned or programmed. I’ve been what I call a victim of serendipity. Good things happen to me in spite of myself. Never thought I’d come – never thought about coming to Alaska either.

Opening Titles.

Narrator: Jay Hammond was born in upstate New York in 1922 . As a young man, he studied petroleum engineering, but migraines and a football injury drove him out of college. He took up flying as a civilian, but was compelled to enlist after the United States was drawn into World War II. He becane an Alaska bush pilot after the war and stumbled into the newly established state’s politics. He was a key player in deciding how the state would manage its newfound oil wealth, and eventually became one of Alaska’s most colorful governors.

Jay Hammond: Well I was born in Troy, New York, but mercifully left at age five. Troy back then was kind of a grubby garment town, although we didn’t live directly in Troy. My dad was a Methodist preacher and he got moved to upstate New York in a little town called Scotia, which not far from Troy, but which is near Scotia — near Schenectady. And I grew up there spent my school years there until high school when my dad was transferred to Au Sable Forks in the Adirondacks up near Lake Placid. And I was there part of the time, but spent my high school years really with a family back in Scotia to finish up during which period my dad moved and mother moved to Vermont. I much prefer people think I came from Vermont than Troy, New York. But Troy has cleaned up its act. It’s much less undesirable than it was back then.

And I went back after many, many years of absence and I almost didn’t want to return. I thought it would be all plastic, paved over, and populated. Same ruts in the road. Looked just the same to me as it did when I – and it was kind of great in a way because it is nice to know there are some things not changing that dramatically up here. Can’t say that about Alaska.

Prior to getting in the Marine Corps I went to Penn State in 1940 to ostensibly become a petroleum engineer…

A good friend of mine a fellow that I had stayed with my last year of high school he – his dad was an old Penn State graduate. He was going to Penn State and he was aspiring to become a petroleum engineer. And we had romantic visions of exploring all sorts of remote, exotic places and so forth. But I was not cut out to be an engineer. I had no interest in the engineering curricula to speak of. I should have been doing something worthwhile like learning waterfowl identification or something I could use in later life, but anyhow and I was miserable at it.

…But I was having some problems. I had headaches virtually every day for a period of time and my dad took me to oh, my goodness, we went to the Harvard Migraine Clinic. I saw 14 different specialists to see what was wrong. Nobody could figure it out. …
….about two times a week I had bone-busting headaches, but every day I had one. There wasn’t a day I woke up without them. Not conducive to doing well in engineering studies, thermodynamics and spherical trig and quantitative analysis. I flunked my only course that I ever flunked at school. It happened to be surveying and I got a D in it. And what happened though the circumstances were somewhat mitigating because the reason I flunked another fellow and myself were off goofing off in a coffee shop having coffee and donuts when the professor came along and found we were not on our assigned location doing the survey project. And he gave me a D.

So I in a way welcomed the excuse the leave, which of course was presented in 1942. But while I was at the University I was playing football. I got injured.

Back then we played full 60 minutes. We played both offense and defense and I played defensive end, right end, and offensive fullback. I wasn’t that big and I was vying for the fullback job which in the East-West game the first year I was in the service I heard this guy, the biggest man on the field, was on Aldo Sensy from Penn State. Now he and I were competing for the fullback job so you can understand he played a little more often than I did. But when I got injured I had to turn down – I had been offered a scholarship and I of course was no longer eligible for that.

Intertitle: Becoming a Pilot

Jay Hammond: Well for one thing I had broken a toe. It had an eardrum busted, but at that time I – my back was giving me fits and I started getting the headaches. And whether there was a connection between the back and the head I don’t know. But I couldn’t stand to watch a football game while I was somehow – unless I was playing. And so somebody said why don’t you take flying lessons. And out at a little airfield I think outside of college, Penn State, State College, and there was a course that was being inaugurated called the Civilian Pilot Training, SPT Program. And for $25 if you could pass the flight physical, they would teach you to fly with one consideration and that was in the event of a national emergency you were compelled or you agreed to enlist in either the Army, Navy, or Marine Air arm.

And of course not long after there was a national emergency. So I was had and I enlisted in the first Navy Preflight School. And I was given theoretically you were given your choice of whether going to preflight school and if going to preflight school where to go. And it was the very first Navy Preflight School. And I opted to go to Philadelphia. So I was sent to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Then for primary training you were given a selection. I opted to go to Boston, which was near Vermont. So I went to Dallas. Then while in Dallas, I was asked whether I wanted to go to intermediate training to an area called Eager Acres, Cabanos Field, or Cudahee Field. Eager Acres or Easy Acres, so naturally I opted for Easy and got Eager. Everything I asked for in the Marine Corps I didn’t get.

Oddly enough like most people that end up flying they say they were really nuts about flying as kids. I had no interest in flying airplanes to speak of at all….

I had an incident when I was in flight training that really aggravated my problem. One night we were flying these OS2U floatplanes and there were a whole bunch of us up about 100 aircraft cruising around. The fog came in at Corpus Christi, really flew off of a place called Laguna Madre outside of Corpus. And the fog came in and we – it became the – I don’t if it still is, but it was the worst training accident in the Navy history. I don’t remember how planes and how many pilots were lost, but it was something else. The fog came in and you heard a lot of chatter on the radio, guys hollering, guys panicked and airplanes smacking into each other and you’d go along and suddenly be in somebody’s slip screen. It was rather terrifying.

But I saw a red glow coming up through the fog and I thought I knew I was oriented over the place near Laguna Madre and so I started to let down on instruments thinking I was going to land in the water and all of a sudden I broke through the mist and here are buildings on both sides. I’m going down one of the main streets in Corpus Christi. And a fellow in the paper the next day said he looked out the window and saw an airplane below him. And I don’t know whether that was me or not, but I remember I had a leather flight jacket on and it literally soaked through with sweat. I was – oh.

Anyhow I finally got oriented from that and I went over to where I was pretty sure Laguna Madre was and now Padre Island – you don’t want too far out or you’re going to hit the island. So you had to calculate it and fortunately I – it’s not hard to land a floatplane on instruments. And so I let down and let down and let down, hit the water, heaved a big sigh of relief and about 10 seconds shot up on a sandbar. Didn’t flip over but high and dry.

Meanwhile hearing people hollering and screeching and actually hearing a couple of airplanes collide and a guy came in, spun in and crashed about 200 yards from me and his airplane was about to sink. And I had a – my rubber life raft inflatable and I went over and pulled him out of it. And a fellow by the name of Harry Moore, who became a general later, but Harry’s head looked like about the size of a pumpkin and split open. And my back, we paddled in – oh, we got over to my airplane and then the tide came in and was able to taxi into the base. And I almost went to the hospital, turned myself in, but I was supposed to graduate within a couple of weeks, so I didn’t do it. And it was only years later I found out that at that time I had fractured either lumbar or cervical vertebrae. And then that got aggravated later on when I had another occurrence.

And then I asked to go into – I didn’t want to go into being an instructor and so naturally they assigned me as an instructor. So I thought well I’m going to play this game. You never get anything you want so then I put my application in to be sent overseas. Lo and behold I finally got what I’d asked for.
And so I got sent out, but I went only in the last year of the war.

In the spring of ’45 I went overseas and then it was in the Marshalls, actually all over the South Pacific, but mostly in the Philippines, Zamboanga, the Philippines, and then Okinawa and when the war folded up.

When the war folded up I was in Okinawa and had enough points to come home. They had a point system that would release you if you had enough of them accumulated and I went to the squadron doctor. I had a couple of incidents that injured my backbone pretty badly and I used to have to wear a two by four behind my parachute, a piece of two by four to keep my back pulled in some sort of line. And I wanted to see about getting a medical discharge, but he said you have enough points to get home anyhow very shortly. It will take you two months to go through the drill of getting a medical.

And so I decided to wait. Meanwhile they asked for volunteers to fly Corsairs up to the Chinese Nationalists, Chiang Kai-shek, who was then in power. And I thought, well I’ll never get to see China otherwise so I’ll do that and be gone for a couple of weeks. And six months later I’m still in China. After the – we had very poor timing. We got there just at the time the communists had taken over and they were bombing our administration building and we were theoretically flying dissuasive combat air patrols. We were supposed to make simulated strafing runs on the communists troops that were coming into North China, but we weren’t supposed to fire our weapons. We had our machine guns were taped up and so forth. So our strafing runs were conducted about 6,000 feet because they were shooting back.

Oh I had my tail feathers knocked off and I was going to jump out of the airplane, but I chickened out. I was only about 600 feet up and I looked – got over there and looked, looked over the side and I wasn’t doing anything dramatic. I had no vertical stabilizer.

I had a little stick up there so I had no rudder control, but the aircraft was not doing anything dramatic and I was able to land on the beach, wheels up, but gave me another jolt.

So between those two or three incidences, plus the football injury, I was not in too good of shape.

So everything I’ve done in life has not been planned or programmed. I’ve been what I call a victim of serendipity. Good things happen to me in spite of myself. Never thought I’d come – never thought about coming to Alaska either. And I ran into this Navy officer shortly after I got my wings in Corpus. We were walking toward each other down the sidewalk and this guy has his nose all Calamine lotion and he blistered and red headed fellow. I walked by him and I said boy you look as miserable in this country as I am, where you from? He said I’m from Alaska. Well it happened to be a fellow by the name of Bud Branom who was about 13 years older than I was and he was a Navy officer who came to Alaska to – and handled the Navy’s Air Sea Rescue Program and I went to the South Pacific. But we corresponded and he spun a bunch of tails that sounded pretty good to a wild haired kid and asked me if I’d maybe want to come up and work with him after the war. So I did and only wish I had come up 20 years before.

Intertitle: Fish and Wildlife

Jay Hammond: One of the reasons I went back to school and took biological sciences, I had gone to see Hogar Larson, who was an old game warden with Fish and Wildlife Service here in Anchorage, see about getting a job as a pilot agent. And he said well you ought to go back to school get a degree in biology, we don’t have any openings right now and so forth. So I went back to school and I got my degree and I came back and but I departed a bit from the pilot agent thing in this manner. I had written an article that predated Farley Mollett’s Never Cry Wolf exactly in the same vein. Ivory tower assumption that wolves took nothing but the lame, the sick, and the whole and it was printed in, I don’t remember, Field and Stream or Outdoor Life or something.

And remember Frank Glaser , old-time wolfer, mountain man, incredible guy and Morrie Kelly. Morrie Kelly was the head of the newly inaugurated predator control division here in Alaska and they had read my article and they came out to see me. And as graciously as possible told me I was all wet. I had – and they said you’re familiar with the Rainy Pass country, you’ve flown around there a lot, we want to do some predator appraise studies up in that locale. And you’re also a pilot and would you be interested in taking a job as a temporary, at least to see what really is going on. I had the impression they were flying around the country indiscriminately throwing poison out of the windows and killing everything and sundry in the process and so forth.

And they asked me – they said would you be interested in taking a temporary job so you see what’s really going on. And I said well if I do and find things to be, as I believe them to be, I’ll be your worse critic. I ended up working for them for seven years. But in the process I’d like to think did something to win the public attitudes away from what prevailed when I first came here in Alaska, which would kill all the varmints off. That was the attitude back then and predator control was very, very popular, wasn’t controversial, no, they had bounties on virtually everything up here as you might know, eagles and wolves and coyotes and seals and somebody even wanted to put them on bear, but they didn’t go that far.

Anyhow I ended up working for them for seven years and we I think – I personally – most people start out one end of the spectrum or another, either all varmints or they’re noble creatures that never should be in the slightest degree harmed. The truth is as in most instances somewhere between the two, but very few people reach that point.

I remember I made the statement one time – in fact I think I wrote it in the book I said I want to make it clear from the start that I’m not a wolf expert but of course like everybody else I used to be, but that was before I got a degree in biology, trapped for a living, worked seven years as a government hunter, lived in the area where we see wolves frequently. And as they say the truth is somewhere – if you truly want to affect population dynamics that increase numbers of not only moose or caribou, but incidentally the wolves predator control may be warranted in certain circumstances. Most everybody agrees that, even the most extreme ivory tower biologists may say and there are maybes but they never encounter those circumstances.

So what happens? You try to conduct a reasonable operation up here that is surgically pinpointed to affect a select area or a number of wolves and of course it is so outrageously un-sportsman like the screams of anguish deter the – say for example if you – what’s the most select means of conducting predator control? To go out and locate the offending pack members and radio collar them and then follow them with the helicopter and selectively pick – oh, my gosh it’s so outrageously un-sportsman like. Politically it’s untenable. So the state is then forced to do something else. And what do they do, they adopted this snaring program, which of course then was videoed and sent around the country showing the wolves suffering in the snare and the public outrage was in extreme. So then they adopted ridiculous measures like trying to neuter the males and cut down on production when – I don’t know.

The answer to it is to do it selectively if recommended by not the politicians but by the biologists. And ironically enough the biologists that recommended when I was in office as governor, the biologists for Fish and Game recommended the state conduct a very selective predator control program south of Fairbanks. You may remember that. It was one who had been the most critical of the federal programs and totally opposed to predator control until you’re out in the field and you see the results of constraining the wolf population. And wolf populations are kind of like a rubber band. If you cut them way down they’ll spring back in greater numbers than they were before. Nothing in a wolf population depends on prey and by protecting the prey and let it build up in numbers your wolf population will incline upward as well, but most people will never have the chance or opportunity or necessarily desire to learn the facts and so they take one extreme position or the other.

And the truth is somewhere between the two. If you want to increase prey populations in some instances wolf control – I’ve seen it – I saw it on the Alaska Peninsula. I went down – I was sent down there to take a look at the situation. The caribou that at one time caribou and reindeer population totaled 60,000 allegedly back in the old days. Wolf populations built up with the introduction of reindeer. People down there had never seen the wolf until they introduced reindeer into the country. Wolf population built up to the point where they were – I remember Dave and Mary Alsworth for example took – found what – I don’t remember – they had taken a number of wolves between Egavik and Naknek. Can’t remember numbers. But we took about 250 wolves off the Alaska Peninsula. When I went down there to survey the reindeer/caribou populations, all we could find is roughly 1,200 of that 60,000 alleged. We took – I didn’t do it all by myself but together about 250 wolves off of that herd. They built back up to 20,000 and the wolf population built up along with it. So there are plenty of wolves and plenty of caribou or at least they were. I don’t know what it is like now.I

Intertitle: Bella

Jay Hammond: I met Bella when I went into the Fish and Wildlife Service I first was assigned here in Anchorage.

And I was in Dillingham and they had – they used to have kind of family type dances and penucle games weekly at a place called The Willow Tree. And there was a dance that particular evening and I’m not much for tripping the light fantastic. It is not very light but it sure is fantastic. Anyhow, I walked up to this pretty young thing and I said I always accord myself the privilege of asking the prettiest girl in the room to dance and that’s the only dance – and it happened to be Bella. And I met her, she was I don’t know, still in high school then and I – her dad was an old Scotchman that came from the old country back in 1896 or something. It was on the Gold Rush. He had been playing professional soccer around the world at different locales. Anyhow he was much older than Bella’s mother.

And I think the next time I encountered her was in the restaurant called the Greenfront Café in Dillingham and I used to eat there regularly and I very carefully avoided ever drinking the water because they got their water from up on the hill just above the Greenfront, which was at the base of the cemetery. And I remember seeing a small boy relieving himself in the water hole one time and I thought I’m going to drink nothing but orange juice. I conveyed this to Bella and her dad and they started laughing and found out that they were reconstituting the orange juice with very high calcium content plus whoever knows what else on the other hand. That was kind of my second introduction with Bella.

She then went to the University and was up there in ’51 I believe and I took her away from all that and we got married in ’52, yeah.

We got married in Palmer. … And then we honeymooned in Seward.

And then I came back and we went back to Bristol Bay, King Salmon actually. And I was working for Fish and Wildlife. We had a little World War II house, building, about the size of this room, less so. And I moved it into a location there, paneled it, and spent not much. We had no indoor plumbing facilities of course.

Intertitle: 1956 – A Good Landing Gone Bad

Jay Hammond: And then I had another very strange accident that you perhaps recall where I don’t know how much you want me to go into it but I was flying a fellow by the name of Sea Otter Jones, very colorful character from Cold Bay around the country and he wanted to stop at King Cove. This was before King Cove had an airstrip and we were – I had ski wheels on the airplane, Super Cub and there was a little lake there that we used to use to land there. At the end of the lake about three feet off the ground is a big wooden pipe that the canneries got their water from. And there were a number of kids who were skating on the ice.

And I came down, buzzed the lake to let them know I wanted to land and they all parted to make room. And I came around to land and it was a hot day for Cold Bay at that time of year. It was above freezing and the sun was shining and a little slick of water on the ice. And if you land on skis on ice of that nature it seems like you accelerate rather than slow down. So I pumped the skis up, landed on wheels and congratulated myself on getting in right on the edge of the lake, but it kept going, and going and going and going and going. It looked like we were going to run out and I might knock the gear off. So normally I would just done half a ground loop and caught it with the throttle, which is easily done on ice, but the kids had all come back behind me so I didn’t dare do it. I had to ride it straight out.

So I jumped out of the airplane, grabbed a hold of the strut and I’m sliding along trying to slow it down. We weren’t going very fast, but I hit a box that was buried in the ice and it shattered both my ankle bones and I got picked up by a fellow who is known the Bull of King Cove, old Mike Utak. And he packed me up the hill on his back and they put me in – well first we stopped at the schoolteacher’s place there who professed to be an expert in First Aid. And I should have known better and it didn’t sound right to me. Oh you got to soak your feet in hot water right now. Worst thing I could have done. They blew up like balloons. They were all red blood blistered and so forth.

Well we – they tried to get an airplane in from the Coast Guard from Kodiak and Fish and Wildlife tried to get a Goose in from Anchorage. They couldn’t get in the weather was bad and for three days I – they put me in a cannery bunkhouse there and the people proceeded to party for about three solid days and it was just as well I guess because I couldn’t get any sleep anyhow. I had taken fistfuls of aspirin but my legs were blown up to the point where they looked like elephant legs and I thought I got to get out of here.

Well they couldn’t – I couldn’t fly. I couldn’t fit in the front seat with the feet the way they were or I could fit but I didn’t think I could press on the rudder pedals, but I thought if I had to in an absolute emergency maybe I could do it, but Bob Jones who didn’t fly he got in the back seat of the airplane and I said you work the pedals and I’ll work the stick and throttle. Well let me tell you, two heads are not better than one when it comes to trying to fly an airplane. And we went racheting off the ice there and I thought oh my gosh we got aloft, how are we ever going to get down? Right, right, left, left, right, left, we’re going off like a besodded ptarmigan over ripe berries. And we went over to Cold Bay and it was still blowing bad cross wind and I thought oh, my gosh, how are we ever going to get down? We came in for a landing and hit the runway, caromed up in the air, up on one wheel, around, missing the runway lights and finally did a ground loop and knocked the (inaudible) off one, but got stopped. And didn’t do any damage to the airplane.

They packed me over to Jones’ hut. Fellow by the name of I think it was Cal Linsink and Ron Skube, but I’m not sure. Names that you may remember and while we were at Jones’ still they’re trying to get airplanes in. There was nobody at Cold Bay. This was before the Army, very few people there. It was before Reeve established a regular stop there and so forth. And I’m at Jones now for another three or four days and things are getting worse and worse and I thought I was going to lose my feet if I didn’t get out of there, but there was nobody, believe it or not, in Cold Bay who flew that could fly me north.

So I had them build me a couple of splint type things that went down below my foot so I could push on the rudder pedals, cause I couldn’t stand the pressure if my life had depended on it I couldn’t have pushed on those rudders. I found when I took off at King Cove. So anyhow some brave soul went along with me cause we had to have somebody to pour gas in the airplane and I put – I couldn’t sit in the front seat because of this splint type things. So I sat in the back seat where the rudder pedals that I could push but there wasn’t throttle or stick. The throttle had been removed. There was one up front but I attached a rod to it so I could use that and I had a big long screwdriver that went down through the floor into the slot where the stick belonged.

And we got off all right and went up to I don’t know whether it was Port Moller or some place, Port Heiden maybe and he fueled the airplane with gas. We had terrible weather. Blowing a gale. My wife meanwhile has heard I was coming up and waiting there at the airfield with an ambulance. She is there with some of the medics from the military. And it’s getting pretty dark about now and we’re coming in for a landing and all of a sudden this guy snatches the control. He panicked, snatched the controls away from me, and we go rocketing up like this. And I’m hollering at him. I got it. I got it. And the normal means of communicating with your co-pilot is to wiggle your stick, which I did and my screwdriver came out. And there we are fluttering along. Fortunately I was able to get it back in and made not a textbook landing, but they put me in the ambulance and finally then brought me into Anchorage a day or two later. They doped me up and hauled me into Anchorage.

They put me in the 5001st Hospital, which was an old elephant hut is what it was, like a big Quonset hut. And they got me in traction because they had to let the blood blisters and swelling reduce somewhat before they could operate. And I’m hung up in this traction device one night and suddenly I heard shrieking and screaming and people come out of one of the sections of this thing. The doors open, smoke billowing down the hall and here’s the lame, the sick, and the whole going out on their crutches and canes and wheelchairs. Hey you guys I’m hung up in this traction device. And finally I had to unhook myself and slip over the side of the bed and go out in the snow on my butt. And it burned the whole place down. Two nurses were lost in it. Really a tragic event.

And that wasn’t the end of my humiliation however. They put me in the then new Native service hospital here in Anchorage.

There was a picture in the Anchorage News or maybe it was the Times that was the ultimate. That picture on the front-page it says Native women from the villages arrive anticipating what was the headline? Native Women and Villages arrive to anticipate birth of their children or something like that. Here’s a picture of maybe 30 or 40 very obviously pregnant Native women and in the midst of this conglomeration is myself; the lone male on a hospital gurney looking like an oriental potentate this was his harem. That was the ultimate.

But then that finished my career with Fish and Wildlife Service, so.

I was long time in a cast. They fused my right ankle, not my left one, but they put me in a cast and we moved to Naknek then and bought what they call Model Café. And it was truly a model. It was certainly of ancient vintage, but it had one of the few flush toilets in town, one of the three or four about all there were. And we built onto that and then ultimately got a piece of land out up on the hill towards King Salmon and moved that building over another basement that we dug up there. I didn’t do that one in plaster cast however.

When I was able to walk around at all we bought the Model Café as a place to live and that was and Bella and I, I was stumping around on crutches, short order cooking and finally I had a couple of walking casts. She was making up the 30 pies a day or so and we were losing our shirts believe it or not. And we had charged I remember outrageous prices. A cup of coffee and potato salad and hamburger we were charging one dollar. And it seemed like a high price back then believe it or not. Anyhow that proved to be a very unsuccessful venture. When I was able to function again they offered me a job Fish and Wildlife. I could either go to Juneau in an office capacity or take what they call a reduced retirement. It was reduced by so many percent for every year you were less than 65. So being much less than 65 myself it ended up something like a negative percentage, very small, $100 or something like that. But it was getting out of an office job.

I never aspired to an office job and then I went into the guiding, flying and the commercial fishing business.

Intertitle: Rep. Jay Hammond – 1959-1965

Jay Hammond: In 1959 I – couple of schoolteachers came to me one day. We just became a State. And they said you ought to run for State Legislature. By the time I stopped laughing I told them I had no interest whatsoever and that actually I had voted against statehood.

My reasons were simply this that with our tiny population – I don’t know it was only about 70,000 people and we had no economic potential immediately on the horizon, fishery, timber, mining, trapping all gone down hill. And I felt with our tiny population and first our ability to finance and administer were very dicey. And I said that with our small population virtually any idiot that aspired to public office is liable to achieve it. And a lot of folks subsequently have said yes and you proved it on more than one occasion. I did not oppose it idealistically, but I also was affronted by the fact that you couldn’t even look at such things as commonwealth status, which seemed to have some interesting aspects worthy of examination, but the very suggestion of looking at alternatives branded you as a crackpot or communist or some sort of loathsome creature. And very few openly opposed statehood. It was kind of the kiss of death to do so.

All I wanted to look at it. When I become suspicious when people won’t lift up the rocks and look at things and because they wouldn’t even let us talk about it virtually back then was another reason I voted against statehood. Again, not idealistically, but I didn’t like what I felt was being obscured.

They said well, and I said I’m not affiliated with either party, Republican or Democrat. And they came back a day or two later and they said well they named a fellow with most outrageous choices imaginable, pretty well inebriated type, which is one qualification I suspect for many politicians, but he exceeded the balance of propriety when it came to that. And he – they said guy has filed. He’s going to win. The only other fellow that has filed is a Republican and doesn’t stand a chance to win and it was six to one Democrats in the villages back in those days. And they said well you could run as an Independent. And they said all you have to do is go out and get a petition with so many names that say they’ll support you. And I said forget it. And they said well would you consider it if we went out and got the petition? I said that’s the only way I would consider it and that’s what I thought would be the end of it.

The next day they came back with a petition. And in their minds consideration translated into commitment. I never said I would but I never had guts enough to tell folk who think I made a commitment that I really didn’t. And so I agreed to – I didn’t do any campaigning. Didn’t lift a finger. And to my dismay really I found I was elected.

I ran as an Independent initially and there was a certain wooing from both sides of the aisle when I — they changed the election code to make it almost impossible for an Independent to win. And I remember being counseled by some of the Democrat – Alex Miller, some of the big guns, Louie Dishner (?), some of the other guys there, but hey you know you’re reasonably smart guy. If you want to get elected without having to worry about it too much, get that magic D behind your name. And I must confess there was a certain attraction to that. I hadn’t had any party affiliation and I realized you could probably have – join either party and vote pretty much the way you wanted to. But on the other hand I made this comment.

Because you never won because you were a Republican back in those days. It was in spite of the fact. And I think that’s a healthy condition.

But then I thought hey you know my folks are Republican. I kind of was inculcated with what was then the Republican philosophy. And I’m at odds very much many times with Republicans today, but not all. And one of them being the fact that they seem to be totally opposed to anything that smacks of environmental constraints and on par with being branded the child molester to be termed an environmentalist, I say I’m an environmentalist but I’m equally concerned about the social and economic environment. Many so-called physical environmentalists are not or not to the extent they should be, but – and to me I – the old Republican conservation mode of Teddy Roosevelt represented is the sort of – but these people seem to think there’s nothing to some of these concerns and others. And that troubles me.

But I enjoyed the legislature. I spent six years there and it was an entertaining time in Alaska’s history. We were setting up the whole state government and there was some very remarkable outstanding statesman like figures involved back then that – and we had the sort of legislature that was truly citizen legislature. It wasn’t you had to get down there, do your work as rapidly as possible, and get out as soon as you could to make a living.

Well I had long been concerned with the impact of nonresident transients particularly in the fishery in Bristol Bay. And I believe 1962 or 3 a very good friend of mine since deceased, Bristol Bay fisherman, Native fellow by the name of Martin Seaverson. Was very good at figures and analyzing things and he showed me a study he had done that evidenced that 97% of the pay day made within the Bristol Bay area or confines of the Bristol Bay Borough as it turned out to be went elsewhere; 65% of it went outside the State. The rest of it elsewhere in the State only 3% stayed at home. And what did we have to show for these facts are that literally billions of dollars of resource while we’re a rural slum. We didn’t have any secondary education. We had no sewer and water system. We had no health care facility, no fire fighting capability. Our garbage disposal plant was throwing it over the bank into the river.

And Bill Egan vetoed that bill. I remember his veto message clearly. It said I would have supported this bill if it did precisely what it contended it did three pages later. I don’t know who gave him counsel and vetoed it. So that didn’t work.

And then there were other unconstitutional things. But then in the wake of this evidence that so much of this money was leaving I thought if we could impose a small tax on the fish, say 3%, paid by the fisherman, not by the canneries, we would capture for every $3 we paid $97 and we can do some of these things, build some of these social vacuums. And I thought, hum, I was then in the legislature and I got a bill through that created a use tax. I remember Bill Borden, who was the speaker of the house at the time. What do you want that for? Well, don’t worry about it. We weren’t yet a borough. Then but I saw the potential I felt for doing something to remedy this and forming a borough.

Intertitle: Bristol Bay

Jay Hammond: Then it was in ’65 that I ran against Joe McGill, lost to Joe McGill. I didn’t campaign at all or really wasn’t that unhappy about it. I had been in the legislature for six years, but it gave me a chance then I went in and we became a borough. And I took over the management of the borough and I saw a chance to impose this tax. So I proposed exactly the same thing as I said in Alaska, Inc., but I called it Bristol, Inc. To sell it I said we could form an investment corporation or investment account, give everybody a share of stock that would earn dividends for each year. We would raise enough money to give you back more than what the fisherman pay in their fish tax and do some of these other things – build – we didn’t have a high school then. Didn’t have any of these other services, social services. And all they could see is Hammond is proposing a tax. It is like the income tax. They are blind. We can create a tax and make people money. They turn it down and they did.

And I thought well I’ll have to give them an offer they can’t refuse. So I wrote two ordinances. One of them imposed the tax and the second one said yes and only if ordinance A passes will we then eliminate your residential property tax. Well the average local, of course locals owned the residential property and non-transients didn’t. They paid a full tax and locals would – the same thing as the capped income tax thing. And they looked at their hole card and they voted it in.

And beyond my wildest anticipation what it did. It translated that borough almost overnight into what Fortune Magazine termed in an article the richest municipality per capita in the nation. And we suddenly were engulfed with revenues that enabled us to build a high school, put in the finest sewer and water – not sewer and water, but sewer system, health care facility, ambulance services, fire fighting equipment, state of the art garbage disposal, you name it – overnight.

Let me tell you a little more directly what happened. When I was borough manager and mayor – no, I was manager first and then I became mayor when I was out of the legislature. Salary – my salary was 6,000 a year. My total budget was 35,000. I had a secretary for 12,000. We hired temporary for tax collection. 35,000 a year total budget. I had one full-time employee. Four years later I believe it was, I’m sure of the four, whether it was four or five or three, the borough budget was $4 million. They had 21 people on the payroll. Borough manager salary went from 6,000 to 82 I think. They spent it all on government. And because Tom Fink came in, didn’t put a cap – didn’t put a lid on how much residential property tax exemption you could render, totally blew out of the tub my tradeoff, the offer you can’t refuse. Made a liar out of me – we’re getting taxed both ways now.

Man, so then – so I failed. That was my first failure in doing it the way I wanted to.

This again this shows you how difficult it is to deal with public and to alert them to things that particularly me, being the world’s worse soap salesman. When we had the experience in Bristol Bay of generating this enormous wealth almost overnight, I went to the Municipal League and spoke to other mayors and borough managers from throughout the state, Kodiak, Peninsula, southeastern and so forth and I said hey guys you’re missing a pretty good deal here. I told them exactly what our experience had been, suggesting they might want to impose a fish use tax in their locale. Nobody did it for years, for years and finally all of them have done it. But that’s a glacial slow public awareness of the difficulty in selling things that are not – you got to think outside the box a little bit to do some of these things and that is tough for us to do. Because we have been so conditioned again we’re so blind sided with taxes who can want a tax. It is either cut government or you know get their money from some other source. And that’s fine if you can cut government to stay within the bounds that’s fine, but everybody agrees you can’t do that and bridge this budget gap.

So what are the alternatives? Many would like to rob your dividends to do it.

Intertitle: Closing Thoughts

Jay Hammond: One of the problems I think is that people spend so much money and time and effort getting elected that they – that becomes the overriding consideration. What’s going to get me re-elected? And when I was Governor I used to have people come to me not infrequently and say you’re right I’d love to go beyond this but I wouldn’t dare I’d never get re-elected.

The problem is the people in the legislature cannot put the statewide interest paramount. They have to cater to their selective provincial constituents in order to get reelected.
And so don’t expect much in the way of change.
Most legislators’ concept of infinity is two or four years away at the next election — 20 years down the pike, they really could care less.

A lot of folks say you know there was a suggestion one time that I might want to go back to Washington and run for either Congress. In fact Mike Coletta came to me one time after a meeting with Republican chair in Anchorage and said we’ve got 250,000 if you’ll file for a seat against Begich. And forget it. I’ve got no interest going back to Washington. I refused to move backward to anything that would take me out of Alaska and bring me to Washington is retrogression. Forget it.

Certainly the last thing I’d ever thought I’d do is get into politics. If anybody had suggested it, I’d probably have kicked them out from under their hats. I had low pain threshold for politicians, still do for that matter, but on the other hand you know I used to say I was one of the good guys, hurling rocks in the arena at the bureaucrats and I suddenly figured out with four years in the service, four plus years in the service, and two years as mayor, one year working for the weather bureau, seven years with Fish and Wildlife Service, six years or twelve years in the legislature and eight years as governor, I’m the biggest bureaucrat of all. And if that isn’t a horrible realization, but anyhow it has been an interesting trip.

Closing titles.

Credits:
Recorded January 4, 2004, in Anchorage.
Hammond Died August 2, 2005.

Full interview transcript

Jay Hammond
Interviewed by Dr. Terrence ColeTerence: Today is Thursday, January 22, 1904. No, it just feels like 1904, Jay, but it is 2004 and we’re in Anchorage with Jay Hammond and anyway Jay, thanks a lot for talking to us and this will be fun. I guess we just maybe start a little bit with your background. I guess growing up in New York, maybe little of your military service and how you came to Alaska. We can just talk about that, okay.

Hammond: I have to tell you I don’t hear too well.

Terence: Oh, that’s okay, okay. I’ll be louder, right. If we just talk about – start with talking a little bit about your early childhood, growing up in New York maybe, and your military service, something about that.

Hammond: Okay. Well I was born in Troy, New York, but mercifully left at age five. Troy back then was kind of a grubby garment town, although we didn’t live directly in Troy. My dad was a Methodist preacher and he got moved to upstate New York in a little town called Scotia, which not far from Troy, but which is near – Scotia near Schenectady. And I grew up there spent my school years there until high school when my dad was transferred to Au Sable Forks in the Adirondack’s up near Lake Placid. And I was there part of the time, but spent my high school years really with a family back in Scotia to finish up during which period my dad moved and mother moved to Vermont. I much prefer people think I came from Vermont than Troy, New York. But Troy has cleaned up its act. It’s much less undesirable than it was back then.

Anyhow, I had grown up there but I spent my college years and years in the service, my residency was Vermont. And when I was in 1942 I enlisted in the first preflight program for the Navy, February I think 13th in 1942, but I really didn’t go into training until the spring. And when I graduated and got my wings I opted to go into the Marine Corps, primarily so I wouldn’t have to fly off the carriers. And of course you might guess it; my first assignment was carriers.

And when the war folded up I was in Okinawa and had enough points to come home. They had a point system that would release if you had enough of them accumulated and I went to the squadron doctor. I had a couple of incidents that injured my backbone pretty badly and I used to have to wear a two by four behind my parachute, a piece of two by four to keep my back pulled in some sort of line. And I wanted to see about getting a medical discharge, but he said you have enough points to get home anyhow very shortly. It will take you two months to go through the drill of getting a medical.

And so I decided to wait. Meanwhile they asked for volunteers to fly Course Airs up to the Chinese Nationalists, Chiang Kai-shek, who ws then in power. And I thought well I’ll never get to see China otherwise so I’ll do that and be gone for a couple of weeks. And six months later I’m still in China. After the – we had very poor timing. We got there just at the time the communists had taken over and they were bombing our administration building and we were theoretically flying dissuasive combat air patrols. We were supposed to make simulated strafing runs on the communists troops that were coming into North China, but we weren’t supposed to fire our weapons. We had our machine guns were taped up and so forth. So our strafing runs were conducted about 6,000 feet because they were shooting back.

Anyhow but prior to – I’m getting ahead of myself. Prior to getting in the Marine Corps I went to Penn State in 1940 to ostensibly become a petroleum engineer, but I was having some problems. I had headaches virtually every day for a period of time and my dad took me to oh, my goodness, we went to the Harvard Migraine Clinic. I saw 14 different specialists to see what was wrong. Nobody could figure it out. They gave me hemoglobin shots and asked me about everything under the sun and nothing seemed to help. And when I went to preflight school I was actually happy to leave my engineering studies at Penn State because I was about two times a week I had bone-busting headaches, but every day I had one. There wasn’t a day I woke up without them. Not conducive to doing well in engineering studies, thermodynamics and spherical trig and quantitative analysis. I flunked my only course that I ever flunked at school. It happened to be surveying and I got a D in it. And what happened though the circumstances were somewhat mitigating because the reason I flunked another fellow and myself were off goofing off in a coffee shop having coffee and donuts when the professor came along and found we were not on our assigned location doing the survey project. And he gave me a B. Anyhow –

Terence: Let me ask you why did you pick petroleum engineering.

Hammond: Why did I pick petroleum engineering? A good friend of mine a fellow that I had stayed with my last year of high school he – his dad was an old Penn State graduate. He was going to Penn State and he was aspiring to become a petroleum engineer. And we had romantic visions of exploring all sorts of remote, exotic places and so forth. But I was not cut out to be an engineer. I had no interest in the engineering curricula to speak of. I should have been doing something worthwhile like learning waterfowl identification or something I could use in later life, but anyhow and I was miserable at it.

So I in a way welcomed the excuse the leave, which of course was presented in 1942. But while I was at the University I was playing football. I got injured.

Terence: What position did you play?

Hammond: Beg pardon?

Terence: What position did you play?

Hammond: Well I played, back then we played full 60 minutes. We played both offense and defense and I played defensive end, right end, and offensive fullback. I wasn’t that big and I was vying for the fullback job which in East-West game the first year I was in the service I heard this guy, the biggest man on the field, was on Aldo Sensy from Penn State. Now he and I were competing for the fullback job so you can understand he played a little more often than I did. But when I got injured I had to turn down – I had been offered a scholarship and I of course was no longer eligible for that.

Terence: Now injured, you mean injured in the service?

Hammond: In football.

Terence: Well what was the injury, what happened?

Hammond: Well for one thing I had broken a toe. It had an eardrum busted, but at that time I – my back was giving me fits and I started getting the headaches. And whether there was a connection between the back and the head I don’t know. But I couldn’t stand to watch a football game while I was somehow – unless I was playing. And so somebody said why don’t you take flying lessons. And out at a little airfield I think outside of college, Penn State College, and there was a course that was being inaugurated called the Civilian Pilot Training, SPT Program. And for $25 if you could pass the flight physical, they would teach you to fly with one consideration and that was in the event of a national emergency you were compelled or you agreed to enlist in either the Army, Navy, or Marine Air arm.

And so I got sent out, but I went only in the last year of the war. And I was – I got in the when did the war –

Terence: You were down in the South Pacific, right, Jay?

Hammond: South Pacific.

Terence: The war ended in August of ’45 and but you went out in ’45 or ’44 or what?

Hammond: No, yeah I went out – I went in the spring of ’45 I went overseas and then it was in the Marshall’s, actually all over the South Pacific, but mostly in the Philippines, Zamboanga, the Philippines, and then Okinawa and when the war folded up.

Terence: What kind of plane did you fly, was it a dive – I thought you had a diver bomber?

Hammond: No I flew mostly Course Airs, although I did fly dive-bombers, SPD Donlets, but mostly Course Airs yeah.

Terence: And what was it, cause did you crack up once or how did you hurt your back?

Hammond: Well I had an incident when I was in flight training that really aggravated my problem. One night we were flying these OS2U floatplanes and there were a whole bunch of us up about 100 aircraft cruising around. The fog came in at Corpus Christi, really flew off of a place called Laguna Madre outside of Corpus. And the fog came in and we – it became the – I don’t if it still is, but it was the worst training accident in the Navy history. I don’t remember how planes and how many pilots were lost, but it was something else. The fog came in and you heard a lot of chatter on the radio, guys hollering, guys panicked and airplanes smacking into each other and you’d go along and suddenly be in somebody’s slip screen. It was rather terrifying.

But I was a red glow coming up through the fog and I thought I knew I was oriented over the place near Laguna Madre and so I started to let down on instruments thinking I was going to land in the water and all of a sudden I broke through the mist and here are buildings on both sides. I’m going down one of the main streets in Corpus Christi. And a fellow in the paper the next day said he looked out the window and saw an airplane below him. And I don’t know whether that was me or not, but I remember I had a leather flight jacket on and it literally soaked through with sweat. I was – oh.

Anyhow I finally got oriented from that and I went over to where I was pretty sure Laguna Madre was and now Padre Island – you don’t want too far out or you’re going to hit the island. So you had to calculate it and fortunately I – it’s not had to land a floatplane on instruments. And so I let down and let down and let down, hit the water, heaved a big sigh of relief and about 10 seconds shot up on a sandbar. Didn’t flip over but high and dry.

I did graduate and went overseas. Didn’t have too much trouble with the back until later on. And oh I had my tail feathers knocked off and I was going to jump out of the airplane, but I chickened out. I was only about 600 feet up and I looked – got over there and looked, looked over the side and I wasn’t doing anything dramatic. I had no vertical stabilizer.

Terence: So the end of the plane was shot off, is that right?

Hammond: Yeah, it was, yeah, it was – I had a little stick up there so I had no rudder control, but the aircraft was not doing anything dramatic and I was able to land on the beach, wheels up, but gave me another jolt.

So between those two or three incidences, plus the football injury, I was not in too good of shape. But when I came back home I had met a fellow in Texas who was walking down the street.

Terence: Okay. Let’s see Jay we were just talking a little bit more about the war and I wanted to ask you something about Vermont, but anything else. What was the thing when you got your tail of the plane shot off, where was that action at? Do you remember where that was?

Hammond: It was in the Marshall – Marshall Islands.

Terence: And what was the mission, do you remember what the – do you remember what the mission was on that particular day?

Hammond: Yeah. We were on a combat air patrol. I don’t remember precisely. We did a lot of – during the last year of the war there was mostly aerial combat was over. Most of the stuff we did was air ground support, dropping Napon and that sort of stuff and against shipping. And that was what we were doing at that time, combat air patrol, so.

Terence: So the – you would have been shot down or the thing that got you was like fire from the ship?

Hammond: Another aircraft.

Terence: Oh, it was.

Hammond: Yeah.

Terence: Like Japanese Zero or something or what was the – do you know?

Hammond: I don’t know exactly what airplane?

Terence: Okay.

Hammond: I knew suddenly I didn’t have a tail. They had a – what is it – this was not – there’s an old Kipling rhyme, monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga, they got shot off by – or cut off – bit off by the whales at Zamboanga or something. And I remember we had a big half of a zero that was hung up and (inaudible).

Terence: That’s a great. What about in Vermont? You said in a way you remember that a little bit better maybe?

Hammond: We lived in a beautiful spot in Vermont called Rupert, Vermont, which I used to say nobody had ever heard of. I’d been many years in Alaska before I found anybody that had ever heard of it. I was – remember when the volcano blew up over here in Redoubt some – no yeah, Redoubt, no not Redoubt –

Terence: Augustine or

Hammond: Yeah Redoubt and they evacuated some people that were staying at a lodge there. Well that was Big River Lakes going through Lake Clark Pass. I was flying home one time and got caught in bad weather and had to land there and spent the night with those folks. And they asked me where I was from and I said Vermont. And the fellow said where in Vermont. And I said you’ve never heard of it and he said try me. I said Rupert, Vermont. He says my father was born there. Couldn’t believe it. He knew all about Rupert.

Two weeks later – I used to do a TV show and we were out in Upnuk, oh no Dutch Harbor and I was staying with a schoolteacher, my crew and I. And they asked me the same thing. Where you from? I said Vermont. They said where in Vermont and I went through my usual drill. You never heard of it. The woman said I was skiing on Hammond Road two weeks ago. I’d never heard of Hammond Road. There was a little stretch of dirt road named after my father who was on remember the Merck drug industry, Mr. Merck had a beautiful farm not far from where we lived there and my dad was appointed to a conservation organization and they named this little stretch of road. And sure enough I found it. A little sign up, Hammond Road.

And that wasn’t enough, the same year I’m in Dillingham buying some lumber at the Dillingham Lumber Yard and some guy came up to me and said you know I used to have cocoa and cookies at your dad and mother’s parsonage in Rupert, Vermont. So I don’t say that anymore. You’ve probably even head of Rupert, Vermont. I guess less than 100 people, but a beautiful area.

Terence: What part of Vermont was this, the northern?

Hammond: It’s the southwestern part.

Terence: Southwest corner, okay, okay.

Hammond: Near Manchester if you know where Manchester is, yeah.

Terence: Did – so when you were a kid Jay did you like hunting and fishing or what was your dad –

Hammond: Oddly enough like most people that end up flying they say they were really nuts about flying as kids. I had no interest in flying airplanes to speak of at all. My brother did however. Every weekend he’d bicycle out to the Schenectady Airport. I remember we went and met Wiley Post and Caddy and they had been doing their thing with the Winnie Mae – a little before your time. And we’d go out – I’d once in a while would go out there with him, but he was always building model airplanes. I was nuts about horses. Never had one, but I was crazy about horses. I had big albums full of I could name virtually every kind of horseback then. Spent a little time grooming some Arabian horses that the troopers have and I was privileged to deal with them, even shovel the stables was rapture to me of all things. Anyhow what ends up my brother ends up in the Mountain Troops in Colorado with horses and I end up flying in the Marine Corps. And he never did learn how to fly and I never got a horse.

So everything I’ve done in life has not been planned or programed. I’ve been what I call a victim of serendipity. Good things happen to me in spite of myself. Never thought I’d come – never thought about coming to Alaska either. And I ran into this Navy officer shortly after I got my wings in Corpus. We were walking toward each other down the sidewalk and this guy has his nose all Calamine lotion and he blistered and red headed fellow. I walked by him and I said boy you look as miserable in this country as I am, where you from? He said I’m from Alaska. Well it happened to be a fellow by the name of Bud Branom who was about 13 years older than I was and he was a Navy officer who came to Alaska to – and handled the Navy’s Air Sea Rescue Program and I went to the South Pacific. But we corresponded and he spun a bunch of tails that sounded pretty good to a well haired kid and asked me if I’d maybe want to come up and work with him after the war. So I did and only wish I had come up 20 years before.

Terence: Cause he was a guide, right?

Hammond: Yeah, he was a guide and probably one of the most prominent ones and successful back in those days. And I worked off and on, well actually while I was out we had a trapline and about 180 miles in a figure eight. When I was out on the trapline with the dogs one day it got warmed up and was slogging along on snowshoes and big heavy – and it knocked my back out again. And I had to hold up with the dogs and he came out and picked me up and I went to Fairbanks. And saw a chiropractor up there and he got me functional again, but I got a job then at – as a labor foreman – actually I wasn’t a labor foreman yet, I worked as an apprentice carpenter at Ladd Field, which is what now?

Terence: Fort Wainwright.

Hammond: Fort Wainwright, yeah, it was then Ladd Field. And one day I picked up a heavy case of tar and oh, I felt something go and I was hauled over to the infirmary and they X-rayed me and turned me loose and I’m walking home and an ambulance comes screeching up and said get in you’ve got a broken back. And they put me in the hospital in a full body cast, which I wore for about oh my goodness I don’t know how long, long period of time.

But while I’m in the hospital I was on Worker’s Compensation at the time and one day the fellow that handled that came in and says I hate to tell you this but we have to take you off of Workman’s Comp. Why is that? He says well we got a letter that your X-rays show that – evidence of what appears to be either – might be either cancer of the spine or tuberculosis (inaudible). Well fortunately Dr. Haglund, Paul Haglund reviewed those X-rays and concluded no you have an old spinal injury and which apparently an infectious process set in and it collapsed when you picked up that case of tar. And so he checked my records and I had amebic dysentery when I was overseas and he concluded an amebiasis infection that had caused a weakening in the bone and collapsed and so forth. And boy he achieved sainthood in my mind – old Dr. Haglund because of that because it bailed me out and they – then I went back to school at the University to finish up, wearing a full body cast and bought an area of land from old Dr. Bunnell out in what they call Vulture Flats.

And I remember one day I was down there. I bought a little shack and moved it out there and I was going to build a basement and move it over the top of that. And I’m down digging and shoveling the basement wearing my full body cast and some guy comes up to me and – two guys and they’re standing there watching me and asked me what my name was and I told them and said you know I had an instructor in the Marine Corps by the name of Hammond, but he was a great big guy, big SOB. I said I guess I’m that SOB. Sure enough he had been a student of mine. Jack Hagdahl by name. Maybe you knew him. He was around Fairbanks for a long time.

Well then when I first started out in Petroleum Geology up there when I went back to school but concluded again that wasn’t for me so I switched to anthropology – switched to premed and graduated in biological sciences. And I tell people I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up. Certainly the last thing I’d ever thought I’d do is get into politics. If anybody had suggested it, I’d probably have kicked them out from under their hats. I had slow pain threshold for politicians, still do for that matter, but on the other hand you know I used to say I was one of the good guys, hurling rocks in the arena at the bureaucrats and I suddenly figured out with four years in the service, four plus years in the service, and two years as mayor, one year working for the weather bureau, seven years with Fish and Wildlife Service, six years or twelve years in the legislature and eight years as governor, I’m the biggest bureaucrat of all. And if that isn’t a horrible realization, but anyhow it has been an interesting trip.

Terence: Well Jay did you have Iris Garland in anthropology.

Hammond: I remember that very well and I worked for Louie Giddings as – I was the assistant curator under Louie, helped pay my way through school and that and also worked as a carpenter there – helping the carpenter. Funny little guy – I wish I could remember his name. I’m sure he’s long gone, but I remember when we’d go up to the girls dorm to do a repair job, he opened the door and he said all right girls close your eyes we’re coming through. Oh dear.

Terence: What a great guy to work with.

Hammond: Wonderful little guy.

Terence: What was the – cause your degree was in – was it biological – what was your degree finally in Wildlife or?

Hammond: No, no, degree in the Biological Sciences.

Terence: So was that –

Hammond: Druce Schaible or Druce Gacar at that time was the main professor. She had aspirations or thought I was interested in going into medicine and she was very helpful and permitted myself and two or three of her other students to sit in on autopsies and do a number of things that normally you weren’t permitted to do at that stage of time. And – but I had never had intention to become a doctor and could never have made the grade anyhow in all probability, but I’ll never confess that publicly.

Terence: What was the – the shack where you lived or the house that you built that was down in the flats, right, Vulture Flats?

Hammond: Yeah.

Terence: But do you remember where that was or I don’t know –

Hammond: Well I found it. I had to look carefully to find it because it is all grown up. Back then there was only I think two other residences. Nick Item had a store there that maybe still exists and then there were one or two other people but I don’t remember their names, but I found it. It had been built onto. People had added little wings and the original shack was pretty well enclosed, but I can’t remember the name of the street. Do you know the names of any of the streets there we might be able to – if I heard it I’d remember it?

Terence: Well Bunnell had named – I think he named the streets – now I don’t know if this was afterwards, but he had – there was Deborah, Hess, Hayes. He named them after the mountains and there was also one after the first graduate Shanley.

Hammond: I don’t remember where it is exactly, but –

Terence: Next time you come up I want you to show it to me though.

Hammond: Yeah.

Terence: We ought to do that, yeah because, especially if you dug it out you know if you had a basement then that has got to be pretty unusual.

Hammond: I had a basement and the interesting thing I also had a well and had you know how the water much of it has got that iron, wonderful water, beautiful water, perfect. And somebody said oh you’re just getting surface water. You got to get down. And so I got a steam point and I drilled it down another and I busted into that lousy stuff. Then I got out of there shortly thereafter. But Jack Hagdahl had a place not far from where I was ultimately and Jack – and in fact one time I went back to visit there and I spent a little time in the trailer with Jack. I’m sure that the other guys you’d remember if I could think of their names, but I can’t.

Terence: So Jay tell me when did you meet Bella, cause –

Hammond: I met Bella when I went into the Fish and Wildlife Service I first was assigned here in Anchorage.

Terence: Now was Fish and Wildlife right after you graduated was that what I should go back a second, so when you graduated –

Hammond: I went to Fish and Wildlife, yeah. One of the reasons I went back to school and took biological sciences, I had gone to see Hogar Larson, who was an old game warden with Fish and Wildlife Service here in Anchorage, see about getting a job as a pilot agent. And he said well you ought to go back to school get a degree in biology, we don’t have any openings right now and so forth. So I went back to school and I got my degree and I came back and but I departed a bit from the pilot agent thing in this manner. I had written an article that predated Farley Mollett’s Never Cry Wolf exactly in the same vein. Ivory tower assumption that wolves took nothing but the lame, the sick, and the whole and it was printed in, I don’t remember, Field and Stream or Outdoor Life or something and –

Terence: Was that your first publication?

Hammond: Not the first one but one of the first, yeah. And remember Frank Glazier, old-time wolfer, mountain man, incredible guy and Morrie Kelly. Morrie Kelly was the head of the newly inaugurated predator control division here in Alaska and they had read my article and they came out to see me. And as graciously as possible told me I was all wet. I had – and they said you’re familiar with the Rainy Pass country, you’ve flown around there a lot, we want to do some predator appraise studies up in that locale. And you’re also a pilot and would you be interested in taking a job as a temporary, at least to see what really is going on. I had the impression they were flying around the country indiscriminately throwing poison out of the windows and killing everything and sundry in the process and so forth.

I remember I made the statement one time – in fact I think I wrote it in the book I said I want to make it clear from the start that I’m not a wolf expert but of course like everybody else I used to be, but that was before I got a degree in biology, trapped for a living, worked seven years as a government hunter, lived in the area where we see wolves frequently. And as they say the truth is somewhere – if you truly want to affect population dynamics that increase numbers of not only moose or caribou, but incidentally the wolves predator control may be warranted in certain circumstances. Most everybody agrees that, even the most extreme (inaudible) retired biologists may say and there are maybes but they never encounter those circumstances.

So what happens? You try to conduct a reasonable operation up here that is surgically pinpointed to affect a select area or a number of wolves and of course it is so outrageously un-sportsman like the screams of anguish deter the – say for example if you – what’s the most select means of conducting predator control. To go out and locate the offending pack members and radio collar them and then follow them with the helicopter and selectively pick – oh, my gosh it’s so outrageously un-sportsman like. Politically is untenable. So the state is then forced to do something else. And what do they do, they adopted this snaring program, which of course then was vidoed and sent around the country showing the wolves suffering in the snare and the public outrage was in extreme. So then they adopted ridiculous measures like trying to neuter the males and cut down on production when – I don’t know.

Terence: But Jay so in the seven years so after you left the University you went to work for the predator control guys. And I remember then you wrote an article on Alaska sportsmen about that, right? Was that after you had left, remember you wrote after you working for them. If you don’t remember, that’s okay.

Hammond: Oh I –

Terence: Might be more than one. I don’t remember.

Hammond: I did do more than one, but I tried to – I did one oh, maybe it was something I did for my last book – Chips Off the Chopping Block. Remember Bill Waugaman wrote a letter to the Editor saying every biologist and all Alaskans should read this, best thing he read on wolves, trying to give an even and balance to presentation in regard to the wolf situation, but most people are so entrenched in their one camp or the other it is hard to meet a happy middle.

And the truth is somewhere between the two. If you want to increase prey populations in some instances wolf control – I’ve seen it – I saw it on the Alaska Peninsula. I went down – I was sent down there to take a look at the situation. The caribou that at one time caribou and reindeer population totaled 60,000 allegedly back in the old days. Wolf populations built up with the introduction of reindeer. People down there had never seen the wolf until they introduced reindeer into the country. Wolf population built up to the point where they were – I remember Dave and Mary Alsworth for example took – found what – I don’t remember – they had taken a number of wolves between Egavik and Naknek. Can’t remember numbers. But we took 250 wolves off the Alaska Peninsula. When I went down there to survey the reindeer/caribou populations, all we could find is roughly 1,200 of that 60,000 alleged. We took – I didn’t do it all by myself but together about 250 wolves off of that herd. They built back up to 20,000 and the wolf population built up along with it. So there are plenty of wolves and caribou or at least they were. I don’t know what it is like now.

Terence: It’s the balance isn’t it. Let me check is there a thermometer in here? Jay, I might turn that down because the heat we’re hearing.

Terence: All right. How is that?

Hammond: Okay. I first met Bella – I had been sent down to Bristol Bay and –

Terence: And this as a predator control guy?

Hammond: Predator control, right and I was in Dillingham and they had – they used to have kind of family type dances and penuche games weekly at a place called The Willow Tree. And there was a dance that particular evening and I’m not much for tripping the light fantastic. It is not very light but it sure is fantastic. Anyhow, I walked up to this pretty young thing and I said I always accord myself the privilege of asking the prettiest girl in the room to dance and that’s the only dance – and it happened to be Bella. And I met her, she was I don’t know, still in high school then and I – her dad was an old Scotchman that came from the old country back in 1896 or something. It was on the Gold Rush. He had been playing professional soccer around the world at different locales. Anyhow he was much older than Bella’s mother.

And I think the next time I encountered her was in the restaurant called the Greenfront Café in Dillingham and I used to eat there regularly and I very carefully avoided ever drinking the water because they got their water from up on the hill just above the Greenfront, which was at the base of the cemetery. And I remember seeing a small boy relieving himself in the water hole one time and I thought I’m going to drink nothing by orange juice. I conveyed this to Bella and her dad and they started laughing and found out that they were reconstituting the orange juice with very high calcium content plus whoever knows what else on the other hand. That was kind of my second introduction with Bella.

She then went to the University and was up there in ’51 I believe and I took her away from all that and we got married in ’52, yeah.

Terence: What was her dad’s name?

Hammond: Her dad’s name was Tom Gardiner.

Terence: G-A-R-D-N-E-R.

Hammond: G-A-R-D-I-N-E-R. And he was kind of the head of the fisherman union or whatever they called it back then and a very interesting fellow. I wish we had recorded more accurately some of the stories he had.

We went back to Scotland here some years ago to try to locate where he had come from but it was all part of an urban renewal thing and had been wiped out. We finally located his site, but the interesting thing about that was we went over there the first time the convener which is like a governor had known we were coming over and that I wanted to seek out his family tree. And a fellow, very proper gentleman by the name of Mr. Quale drove us around and he said we’ve looked into all the records and we can find no reference. We knew what his name was, what his date of birth, what his father and mother’s name were, where they lived and so forth – couldn’t find any reference to it, any records. And I went – he said but you could go to the archives there in Edinburgh and find the names of –

Hammond: F. Gardiner, D. Gardiner different names and so forth and nothing jived. The birth dates or anything else. And I started to walk out and the thought hit me. I wonder if he changed his name. I went back there and looked up Thomas Gardiner Finley. There it all was. His mother, where he lived, the date of birth. Mr. Quayle and Bella were there and I told them what had happened. I said we’re going to come over and research further sometime and the next time I’m going to check the jail records. Mr. Quayle threw up his hands oh my God. But I guess that was not uncommon to change their names and assume his mother’s name I guess.

But we went back then later and we found exactly the street he lived on and it was in Grenich, a place not far from Glasgow and the whole business. Very interesting. We enjoyed Scotland immensely. I’d like to go back again

Hammond: And determine how to disburse the wealth. I would put it in the people’s pockets and compel the local governments and the state government to tax it back or user fee it back.

Terence: Yeah, yeah. Cause he’s talking about this community is that his deal?

Hammond: Well a community dividend, which is nothing more of course than revenue sharing.

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

Hammond: Which I have submitted before. I wrote the bill incidentally that created it.

Terence: Yeah.

Hammond: And one of the most interesting things that time does not permit to understand but if I ever did anything that gave me satisfaction in the legislature was that action. Because it involved a free conference committee report that the media said, whoa, you talk about a free conscious of disband in five minutes. It was a free conference comprised in the House of Bill Ray, Tom Fink, and the free conference that couldn’t possible resolve it. In five minutes we came out with a bill that all agreed to. It gave everybody presumably exactly what they all wanted. The only thing is it gave us in the Senate exactly what we wanted and it gave the house only what they wanted after we had been accommodated in the Senate. And after we had been accommodated in the Senate from the funds that had been appropriated – but it worked beautifully. But it’s so hard to explain and understand. But I never had more satisfaction from doing something that (inaudible), anyhow.

Terence: Well Jay I always thought that you had fun in politics. Well I did and largely because of guys like Tillion. They gave the comic relief that was so helpful. I remember, you may have read about it, when Tillion first came aboard he sat in front of me. And I’d think of some outrageous thing to do but didn’t have guts enough to do it and knuckle in Tillion’s back and I’d say Clamp, why don’t you and he’d leap up and perpetrate another outrage and I’d sit there of course in shock and dismay like everybody else. Wonderful. But I don’t I could have survived it without Clemhill. But anyhow.

Terence: Well let’s see, oh (inaudible), so you guys got married in ’52?

Hammond: We got married in 1952 and honeymoon. We got married in Palmer and by Dorothy Saxson, who I think may be still Magistrate up there. She was for many, many years, but last I heard she was still holding forth in Palmer in some capacity. And then we honeymooned in Seward.

So we moved to Naknek and bought what they call Model Café. And it was truly a model. It was certainly of ancient vintage, but it had one of the few flush toilets in town, one of the three or four about all there were. And we built onto that and then ultimately got a piece of land out up on the hill towards King Salmon and moved that building over another basement that we dug up there. I didn’t do that one in plaster cast however.

Terence: And then you guys – so you decided you were going to live down there in Naknek or cause of the Fish and Wildlife work basically, right, was that it?

Hammond: Yeah, I work out of there for a number of years and then I had another very strange accident that you perhaps recall where I don’t know how much you want me to go into it but I was flying a fellow by the name of Sea Otter Jones, very colorful character from Cold Bay around the country and he wanted to stop at King Cove. This was before King Cove had an airstrip and we were – I had ski wheels on the airplane, Super Cub and there was a little lake there that we used to use to land there. At the end of the lake about three feet off the ground is a big wooden pipe that the canneries got their water from. And there were a number of kids who were skating on the ice.

Well they couldn’t – I couldn’t fly. I couldn’t fit in the front seat with the feet the way they were or I could fit but I didn’t think I could press on the rudder pedals, but I thought if I had to in an absolute emergency maybe I could do it, but Bob Jones who didn’t fly he got in the back seat of the airplane and I said you work the pedals and I’ll work the stick and throttle. Well let me tell you, two heads are not better than one when it comes to trying to fly an airplane. And we went racheting off the ice there and I thought oh my gosh we got aloft, how are we ever going to get down? Right, right, left, left, right, left, we’re going off like a busaded target gun over wipe berries. And we went over to Cold Bay and it was still blowing bad cross wind and I thought oh, my gosh, how are we ever going to get down? We came in for a landing and get the runway, came up in the air, up on one wheel, around, missing the runway lights and finally did a ground loop and knocked the (inaudible) off one, but got stopped. And didn’t do any damage to the airplane.

They put me in the 5000 1st Hospital, which was an old Alvin hut is what it was, like a big Quonset hut. And they got me in traction because they had to let the blood blisters and swelling reduce somewhat before they could operate. And I’m hung up in this traction device one night and suddenly I heard shrieking and screaming and people come out of one of the sections of this thing. The doors open, smoke billowing down the hall and here’s the lame, the sick, and the whole going out on their crutches and canes and wheelchairs. Hey you guys I’m hung up in this traction device. And finally I had to unhook myself and slip over the side of the bed and go out in the snow on my butt. And it burned the whole place down. Two nurses were lost in it. Really a tragic event.

And that wasn’t the end of my humiliation however. They put me in the then new Native service hospital here in Anchorage. There was a picture in the Anchorage News or maybe it was the Times that was the ultimate. That picture on the front-page it says Native women from the villages arrive anticipating what was the headline? Native Women and Villages arrive to anticipate birth of their children or something like that. Here’s a picture of maybe 30 or 40 very obviously pregnant Native women and in the midst of this conglomeration is myself; the lone male on a hospital gurney looking like an oriental potentate this was his harem. That was the ultimate.

But it brings – anyhow I was laid up for a long time.

Terence: What year was that? What year do you think that happened do you think?

Hammond: Oh, my, 1950, must have been ’56.

Terence: And the hospital that burned down, was that in Anchorage?

Hammond: It was 5000 5th Hospital.

Terence: Out at Elmendorf?

Hammond: 5000 5th or 5000 1st. It is stilled called that, but it is not an elephant hut anymore, very elaborate. But then that finished my career with Fish and Wildlife, so.

Terence: Cause you couldn’t fly any more basically or –

Hammond: Well not – they put me in a oh I was long time in a cast. They fused my right ankle, not my left one, but they put me in a cast and when I was able to walk around at all. We bought the Model Café as a place to live and that was and I was stumping around on crutches, short order cooking and finally I had a couple of walking casts. She was making up the 30 pies a day or so and we were losing our shirts believe it or not. And we had charged I remember outrageous prices. A cup of coffee and potato salad and hamburger we were charging one dollar. And it seemed like a high price back then believe it or not. Anyhow that proved to be a very unsuccessful venture. When I was able to function again they offered me a job Fish and Wildlife. I could either go to Juneau in an office capacity or take what they call a reduced retirement. It was reduced by so many percent for every year you were less than 65. So being much less than 65 myself it ended up something like a negative percentage, very small, $100 or something like that. But it was getting out of an office job.

I never aspired to an office job and then I went into the guiding, flying and the commercial fishing business. And I worked with a fellow by the name of Dick Jenson, who had an operation called Alaska Aero Marine. And I remember we acquired our hangar from the military. I went and took a chain saw and literally cut a big building in half and we moved it across the runway at King Salmon and put it together and operated out of there. He guided for me in the spring and fall and I’d fly for him in the summer. He finally sold out to what ultimately became Penn Air to Oren Seabert and George Tibbets. And they were much more successful than we were obviously.

Then when I left that I – in 1959 I – couple of schoolteachers came to me one day. We just became a State. And they said you ought to run for State Legislature. By the time I stopped laughing I told them I had no interest whatsoever and that actually I had voted against statehood and for reasons that you are probably familiar with. And they said well and I said I’m not affiliated with either party, Republican or Democrat. And they came back a day or two later and they said well they named a fellow with most outrageous choices imaginable, pretty well inebriated type, which is one qualification I suspect with many politicians, but he exceeded the bounce and propriety when it came to that. And he – they said guy has filed. He’s going to win. The only other fellow that has filed is a Republican and doesn’t stand a chance to win and it was six to one Democrats in the villages back in those days. And they said well you could run as an Independent. And they said all you have to do is go out and get a petition with so many names that say they’ll support you. And I said forget it. And they said well would you consider it if we went out and go the petition. I said that’s the only way I would consider it and that’s what I thought would be the end of it.

But I enjoyed the legislature. I spent six years there and it was an entertaining time in Alaska’s history. We were setting up the whole state government and there was some very remarkable outstanding statesman like figures involved back then that – and we had the sort of legislature was truly citizen legislature. It wasn’t you had to get down there, do your work as rapidly as possible, and get out as soon as you could to make a living.

And I mentioned several times that there has only been one session which I served in the legislature that warranted more than 90 days and that was the first and we did that I believe in 67. And we set up the entire state government. I have since wondered what in the world did we overlook that obliges us to sit every year 120 days threshing out.

One of the problems I think is that people spend so much money and time and effort getting elected that they – that becomes the overriding consideration. What’s going to get me re-elected? And when I was Governor I used to have people come to me not infrequently and say you’re right I’d love to go beyond this but I wouldn’t dare I’d never get re-elected.

Problem is too few really can place the best interests of the State over the interests of their selective constituencies or provincial constituencies or special interests constituencies. And it’s a shame. I don’t know how you get around it, but I almost have reached the conclusion we’d be better off if they could vote secretly on issues. I’m not so sure we wouldn’t. Outrageous suggestion but so few (inaudible). I mentioned somebody the other day an issue that one of the prominent Republicans down there the – remember Fran Ulmer had proposed that so-called parachute plan that would turn – oh he said yeah the concepts great but Fran Ulmer proposed it, we couldn’t support that. I mean gosh. And I don’t know.

So I for a guy who is happy to be out of politics it seems like I’m sticking my nose into overly much, but with this fiscal gap issue. If that can once be resolved you’ll hear a lot less from Hammond on the political front. And we’re getting close. I believe it.

Terence: Jay, let’s go back to the statehood for a second. Let’s just sort of recap a little of your interests about why you thought it was a bad idea and the people who did. A lot of people felt that way.

Hammond: Yeah, well, yeah, I voted well let me go back a little bit. I was recently invited to the University of Alaska by President Hamilton. The invitation read rather whimsically I thought for – we’re inviting old or many of those who played significant roles in the establishment of the statehood. And they had apparently had forgotten that I voted against it. A fact I didn’t reveal until after they had fed me, feeling they would deny me nourishment, and confessed earlier but I knew somebody would confess for me if I didn’t, perhaps Terrence Cole.

But anyhow, my reasons were simply this that with our tiny population – I don’t know it was only about 70,000 people and we had no economic potential immediately on the horizon, fishery, timber, mining, trapping had all gone down hill. And I felt with our tiny population and first our ability to finance and administer were very dicey. And I said that with our small population virtually any idiot that aspired to public office is liable to achieve it. And a lot of folks subsequently have said yes and you proved (inaudible) on more than one occasion. I did not oppose it idealistic, but I also was affronted by the fact that you couldn’t even look at such things as commonwealth status, which seemed to have some interesting aspects worthy of examination, but the very suggestion of looking at alternatives branded you as a crackpot or communist or some sort of loathsome creature. And very few openly opposed statehood. It was kind of the kiss of death to do so.

But one time I had an interesting experience subsequent to my service in the legislature when a number of us were standing around some unanticipated expenditure had crawled out from the rocks and there were eight legislators there. And one guy said huh, we almost went bankrupt the first – more people left the State than arrived by any other means other than the birth canal and the economy was going downhill badly. We were on the edge of bankruptcy and something as I saw crawled out of the woodwork unanticipated and some guy said well I never really was too hot on this statehood business and the other guy says no neither was I and matter of fact I voted against it. Six out of the eight legislators voted against it. But I was the only one stupid enough to publicly announce it.

Now was it a mistake, no. I was wrong. We did have and do have the ability to finance and administer, but the jury is still out as to whether we’ve succeeded in doing so. Much will depend on how we resolve this fiscal gap issue. If it goes away, I and people like Tillion and Halford and numbers of others believe it should, man we’ve got a wonderful future in this State, but if they screw it up which I fear they may well do, we will do nothing but further encourage what I call uneconomic development. That is development does not pay its way. Why do we have a fiscal gap? Because we have not extracted enough from new development to generate revenues to offset the cost of service provider. Either that or we spent so much money that we can’t meet our obligations once they’re in place. To correct that there is a means of dealing with this fiscal gap, including this so-called endowment that could resolve that issue in a manner that two years from now in my view nobody will even be talking about it. But it is going to require massive change of thinking on the part of the politicians. The public is with us. The public is with us. They don’t realize it but the majority of the public will only support an endowment which one bulletproofs inflation proving and assures them that their dividend will be no less than it would have been under the existing status quo formula.

There is a way of doing that in a manner which can actually increase dividends for those folks who most need it, won’t take a penny of earned income from Alaskans, resolve the fiscal gap, re-establish a proper longevity bonus, reduce the magnetic attraction of those folks who come up here. Many people are opposed to the dividend because they think it attracts a number of freeloaders. It does literally 20 desirable things that I have bounced on people; the most recently Rick Halford said punch holes in it. Tell me one of those things this approach would not do. Rick is a very bright guy and if anybody can find holes in it he can do it, but while we went through it he didn’t. Clint is in accord. If I can only persuade the Governor to go this route, he will go down as a hero. He’ll go out in a blaze of glory. And if he goes the way I fear this conference they recommend, unless they’re persuaded otherwise he’ll go down in flames. And it’s an issue that I feel as you might suspect somewhat passionate about.

Terence: Oh this is fascinating Jay. What do you think in the sort of fears of bankruptcy like you say there really was no economic development on the horizon because fishing had collapsed, was doing down even worse, right? I mean terrible years I guess and that the pulp was maybe something, but that was not. So really did oil figure into any calculations at all and what did occur to you? What would you know –

Hammond: Not the first years of statehood. Oil hadn’t even peaked over the horizon. The – I –

Terence: Well then put it this way. Could you ever imagine something the size of Prudhoe Bay, I mean –

Hammond: No, no. Nobody even had that vision. And when the leases were sold in Prudhoe Bay, I remember there were all sort of speculation. I think they had a pool as I recall or maybe we just recorded our predictions as to how much the leases would bring in and I, following an old practice of mine to take the most outrageous extreme position knowing full well that if you’re in accord with the public presumption nobody is going to pay any attention, end up right, but certainly you go. For example, I predicted, believe it or not, Truman’s win over Dewey when everybody was saying that of course Truman – I said you watch. I predicted the Jets win when Joe Namath won and three or four things. Only because it was the most outrageous un-improbable presumption. I did the same thing in Prudhoe Bay prediction, the revenues we’d acquire and fell flat on my face. I predicted 900,000 or not 900,000, no nine million. That’s what it was and of course it was 900. So it doesn’t always work, but people – they pay attention when you come up with so what can I predict now that’s an improbable, but –

Terence: So resources of that size, which is what made a (inaudible) of a state, where it went and unpredictable, right? I mean well unforeseeable?

Hammond: Well they were and immediately my intent – one of the reasons that I was not totally unhappy or (inaudible) when I was elected Governor and you know history I won’t recount that, I had not any frankly any desire to become Governor at a time when the state was split on several issues along different fracture lines. The pro-development and the development, land claims issue, pipeline, so forth and so on, but I did see a potential for doing something that I failed to do in Bristol Pay and that is creating a stockholder owned if you will investment account that spun off dividends using as the basis our resource wealth that in my view belongs to the people.

And I tried to do in Bristol Bay, was successful in establishing quote what you might call a permanent fund but they didn’t append the dividend program to it. And as a consequence as I fear will happen to the State if they somehow damage the dividend program, which is the major protector against invasion and dissolution of that fund, it went out the window. They ultimately spent their $12M permanent fund on a swimming pool in Bristol Bay or Naknek and now they’re broke. They have 41 homes for sale and people are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship in many instances.

And the State I fear will experience exactly the same thing where a successful in requiring the vote of the people before they can expend any of the corpus of the fund. But whose going to care if there is no dividend that is impacted one way or the other by what they do and the question arises, all right now we need a billion dollars to balance the books. Shall we take it from that $27, $28 billion dollar fund or impose an income tax? You know what the people will say, of course not. So there has to be some means of stopping that and the people I think you know a lot of people say, huh, terrible the public has suddenly assumed that this is the permanent dividend fund, outrageous. They better recognize that’s exactly the way the public perceives it and play to that in this manner.

Okay, we’re going to give you your dividends, we’ll expand them but you got to understand we are going to take them back through various mechanisms, user fees, taxes and the best that I have been able to conjure up or perceive is a capped income tax that would never take a penny of your earned income, but capped income tax, capped removed only by a vote of the people. The big argument against an income tax of course it takes my hard-earned income and redistributes it. Doesn’t do it if it takes your –

Terence: Dividend.

Hammond: A bonus is given to you by your state for your ownership share. It does not penalize productivity in any way, shape, or form. And if we did that we might have on paper what appears to be one of the highest income taxes in the nature, most Alaskans would pay nothing. And it would – but you have to then do something to dissuade people from coming up here attracted by that big dividend. So it’s a three-part deal. You do an endowment that generates nothing the dividend dollars, you put in place a feature that would what I call demagnetize the attraction and also provide for a mechanism to call all those moneys back, which could span those things alone could span the entire fiscal gap right now, right now.

Man: We have to change tapes.

Terence: There’s a famous story of James Wickersham that he gave a speech that was eight hours long you know. I think you and he –

Hammond: Everywhere I go, yeah, that’s the way. Four or five years ago I first mentioned that and it was oh, hum, nobody ever picks up on it. Terrible. And I see people do such things as this limited entry, which they did all along in my view. They put it in the constitution. They have a little (inaudible), I’d never have the audacity to try to sell it, much less the capability of selling it. And other people will go out and sell something-outrageous package like that with no problem at all what – I don’t know. It’s not very encouraging.

Terence: But you know but you were successful in – maybe it was an easier sell back in ’76 with the amendment for the permanent fund because there was so much potential money on the table but still remember there was a lot of opposition to it nonetheless.

Hammond: Yeah.

Terence: Of the people who wanted and the whole invest all that in Alaska, that kind and what a catastrophe that would have been you know.

Hammond: Oh, Sumner, Holman, one put out, no interest loans, spur development, create jobs, you talk about spurring the uneconomic development, anyhow.

Terence: That’s one thing too I always thought that it was Alner’s idea, he always said well look the whole thing is a permanent fund. It’s sort of what you said you got to think of all the 150 billion, all the oil money or 50 or whatever we get and we spent 75 percent of it. What do you mean we didn’t invest in Alaska? We spent –

Hammond: Hey, you know Roger Cremo, you know who he is? Roger Cremo was counseling Keith Miller when we got the 900 million to put – I think to put all of it in I think, yeah, put all of it the permanent – he didn’t call it the permanent fund. That word hadn’t even been bantered about. And a handful of us supported that concept – Tillion, myself, I don’t remember who. I think maybe CR Lewis even, I’m not sure. But Miller tried to put half of it, didn’t have any dividend – half of it went down in flames.

Then when the 900 million was in view of the public dissipated, it really wasn’t. What it went out in primarily is revenue sharing that reduced the local tax burden, but because people didn’t see concrete and steel they didn’t think they got anything out of it. And the assertion was made by many in the legislature well if we ever have another windfall we won’t blow that. We’ll put it into an investment account and live off the earnings.

And of course when we hit oil that all went out the window. I wanted to put literally four times as much money. I would have loved to put all of it in, but I realized we’d be lucky to get any of it into a permanent fund. So I proposed half (tape skip) bonuses, royalties, and severance taxes. The legislature cut out severance taxes and automatically reduced the input by half and cut the 50 percent to 25 percent, which cut it again. So one-quarter of what I proposed went in. And we did get something and we did get a dividend program but then it got what I call zovolized which totally distorted and abused it into the degree where I even thought about after the Supreme Court decision, I very briefly thought about vetoing the bill. But then I concluded it was far better than nothing and – but I refused to sign the – I’m the only governor that has never signed their permanent fund dividend check. I don’t know if you know that. I had my commissioner of administration sign them.

Governor Murkowski the other month or two ago said something about one thing Hammond and I both were delighted to do is sign permanent fund dividend checks. I didn’t sign them. I was that disgusted in the manner in which it went. So –

Terence: Well okay let’s talk a little bit about in those early years in the legislature. What were some of the – do you remember any of the financial problems that you faced, because that ’59 through ’65, is that what you were in, ’64?

Hammond: I thought you were going to say just major issues.

Terence: Oh, major issues, let’s talk about that, yeah.

Hammond: Well major issue and concern of mine was frankly the management of Fish and Game and I felt that so-called Section 26 board for both education and fish and game were appropriate. Section 26 board refers to an area of the constitution that says that the head of department may either be a commissioner or a board appointed by the governor, who in turn selects the commissioner. And I felt both Fish and Game and Education warranted continuity of program that would be disrupted through the normal process of political appointees. You get in place certain procedures and philosophies only to have it disrupted without giving them time to maturate and work or fail as the case may be. And I crossed swords with Bill Eagan on that issue several times during the first years in office.

And finally my major concern frankly was Fish and Game, but ended up we got the 26 board for education, which I think has worked quite well. And we got kind of a half-breed sort of thing for Fish and Game. So that was the big contention that I had with Governor Eagan, who prescribed to a so-called public administration service approach which had been recommended to the constitutional convention that had an idealistic situation where you would have in an area a single individual who would wear several hats. He’d be a game warden, a policeman, handling ombudsman, you name it. Well it was totally unworkable in my view and I think so concluded by the remainder of the legislature.

But as far as financial, just funding anything was a real, real problem. As it was when I first went into office a lot of people don’t realize that in my first four years in office we spent less money than Bill Sheffield’s first term all together my first five years in office. Now of course we had the money and in my last years of office we spent much, too much and the only reason why I didn’t veto more than I did out of some of the legislative proposals, which one year incidentally came – if all the legislation that had been introduced passed came according to Chuck Cleshoal. He was my walking computer, 18 billion dollars worth of appropriations. Now mercifully most of them never saw the light of day but of those which passed I vetoed a billion six million, which again according to Cleshoal is more than any probably all the other governors combined. And we still spent too much. Why – because we couldn’t put as much as I would have liked to put into the permanent fund. In order to get any permanent fund we had to let them spend some, save some, and invest some. If we tried to invest it all, we’d never have gotten anywhere.

Terence: But do you think what about the issue of the income tax back then, because I was reminding you when you were back in ’79 you had this proposal you called it an energy dividend at that time and it was called – you called it the Alaska – were you calling it Alaska, Inc., was that your opinion?

Hammond: Well Alaska, Inc. was – when I was campaigning for governor I tried to promote the idea of Alaska, Inc., which was a shareholder owned investment account and spun off dividends. Every Alaskan would receive a share – I wanted to actually issue shares of stock and each year you’d accumulate another share and you would earn more dividends. And when I became governor I formed what I called the Alaska Public Forum, primarily to showcase that throughout the state. And I went throughout the State arguing in behalf of that approach and the public response was a massive yawn. There was no interest in there at all. Crackpot idea, crazy.

Just got a letter from my ex-deputy commissioner who sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal advocating exactly what I was talking about earlier. We put all the money into investment account. It spins off only dividends. Man I wish that gentleman who wrote is a Nobel prize winning economist was around back in those days. It would have had a little more credibility in the concept.

Anyhow I got nowhere with it, but this fellow in my administration said when you proposed that I thought it was kind of whimsical, quaint, and so forth, but wow, see what involved into. That was one of the things I had hoped to do when I first got into office and I introduced Alaska, Inc., which was a bill that did precisely that. And it didn’t put all the money. It recommended as I say three times as much as and dividend appended to it.

Well there were a few people in the legislature that saw the wisdom of taking some of the money off the legislature smorgasbord and put it into an investment account. And among them primarily were people like Oral Freeman and of course Hugh Malone and Clark Gruening, and Terry Gardner and a number of people in the legislature, Chancey Croft. And they discarded the name Alaska, Inc. And put out their own deal, which they called the Alaska Permanent Fund, had no dividend appended to it.

And I remember Johnny Sackett came up to my office. He was not favorable disposed at that time to the whole concept I don’t believe, as many politicians are not because if they don’t have the money to spend they have to extract it back in some form or cut budgets. So naturally it is not very popular with those in the legislature. But he came up and he kind of growled in my ear and he said that’s nothing more than that permanent fund – that’s nothing more than your dam Alaska, Inc. I said on the contrary John it is nowhere near Alaska, Inc. It has no dividend and it by no means permanent in my view because statutorily constructed fund will be invaded the minute they need money. It has to go in the constitution.

So then we wrote a bill that put it in the constitution requiring a vote of the people before they could touch (inaudible). But I thought about trying to put dividends in the constitution, but I was biting off much to much. I knew it would never fly with that. Now we are back full circle though. And it should go in the constitution and it is one of the things this amendment PMOW amendment must incorporate in my view for it to pass public scrutiny, public muster.

Anyhow it did go on the ballot. The people to their great credit voted it in. Then we have to fight to get the dividend. And the dividend that first went into place unfortunately where I made my mistake was to presume that why shouldn’t the old-timers that have owned “those resources” since statehood in ’59 get one share of stock for each year their residency just like the new timers will get them for their share of ownership. That’s where it fell down. A couple of new comers came up here and concluded that they would not get as much as the old-timers would initially. Although in the long term ironically in the long term the old-timer for example we arbitrarily set the value of the dividend at $50. So 21 years before that bill went into affect would have accrued $1,150 to every old-timer the first year whereas the new comer would only get 50 bucks. Outrageously discriminatory was their conclusion.

And while I admire folk that have courage in their conviction to tackle an unpopular issue, it would have had a little bit nobility had there been equally – had they been equally distraught over the fact that they as federal employees received a 25 percent cost of living differential tax free not accorded to all other Alaskans, but somehow that was shuffled over.

Anyhow they failed in the State Supreme Court that supported our position and Justice Rabinowitz at the time said have you gone prospected. You should share as a thought earning dividends into the future rather than in retrospectively. No problem. That subsequently was repeated by other attorneys as recently as a couple of months ago. Chancey Croft told me that and Adam Grosch, both I think (inaudible) to be rather fine legal minds when it comes to things of that nature, constitutional law.

Hammond: (Inaudible) permanent fund market value and that is dividend B. Old-timers get dividend A and B. New timers only B and so far into the future. You do that you have eliminated the magnetic attraction of many people think have lured a bunch of freeloaders up here. And embarked on a program that I think gets back to my original intent I hear people say well original intent of permanent funds rainy day account. Bull feathers. That word was never even mentioned back then to my knowledge. Why would we call it permanent fund? The CBR is what the rainy day account is. And look how it’s being treated. You’re obliged by law theoretically to repay any moneys loaned from the permanent fund. Since no dividend appends to it, who cares. Nobody pays any intention. It is going down and down and down, but if your dividend went down at the same time the way those people spent that money, the public would rise up in outrage. That’s why you have to have a dividend program to protect the permanent fund.

Terence: Now Jay let me interrupt you there. What about though the issue and this is the one thing where I think – this is the one thing where I think that it went all wrong was the repeal of income tax. And so let’s talk about that because the thing is you said in 1979, I remember by the way in 1976 I read one speech where you said you know I can give you 900 million reasons to vote for the permanent fund. That was one of your speeches. I was like great line. But that in ’79 you spoke to the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce and that was this energy credit. I forget now how you were phrasing it and the idea was.

Hammond: Okay.

Terence: That it is kind of you’re back to that idea. And that I think is important that it is the dividend is not just a one way street.

Hammond: Yeah.

Terence: There has to be some you know like an air exchanger. You can’t just use up all the air inside you know. So let’s talk about that.

Hammond: I think I know what you’re –

Terence: You proposed an energy tax credit. You said somehow you get a cut off your income tax. I don’t know if you remember that.

Man: Do you want to divide it into the issue of income tax.

Hammond: I know what you’re talking about. The – I had pondered how to distribute benefits from the earnings of the permanent fund. And I thought what is it everybody needs, everybody has to have food, shelter, power generation, probably gasoline and so forth. Maybe we ought to parcel these dollars out in some form of health insurance or some universally required (inaudible). But then I thought wait a minute you know your needs are different than his, than hers, and so forth. The easiest way to do it is just give everybody the wherewithal to select for themselves how to do it.

What I think we had another incidence of a dividend program that many people forgot about. The permanent fund dividend program was not the first one. The first one related to something I don’t know if you remember? I think you do, but if you do, you’re probably one of no more than the fingers on one hand. It related to gas, a gas tax. We had a severance tax on gas that I think was half the national average on natural gas. And there were suggestions that the gas tax be raised to at least the national average because while some of the gas was being utilized here in Alaska, most of it went to Asia as I recall at that time. Why was the severance tax kept so low? It was to accommodate the prime users here in Anchorage. And when I suggested we double the gas price, the Anchorage legislators came out of the woodwork to say that is outrageous. We can’t support that it would affect our constituents.

What it would do according to the records was raise the average gas consuming family in Anchorage by $19. That was all. And in order to prevent that from impacting them, we were subsidizing in essence the Japanese as well.

So I drew up something that I called, it was kind of an offer they couldn’t refuse. I tried to do the same thing at Bristol Bay when they would not support the dividend concept. I said okay if you vote this tax in we’ll give you 100 percent residential property tax exemption. They had voted to tax it. Okay, so I thought well wait a minute why don’t we do this. Why don’t we raise the gas tax up to the national average, which I think was double, we will then give everybody in the state, not just the Anchorage gas user. Why shouldn’t the people in Fairbanks or Ketchikan, Juneau, Barrow get the same sort of benefit. We’ll give everybody a $150 credit against their income tax.

Now what happened is we raised the gas tax. We got seven million more dollars in revenue. Five million went out in the $150 credit. I found almost nobody ever heard of it. Had they received $150 check in the mail, yeah, what’s this for? They would have paid some attention.

That’s when I became determined rather than giving credits and all these types of things other than the direct distribution of cash is the way to go. So I abandoned the whole thought of health insurance or power deals, but that was our first – that was our very first dividend check. And that occurred, gosh I don’t remember, long before the permanent fund was created. But anyhow I think that’s what you’re talking about.

Terence: It is part of it and I think but this thing was that you see before the income tax went away, see this is –

Hammond: Oh, yeah –

Terence: The problem that I feel is that and maybe you should talk about that –

Hammond: Yeah.

Terence: Because I really think that.

Hammond: I’d like to do that.

Terence: That’s the best – I think – wish you would have vetoed that income tax repeal. But let’s tell the story about that.

Hammond: The income – when it was proposed that the income tax be repealed, the legislature of course was almost unanimously aboard. I think only one other person than Clint Tillion. Clint Tillion opposed repeal, somebody else, who neither Clint nor I could remember who it was. But I remember arguing before the Chambers of Commerce at both in Anchorage and Fairbanks. I said you people condemn us for living beyond our means. Now how do you correct that? You either reduce your living or you increase your means. You repeal the income tax you’ll do just the opposite. You’ll not only reduce your means, but you’ll cut the major constraint on spending. You’ll severe the connection between the public’s purse and the politicians. And spending will soar into the stratosphere.

Oh, no, and somebody came to me – so we – I said suspend it, reduce it, but don’t eliminate it. So Michael Coletta, Clint Tillion, and I conjured up a bill that would have in essence suspended it in this manner. It said the first year you pay three-thirds of your income tax. The next year two-thirds, the next year one-third, and then it is suspended for you. So newcomers, pipeline transient workers, so forth would pay the full rate but then it would gradually decline. And some news reporter came to me and said well what will you do if the court strikes that down? Will you permit the income tax to become law? And I had said at the time repeatedly I thought repeal of income tax was downright stupid. Well it wasn’t a very popular (inaudible) as you may recall.

And I said suspend it, reduce it, but don’t take it off the books. Your spending will soar into the stratosphere. Anyhow they said well will you permit it to become law if it – your bill is struck down? I had no idea the court would strike ours down. I still don’t understand the rationale for it. Maybe if we’d had a simple suspension instead of this one, two, three, and out. But anyhow they did strike it down.

Well now mind you there was a petition overwhelmingly subscribed to by thousands of Alaskans to repeal the income tax. Legislature was all but two wanted to do so. And they asked me are you going to veto it now? And I said well, you know I’d like to but on the other hand nobody would delight more than jabbing that veto down my throat than the legislature and I’d probably be recalled by the public salivating over repeal of the income tax. And then they said – people said well now you said you’d let it become law if – well I didn’t really say that. I said I might as well because these other things would occur. Again I didn’t have guts enough to veto it anyhow, which I should have done. I’d probably never have served another four years, but I would have slept better. But I think many people recognized – well, most – probably most Alaskans now think it was a good idea to repeal the income tax. Terrible idea. We wouldn’t have the fiscal gap. We wouldn’t have spent anywhere near the amounts of money we had and no Alaskan would be paying any more than what he is getting in the dividend or almost none of it.

But the fat cats quite frankly who of course would pay a lot more unless that income tax were capped were delighted to see a repeal of it and will fight to the death to keep it off the books if possible. And in the process you know they would take from the destitute working welfare mother, they’d take their dividend check before they would pay a nickel in income tax. And brother it ain’t right. Anything I can do to avoid it and I think there area a lot of people are starting to recognize that. Again, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to bleed the fat cats white. If you put a cap on it, they’re not losing anything more than their dividends. They got no complaint.

Terence: Well you know I think that’s a good (inaudible), Jay. I agree with you, but at the time there was no doubt it would have been – you would have been buried in a tidal wave. I still wish you would have vetoed it because Butrovich is the one who said this even to he said you know this is the worse thing possible and I think that – I think the worst thing possible back then wasn’t so much the four billion dollar budget, it was that income tax.

Hammond: Oh, I agree with you.

Terence: That was the single one –

Hammond: I agree with you.

Terence: Terrible mistake because –

Hammond: I think Butrovich would probably over the guy and Tillion. Tillion said remember it was Butrovich.

Terence: But I don’t remember if he was still in by then. I can’t remember.

Hammond: I’m not so sure. I don’t think he was.

Terence: But he was definitely –

Hammond: He told me the same thing.

Terence: Yeah.

Hammond: He said the worst thing we could do is veto – or is to get rid of. We had a terrible time. Nobody was re-elected, but look what happened to the crew that suggested a modest income tax a few years ago. They (inaudible) all got wiped out.

Terence: Right, but you know.

Hammond: Or chose not to run.

Terence: Exactly, Jay, but I think that the thing is that from looking and I’ll send you this report I did on this. I looked a lot up in 1949 income tax passage because it took Gruening eight years to pass that and Butrovich would have been one of the only few guys still who had been – who had served that long and maybe the only one. And that was 40 percent of territorial revenue from 1950 and I don’t know when you came in what – do you remember what the percentage of income tax –

Hammond: I came in ’59.

Terence: No, no, but when you came into as governor, do you remember – I don’t remember what the income tax percentage was?

Hammond: Oh, percentage?

Terence: Yeah.

Hammond: I think it seemed – somehow 17 percent comes to my mind.

Terence: Is that right?

Hammond: Seventeen percent of – I don’t remember –

Terence: But there was a great deal – there was a great increase in oil lease stuff, but you said in one speech you know all of us are freeloaders in a way because of the ratio of what the state was spending. Maybe you want to say something about that.

Hammond: Well you know I find it a little ironic that those prime advocates of income tax repeal frequently are those most opposed to the dividend program asserting that it lures freeloaders up here and so forth. My heavens the freeloading we get because of repeal of the income tax outweighs the freeloading you get from dividends tenfold; 87-½ percent of our oil revenue goes out in what I call dove (?) government dividends, hidden dividends, hidden dividends that affect you differently than he, than she, than him. And I never hear them complaining about that being an attraction that brings folk up here. To me the best way to remedy that sort of thing not to take from the one program that equitably distributes our oil benefits to shift money from it as some of these people would do with the type of endowment they would have to ship money from the equitably distributed program into the inequitably distributed programs that affect different people different. We should do exactly the opposite as Vernon Smith suggested. Cremo suggested. I suggested. Tillion and Halford. Take the money out of the pot the legislature can spend – we should put the 87-½ percent into the permanent fund and the 12-½ percent instead of vice a versa if anything. But they are so, so scared of an income tax and so determined to not pay anything directly that they’ll kill the dividend. And in the process if they kill the dividend, even if they pass the 50/50 split of this endowment, five years from now everybody will receive roughly $600 less in dividend. Has exactly the same effect as imposing a flat income tax on every Alaskan and only Alaskan. The most outrageous income tax imaginable is the reversibly graduated income tax that takes more of these less money you make takes a greater percentage.

– Break –

Hammond: Mainly what you’re talking about led to the reasons why I felt some sort of a citizen owner investment account was necessary to address the very sorts of economic, social issues that go back to the genesis and think that covers what you’re talking about.

Hammond: There were 98 votes. I thought it was less than that. I thought it was 37.

Terence: No, I think 98 might, but you know Jay I remember that summer I was on the ferry and I had gone out when I had boarded the ferry you had lost and I think when I got to Seattle you had won. So it was really up and down kind of – oh, darn.

Hammond: I went home – the headlines in the paper Hickel – what was it said? Gosh, what was it? Hickel apparent winner or something like that and something and somebody – newsperson had asked me – oh Hickel says it is in the bag. That was it. Hickel says it is in the bag. And some news reporter said well what do you think of that? I said well I’m sure he is right. I’m just not sure who is holding back. And then he asked me further he said well what is your prediction? And I said I don’t know, but you know I’ve often said as Kongiganak goes, so goes the state, Kongiaganak, what are you talking about? Kongiganak.

Anyhow, I went home and it appeared Wally had won and I waited for the deep depression to settle on me and hey, it felt kind of good. I had a winter man taking of my place down there and I wasn’t even paying much attention to it. He come rushing in and boy he was listening to the radio. I was out doing something. He says hey, you’re only – I started several hundred votes behind him and then it started changing. And again, I really had tuned myself into thinking that gee now I could back to what I really wanted to be doing. And he came in and he said my God you’re – suddenly I was ahead. I couldn’t believe it. And I had to re-tune my thinking all over again. I got to go back to the grind and – but I’m glad I did now.

I tell you had I gone out in that first year, gone with a whimper. I had a 43% approval rating is all. Didn’t have a high disapproval rating, but I don’t know if you’re familiar with what happened during the interim so far as approval ratings. David Sawyer, is that name familiar to you – internationally famous pollster. He come up and he done a poll during the ’78 election. He said he came up with 43%, I had something like a 9 or 18% disapproval. He said your disapproval isn’t high, but your approval – you can win but it is going to be tough.

And anyhow we won it as you know and then he came back four years later to do a poll for Terry Miller, who was contemplating running. Same questions asked. He came into my office and he said I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of experience. You went from 43% approval rating to 82% in four years time. He said it almost doubled – your approval and I was doing the same thing, saying the same things, but I was saying it directly. Bob Clark got me on television. It was the first – we’re going to have you saying it in everybody’s living room directly so they hear it from you rather than the Anchorage Times likes to translate it and so forth. And I was doing the same thing, saying the same things, but the people were understanding it and apparently formed this disapproving.

I don’t know if you heard about my (inaudible) that I gave – I gave my (inaudible) versus my (inaudible) to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce. I said I felt there was no group that would more prefer to hear from my very own lips that I was departing the political scene than the Anchorage Chamber. And I laid all this stuff out, but at the end of it Bob Atwood came up to me and he said you know I believe I’m finally beginning to understand where you’re coming from. But I’m kind of sorry about the 80 years of grief we’ve given you literally. This is exactly what he said.

Bob Clark, who is the guy that changed my approach to media that really was responsible for this increase in approval rating. Sat there doing my presentation to the Chamber of Commerce he is totally bewildered. I’m getting standing ovations for saying the same things that they were cussing me for. He said they understand what you were saying.

Anyhow Atwood a few days later there is an editorial in the Anchorage Times. The essence of it isn’t it great we’re rid of old zero growth Hammond and why don’t give a gun hoe pro-development ex-Chamber of Commerce president Bill Sheffield in there. He’ll get things moving. So I wrote a letter, an open letter, that I sent that went something like this. An open letter to Bob Atwood.

Dear Bob, I realize that modesty will prevent you from printing this in your own newspaper so I have taken the liberty of sending it to everyone else. You really didn’t have to come up and apologize for the eight years of grief that you have given me because I’ve always known that in your heart of hearts you were actually a closet Hammond supporter. In advocating one losing position after another in opposition of my stand on an issue so squandered your credibility while enhancing my own.

John (inaudible) drove me back. He said that’s the best letter I’ve ever read in my life. And anyhow as I say Atwood, I thought what am I doing wrong that Atwood supported me. Anyhow, let’s get back.

Terence: But Atwood I mean his – what about – yeah, how would you best describe your relationship? I mean he really took you on I mean didn’t he?

Hammond: He did, but it was interesting. It was very entertaining. I had two letters from Bob Atwood somewhere in my files. I wish I would resurrect them, would have ruined him. In the wake of my elections, both of them said in essence you know I’m kind of glad you were elected and they were rather supportive. Leading me to believe that much of what appeared in the Anchorage Times was not written by Bob Atwood. Upon more than one occasion I’d read some outrageous thing and as I say, I feared stoning in the streets coming into Anchorage after Anchorage editorial – Times editorial. And I’d confront Bob with it. I’d say Bob, why you know better than that? He didn’t seem to be aware of what had been said. I think it was Bill Tobin primarily and some of his other cohorts.

And we began actually on friendly terms toward the end and one of the reasons being you’ve heard about my alleged potential relationship to Bob Atwood, or had you? I was – when the King of Norway was over here, Bob Atwood held a reception for him and I was asked to share the podium with him. And at the podium I happened to have a little book somebody had sent me. It’s called Genealogy of the Town of Barton, Vermont. And my remarks were (inaudible) found them very appropriate audience in front of the King of Norway I guess, but I said you know Bob Atwood and I have been engaged in friendly dispute for a number of years now. But henceforth we’re going to have to watch or be careful of just whose blood we shred because it might very well be our very own. I have here in hand the Genealogy from the Town of Barton, Vermont that evidences that an antecedent of mine one Elizabeth Penn Hammond arrived in this area in 1632 aboard the – didn’t arrive there – on board the Bart de Griffin and with daughter and son. And her daughter Elizabeth Penn Junior or something or other married one Ebinezer Atwood. And his folks (inaudible), so I say Bob, let me tell you, I am now prepared to cry uncle. It may very well be that you are my uncle. He let me say that. Henceforth he always called me cousin. Anyhow let’s get back to the business at hand.

Terence: Well the thing that is important I guess because of the capitol move issue, what you know which of course he never let up on I mean probably from 1959 on.

Hammond: Never let up on me, but I –

Terence: Well you tried to set things a middle ground I mean –

Hammond: What’s that?

Terence: Well how did you have – deal with the –

Hammond: How did I deal with it?

Terence: Yeah, because remember the voting ’74 and go it and –

Hammond: The way I dealt with it – remember I had three major adversaries that really should have prevented me from getting to first base much less home when it came to running for office; Bob Atwood, Wally Hickel, and Jessie Carr. Guess what happened when they had an – I guess it was a state chamber convention here in Anchorage hosted by Atwood, Hickel, and Carr. Do you remember this story?

Anyhow I was invited to speak at the same presentation or shortly after they did. And I went to this big dinner they had and I knew what would be on the bill of fare – roast bull (inaudible). No question about it. And they got and Jessie Carr started out and he after enumerating my sins of omission and co-mission told a very crude ethnic joke. Wally Hickel got up and he said I, unlike some folk, am a practical environmentalist. This ring a bell?

Terence: I don’t –

Hammond: Oh, okay. And Bob Atwood got up and I thought he was pretty good. He told this joke. He said well you know there are two guys out on a camping trip. Let’s call one of them Av and the other one the Gov. The Gov looks up at the moon and says wistfully God it must have been pretty before they went and walked on it. Now I thought that was pretty – I viewed it as a flaming far out environmentalist. Anyhow, then they recessed for lunch and I was going to be able to respond after lunch. Well I’m frantically scribbling on a piece of napkin or something and while they were engaged in whatever it was, chocolate souffle or something, I got up and said well you know I don’t suspect that I’m going to get the majority of the Teamster’s vote, but I’ve no doubt that I will catch many from those of Polish extraction (inaudible) Polish joke. And as far as Wally Hickel’s practical environmentalist is concerned, I want you to know that I am a practical developer. A practical developer is one who advocates rational environmentally friendly resource development and if that sounds like plagiarism from the tax book of the practical environmentalist, so be it. Scratch one you got the other. And as far as Bob Atwood is concerned I really appreciate his comments, but I want to alleviate some of his apprehensions. And I can best do it verse form. I don’t know if I can remember it.

Bob Atwood says that Av and I once on a moonlight night gazed at that fat and full some moon and lamented its late plight. But Av says I, says Uncle Bob that moon sure once was pretty before they went and walked on it profanely what a pity. Well it is true that Av cried trespassage on some wild and scenic lands, Bob just hasn’t got the message and can’t seem to understand that I’d like for him to travel there. I’ve no intent to lock it up. In fact if it were possible I’d help him (inaudible) it up.

Anyhow that’s the way I dealt with Atwood. Every time I had a chance to do it and these guys were – Wally was a wonderful, wonderful opponent because he took himself so seriously. And of course viewed me as an irreverent clown of course and which I’m sure a lot of folk did. But most of us take us too seriously and pose tempting targets because there is nothing I prefer to do then prick pomposity’s including my own and they are in abundant array as you know out there on the political horizon.

Anyhow you want to get back.

Terence: We were also talking about the –

Hammond: Economy.

Terence: Economy, yeah and especially maybe in the idea of thing that ties into this of the resident versus the nonresident battle in Alaska, which as you know is the long historical – so you must have had some experience with that in the 50’s or in the whole idea of coming out, so what about that? What would you say?

Hammond: Well I had long been concerned with the impact of nonresident transients particularly in the fishery in Bristol Bay. And I believe 1962 or 3 a very good friend of mine since deceased, Bristol Bay fisherman, Native fellow by the name of Martin Seaverson. Was very good at figures and analyzing things and he showed me a study he had done that evidenced that 97% of the pay day made within the Bristol Bay area or confines of the Bristol Bay Borough as it turned out to be went elsewhere; 65% of it went outside the State. The rest of it elsewhere in the State only 3% stayed at home. And what did we have to show for these facts are that literally billions of dollars of resource while we’re a rural slum. We didn’t have any secondary education. We had no sewer and water system. We had no health care facility, no fire fighting capability. Our garbage disposal plant was throwing it over the bank into the river.

So that is what got me to start thinking about how can we remedy this situation and address some of our social needs by using some of this vast resource wealth which was hemorrhaging out – not only outside of the borough but outside of the State. Previously I and the legislature had tried to throw all sorts of curve balls at the nonresident fisherman, increasing the cost of gear licenses. And one of the most interesting ones was, if I can remember it, was called the PNA Bill after Pacific Northern Airlines. What it was I proposed a piece of legislation that would require people be come to Alaska in person to acquire their gear license by I don’t remember March 1 or something like that. And however you could buy it at any time during the year you could qualify. I don’t know if I can explain this carefully. To qualify for the gear license, your fishing license, but you had to get one of them by being physically present. Well nobody would come up normally until the fishing season, they’re on the grounds and then they would find out, oh, no, you don’t qualify because you had to be up here physically present back in March. So it compelled for them all to come up twice at least (inaudible).

I was talking to Clint Tillion just about this the other day. He didn’t know about it. And I’ve never announced it very widely, but I was on a committee then with some other locals, Kathryn Kastrosky. I don’t remember if you remember Hank Kastrosky. She was the president, not president, of the school board, very active. And Harry Shawback, another localite there, and five other people, five or seven people. They were studying whether we should become a borough. Now I was in the legislature at that time. I wrote a minority report that said well you know if we became a borough of course somebody might be inclined to impose a fish tax that would capture revenue from folks who live outside the borough but within Bristol Bay, which I represented. Therefore, I couldn’t support that, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow Harry Shawback, a very frank guy, told me later he said I was going to vote against the borough until I read your minority report, I’m all for it. They voted six to one for it. I’m the only guy opposed to it. Just exactly what I wanted them to do.

Then it was in ’65 that I ran against Joe McGill, lost to Joe McGill. I didn’t campaign at all or really wasn’t that unhappy about it. I had been in the legislature for six years, but it gave me a chance then I went in and we became a borough. And I took over the management of the borough and I saw a chance to impose this tax. So I proposed exactly the same thing as I said in Alaska, Inc., but I called it Bristol, Inc. To sell it I said we could form an investment corporation or investment account, give everybody a share of stock that would earn dividends for each year. We would raise enough money to give you back more than what the fisherman pay in their fish tax and do some of these other things – build – we didn’t have a high school then. Didn’t have any of these other services, social services. And all they could see is Hammond is proposing a tax. It is like the income tax. They are blind. We can create a tax and make people money. They turn it down and they did.

Let me tell you a little more directly what happened. When I was borough manager and mayor – no, I was manager first and then I became mayor when I was out of the legislature. Salary – my salary was $6,000 a year. My total budget was $35,000. I had a secretary for $12,000. We hired temporary for tax collection. $35,000 a year total budget. I had one full-time employee. Four years later I believe it was, I’m sure of the four, whether it was four or five or three, the borough budget was $4M. They had 21 people on the payroll. Borough manager salary went from $6,000 to $82 I think. They spent it all on government. And because Tom Fink came in, didn’t put a cap – didn’t put a lid on how much residential property tax exemption you could render totally blew out of the tub my tradeoff, the offer you can’t refuse. Made a liar out of me – we’re getting taxed both ways now.

Man, so then – so I failed. That was my first failure in doing it the way I wanted to. When the Native lands claim settlement came up, I proposed, wrote an article for the Tundra Times in the wake of my constituents coming to me and saying, hey, you know, what do you think we ought to do with that billion dollars and all this land we’re going to get? I said don’t ask me a gusset tell you folk what to do. No, you’re our representative. What do you think? Well you ought to consider instead of creating a multitude of many bureaucracies with the intended legal and administrative costs, why don’t you consider creating a – I didn’t call it a Permanent Fund, that word hadn’t been bandied about yet. An investment account, spin it off here as a stock equally to everyone and the corporate board would be comprised of people from throughout the State. And you ought to consider that.

Well Willie Hensley and John Shrively responded favorably to that as I recall, but about the only ones. Again, most of the (inaudible) nobody paid attention. Meanwhile of course the legal beagles and some others who feared I believe the enormous political clout and fine inter clout that they would have had under such an arrangement. Back then a billion dollars was a lot of money. (Inaudible) told the people in Bristol Bay, oh you don’t want people from Barrow and Ketchikan and Juneau telling you how to – you take your pot down there and do with it. You up there and of course the enormous intended legal and administrative costs of so splitting the pie, the end product, for some people of course made out like gangbusters and other little guy you were trying to help sitting there at the end of the tube waiting for it.

I submit that had they gone the route of the Permanent Fund dividend many would be far happier than what the end – still would have had the – now one of the benefits of the way they did go was the involvement of a number of powerful and experienced and knowledgeable Native leaders. But again did it benefit the overall people in a manner, which it could have?

Created another condition. Example: What happens when they start losing their money from the corporate and village entities? They are going to have to exploit or utilize or sell their resources and their lifeblood in many instances is their land. People in Nondalton for example were approached by somebody who said hey you ought to sell a big parcel of this land up there at Lake Clark (inaudible) make a great deal of money. A lot of people came and they said we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to do that. They wouldn’t have had to do it under the scenario I mentioned earlier, because they would have enough wherewithal to avoid having to sell their life blood, their lands and resources. A lot of people said can we go back to it. I don’t know how you go back to it. But I am so concerned about the State making the same mistake, which we have done in a large measure and if we revert back, we’ll end up in the same sort of scenario. According to the World Bank, every other state and nation, except Alaska, has made mistakes in handling their oil wealth. We have done the best job because of the dividend program largely.

And as Vernon Smith, economist, says it should be an example for the world to emulate and Alaskans ought to be extremely proud of it because it is a whole new concept of people owning the resources and government having to take the money back from the people instead of government getting the money and parceling it out in socialistic programs. It is exactly the opposite of what some people term the dividend be socialistic, it’s capitalistic in (inaudible). And of all people who want to be supporting it are the so-called conservative Republicans. Ironically, who do I find most supportive are the Democrats. These so-called tax and spend. It’s all screwed up in people’s minds.

Terence: Well, you know Jay I think that even though it is loss of resident and nonresident issue has lost some of its potency apparently in modern years, a little bit, and even though there is that lingering feeling, but do you think because I see in one thing your whole approach obviously with Bristol Bay and then obviously with the Permanent Fund as it was pre-(inaudible), was that resident, nonresident battle that so had this trouble with throughout your term, didn’t you, as governor, I mean both terms really, I mean the residency hire laws and all that stuff?

Hammond: Yeah, okay, well let also expand on that.

Terence: Sure.

Hammond: I think I know what you’re getting at. The situation with resident and nonresident right now is allegedly that roughly 25% of the payday made in Alaska is made by nonresident, fisherman – transient pipeline – construction works, and so forth. And they are of course paying anything for the price of admission. And to me that was one of the reasons for retention of an income tax if structured properly. An income tax could capture that. For example, what would you think of an income tax that took not one red cent from Alaskans’ earned incomes, only from those nonresident transients? We could do that. The capped income tax could do that. It wouldn’t take a nickel of their earned income. It would only draw down on depending on the side of the dividend of course the more you get in dividends the greater under capped tax would be the amounts of money gleaned from that capped tax.

Now why I included the capped tax might have some liability is when in 1999 when the question of whether or not the legislature should be allowed to use some of the Permanent Fund earnings went down by a smashing 84% or 83%. A number – I was at a Rotary Club meeting and some fellow stood up and he said I don’t mind losing my dividend but I’ll be darn if I want to pay an income tax in order that the great in Wash can get theirs. He didn’t put it quite that crudely, but that’s what he meant. And I said well how many agree with him? And almost every hand went up. And I said what we capped your income tax so you didn’t pay any more than your dividend. You’re willing to lose your dividend, but why take everybody else’s along with it who can’t afford to lose it. Well, he said I could live with that. How many agree? Virtually every hand went up.

Now here’s what would happen if you had the capped income tax you do several things regarding, see if I can remember them. A lot of this stuff I have to have my notes in front of me. But –

– Break –

Terence: Well, I’ll say it on the tape. Cause I think I never really knew about all that stuff in Bristol Bay about what you had tried to do down there you know. This is very informative to me. I didn’t know about that.

Hammond: You didn’t?

Terence: No, no. Well, if I did, I forgot.

Hammond: You haven’t read my book?

Terence: Well that’s right, I guess I don’t remember now.

Hammond: It is in that book.

Terence: The first one, right?

Man: Actually I want to move – that’s fine.

Hammond: Maybe it didn’t elaborate –

Terence: Well it has been –

Hammond: Yeah, extends beyond four-year tenure of a governor. You want to talk about local hire and the impact of how we address it or couldn’t address it. That’s another duty of this capped income tax. Think of what it would do in conjunction with an endowment program spun off an everly increasing dividends. That is one of the concerns of many people. Everything grows to thousands and thousands of dollars. No problem. We might have what on paper appeared to be the highest income tax in the nation, but no Alaskans would be paying a nickel of their earned income, but think of what the outsider. He could not compete with the Alaskan labor market who could work at a much lower rate than the outsider. Wait I’m not going to Alaska my gosh they are going to take 50% of my pay. He pays in spades. I think that would have an enormous impact on local hire. I don’t know, but that’s another spin off. But again you would – you have to let that dividend go upward and upward and upward, but a very substantial tax to bring it back.

If you had it, you could cure the whole fiscal gap right now. They tell me that something like Mike Hawker says it is something like $250M would be raised with the capped income tax, assuming the rates that they discuss which is 3% of what you pay or owe the feds, I don’t remember what it was. Okay, you need a billion, instead of 3% you put 12% tax on. Again, the Alaskan pays a nickel, what in the world could be easier for legislators to pass and painless. And yet what it does to the nonresident transient fisherman to both curb. Now if you’re going to do that, of course, have an enormous dividend, what do you do about the attraction that brings folks up here? That’s where the dividend A, dividend B got. So it is kind of a three-part package that all is contingent one piece on the other.

Terence: It seems Jay the key thing is they all have to be there.

Hammond: They all have to be –

Terence: Because if one is missing then it doesn’t –

Hammond: That’s right, they all have to merge. And the only way we can hope to have that happen is to have this group that is dealing with the PMOV or POMV is to understand as the governor does. He told me, as did Jim Clark, more than once, nothing is going to pass unless it has your support, Tillion, and Halford. And while I don’t know whether we can pass anything, I think he is absolutely correct. We could probably kill anything that we come up with and I already lament to say that if they come up with something that I fear and Tillion and Halford fear does not serve the best interests of the people, we will have no recourse but to kill it. So if they want anything, if they take an endowment that right now I wrote some language for one in an article and Tillion and Halford signed off on that would give them roughly $200M unless the people decided to the contrary.

I won’t bore you with the details of it, but if they want that they could get it, but it is going to have to of course have something else along with it and that is where the capped income tax comes into play. So I don’t know it is going to be a tough to do, but I know there is no question in my mind that if the public understood it, 90% would support even those who are fearful of an income tax because a capped tax how can you argue that it is taking stifling productivity and taking away my sweat of the brow income. If it doesn’t and it would not, but how do you get that across in the brief period of time we have.

Fortunately, the Democrats understand this clearly that I have spoken to and they will kill any – they have to have the Democrats get short a bill through and I’m convinced they will kill it. I don’t have to say a word or (inaudible) or Halford, they’ll kill it. So if they want something they almost have to go the route we’re recommending or they ain’t going to get nothing.

Terence: Well I think like I say this resident, nonresident thing is one of the great divides in Alaskan history throughout time you know. And so one thing I was thinking well when you were a young guy and you know there is the whole story of the fishing interests taking all the resources outside and you worked really hard about that against that as governor too. The whole idea we didn’t want Alaska just to be the oil barrel for the nation or something I think that maybe one time you said. So how about that – that idea of protecting Alaska’s interests against the corporate interests outside or the – I don’t know if any of that –

Hammond: Let’s relate it to oil, which is a bigger item on the horizon. I was asked one time how much do you think we should tax oil? For every penny that we can possible get. What do you mean? I said well just like the CEO of an oil company his obligation is to the best, get the best possible deal for his shareholders. I think the obligation of the CEO of the State of Alaska is to do the same for the citizens of the state. Are we doing that? I doubt it. I doubt it. I don’t think a reflection of the windfall profits that the oil companies have made are being reflected in the take that Alaska has made.

Now people will say but if we twink them upward insofar as taxes it will stifle development. There is a point beyond which that might occur. Right now we’re looking at a situation where ELF – you’re familiar with ELF – Economic Limit Factor. A little devil that emerged during my administration and which at the time I said I will support it only if it is demonstrated to me it will not reduce one nickel of our share of the wealth, the agreed upon wealth that the people of the state will receive.

And at the time it didn’t, but later on in the 80’s things changed to where now there are several fields that are not (inaudible) of yielding anything in severance tax. With oil prices at $35 a barrel that windfall should be reflecting the bid or bowing a little toward the State of Alaska and its citizens. The oil companies say well we have to have those windfalls of course to offset the poor years, the bad years when we’re losing money. And yet then why do we have this cents per barrel pipeline tariff. It should be a percentage pipeline tariff. When prices are high, they get more and vice a versa.

Why we do those things is beyond me. Same with the liquor tax. Cents per jug. As a consequence over the years I found when I was in office the price actually the tax on liquor went down, went down because of inflation. It was the same as it had been in ’65. I proposed a modest increase in liquor taxes, 50 cents a jug or something like that. Screams of anguish from the industry. Terrible. Because that 50 cents will actually translate into two bucks because of various arcane things I could never understand. And so I said, well, if that’s the case why don’t we reduce it 50 cents. You’ll save two dollars and give us one and you keep the other. Well it didn’t work that way when it went back down hill. But we are not extracting from our resources Alaskans fair share and personally one of the first things I would try to do is readjust ELF in a fair manner but in a manner that reflects windfall profits somehow spin off to a degree on the state. And they’re not doing it.

Right now Halford tells me that we’re losing something like five to six hundred million a year because we failed to readjust ELF. And at $35 a barrel I don’t think many of these – they tell me they can make money at $10 a barrel. Now I’m told that. I don’t know enough about it and I wouldn’t say automatically that we should do that, but unless I were convinced that it would devastate activities up here and incline them to pack their bags and pull their drill bits I would certainly pursue that first. But that’s not going to happen. So the only thing you’ve got to look for in addressing this fiscal gap thing in the near term is this endowment properly built.

– Break –

Hammond: Two or three structures that I had –

Man: We’re rolling again.

Terence: We were talking about – dam I forget?

Hammond: Local hire and nonresident –

Terence: No. Oh, no, no.

Hammond: Gas pipeline.

Terence: I just wanted to mention and maybe if you have comment on this. This is sort of a general thing that we’ll talk about maybe local hire. You know in territorial day’s look at the numbers and the fishing business paid about 3% of the gross value of the salmon pack in territorial taxes, that was it. Mining paid between 1 and 2%. So the state take, it sort of shows the power of the state, doesn’t it? That even if we were only getting 20 instead of 30, it is nothing like territorial days. That’s really sort of the power, I mean, cause you were very powerful in a way, right? I mean you had a lot of compared to what the territorial leader would.

Hammond: Well, that’s right. We were frankly being ripped off in the early days unmercifully by the fact that we received so little in our resource wealth. So much of it departed the state. Certainly improved upon that. Legislature, particularly in the wake of the 900 million and Prudhoe Bay realized that they could glean a great deal more from our resource wealth oil than had been the case in years past and as a consequence there were several changes in the taxation levels that occurred ever upward and yet I think the major reason for that was that they realized that hey, this is ridiculous.

What we have been doing is this. We put a very low severance tax or whatever taxes impacted resource development; we put it way down low to encourage development. We want to bring them up here. We had coal. We had a five, a nickel a ton or something like that by contrast to Montana’s 30%. And gold virtually nothing, almost nothing on fish until the fish tax went in, which was doubled incidentally through municipalities, through a bill I introduced years ago and there became an awareness that we were not getting our “fair share”. So what had happened because initially the idea was to attract more development, keeping those taxes way down in the basement.

We had a situation, which was exactly the opposite of what we should have done. With oil we had something like a 1% severance tax initially and the idea being we’ll get them up here and then we can crank it upward. Well once they’re entrenched of course they develop a powerful political lobby which resists any increments.

But fortunately legislature overcame that resistance and jacked it up to where we are today. Did they go far enough? No, not in my view. In my view what we should have done initially instead of a 1% severance tax, had a 99% severance tax, no interest; 98, no interest, 97, 96, 95. You get down to a point suddenly you get vibrations or some interest, probably would have been substantially above the 33 1/3% we’re getting now. Some people in some oil states they get 90%. This is the case made by Ray Metcalf and some others, Jim Sykes that document. I can’t refute them. I don’t know whether they’re right or not, but it ought to be looked at.

So we started out wrong. Then we changed the rules of the game repeatedly. And a lot of folk, I’ve been asked, do you think we’re taxing oil unfairly? Yes, indeed. We certainly are. We tax (inaudible) in a manner we don’t tax other resource development. But are we taxing them excessively. I don’t think so.

But so you develop, let’s say a coal facility that creates 10,000 jobs and exports to the orient and does all these wonderful things, tons and tons of coal a year, attracting probably 20,000 people to come here and compete for their jobs and with their families included, all paying nothing in the way of an income tax. All drawing down Permanent Fund dividends and services from the state.

That’s the sort of uneconomic development we have fostered by elimination of the income tax. The only way you can correct that is re-impose it. That’s the major reason for an income tax is the re-imposition of the awareness that these things cost money and that we have to pay for them from some mechanisms.

Now why have we not had that awareness cause we have been able to dip into this finite oil well, which is the same in magnitude when you got 400,000 or 4 million people up here. And until that CVR exhausts people will be happily satisfied with doing that. Therefore, you have to set a level and the governor has adopted this. Thank heaven. It should have been done five years but he has adopted a provision that $1M we’re not going to let it go beneath that. However, he hasn’t pronounced what we’re going to do if it hits that level. I say what we’re going to do is trigger whatever a suspended capped income tax would generate or what other mechanisms, perhaps budget cuts, would occur. What better constraint on spending than hanging over the heads of the legislative the threat. That is what the income tax would have done had we kept it in place. We wouldn’t have had to – we could have kept it suspended until we started going into the hole or spending like wild sailors.

Terence: You know Jay I always thought and I wrote this in this paper that I’m going to send you. You always said your middle name – you know what your middle name should be? I know it is S, what does the S stand for anyway?

Hammond: Sterner.

Terence: Sterner, okay.

Hammond: My grandmother.

Terence: I always wondered if you were like Harry S Truman, you know the S didn’t stand for anything. Actually I wrote a column in 1978 when you guys were all running for governor. This is just a slight aside. When you were running for governor and remember what Wally said, there is no shortage of whales, there is a shortage of leadership. I thought that was funny.

Hammond: What was that?

Terence: Wally said there was no shortage of whales. There was a big whale problem.

Hammond: Oh, yeah.

Terence: And he said it’s not a shortage of whales, it’s a shortage of leadership. I thought that struck as really amusing. You know, quite get it, but anyway this is what I was going to ask you. Your middle I thought and correct me if I’m wrong gentleman has he said his middle name yet? One time only. This is Jay, one time only, Hammond, right? I remember one time only oil revenue.

Hammond: Oh, yes, one time only oil bill.

Terence: And the thing is that was the issue. You said at the time we don’t want to use one time only oil dollars to pay for recurring costs of government, right? Wasn’t that – that was your –

Hammond: Absolutely.

Terence: That was your plan, right? And the income tax –

Hammond: Well, I –

Terence: Recycles the money in a way.

Hammond: (Inaudible) I say translate oil wells, pumping oil for finite periods into money wells pumping it for infinity. And that suggests we put all the oil wells. Instead we put only 12 ½% and so 87 ½% is out there providing all these –

Hammond: Had no problem with that at all. The freebies that were receiving – if I were an outsider I’d be far more interested in coming up here and receiving all these freebies than I would be to the dividend check yet somehow all they wanted to attack dividends. It’s ridiculous.

Terence: Because the dividend is quite – I mean the thousand dollars a person the state then spends far more than a thousand bucks a person.

Hammond: Six thousand.

Terence: Right, easily, easily, that’s right.

Hammond: Where’s the outrage on the voice of the times and some of these fiscal conservatives over that being that being the magnetic attraction? Gee – and if we have a pipeline, a gas pipeline without a – we’ll be digging a trench in which we’ll never get out of. If you think we have a fiscal gap now, you put another 20, 30,000 jobs up here and 50, 60,000 people all drawing down even further and again that pipeline isn’t going to generate any income for years and years to come but all these people will be receiving dividends and receiving all these resources and education for their kids. Without an income tax it will bankrupt us. But boy because people are so conditioned to thinking income tax is the worse possible thing that could ever happen. But again you cut the ground right out from under them when you put a cap on it.

Terence: Now Jay, do you think – you mentioned a point and I think people have often noted this. We do tax oil on a far heavier rate than fish, I mean the other taxes are virtually insignificant. Now Scott Goldsmith mentioned the other he said $5B – we produce $5B in zinc at Red Dog.

Hammond: What?

Terence: $5B in zinc at Red Dog, that has been the total.

Hammond: Is that right?

Terence: Yeah, and –

Hammond: What have we got – virtually nothing.

Terence: Right, I mean I don’t know what we.

Hammond: Well, okay, I’ll give you that since you mentioned it. When it came to severance taxes years ago I proposed something as simplistic as this. Why don’t we put a 12% severance tax on renewable resources and a 6% – no a 12% on nonrenewable resources like oil or whatever percentage and half of that on nonrenewable – or renewables.

Terence: Yeah. Why don’t we say that cause you’re saying 12% nonrenewable’s, 6 on renewals.

Hammond: Yeah.

Terence: We should get you to say that.

Hammond: And.

Terence: Well go ahead Jay, just say that cause so we get it.

Hammond: Get it clear in my mind. I’m a little confused.

Terence: It’s 12% on nonrenewable probably and 6%, the lower rate would be on renewable to encourage renewable I think.

Hammond: Yeah. Yeah. I proposed at one time that we put a certain level of severance tax on nonrenewables and it was double of that of renewables because renewables of course were perpetuated year after year after year, where as of course nonrenewables were exhaustible. And to me we should have set those at a high enough level to say – assure that the state is getting their fair share and you announce that publicly and then you stick with it and if you can do it, fine. If you can’t, leave it in the ground, on the stump, or in the water. Now you can always re-tune those in such manner but instead we cut them down to a point oh, we wouldn’t have this production of this ore body if we charged anything like a severance tax comparable to what we are charging for oil.

So I don’t know what for example the Red Dog is bringing in. I understand $5B it has generated so far. What has been the state’s share? I suspect peanuts. The state’s involvement though in providing an infrastructure, roads, and some of these things all cost money and also provision of services for those working there. Is this good healthy development? For those who live there or work there or the area in which they live they may be prospering, but maybe at the expense of the rest of the state.

One of the things a lot of folks don’t understand are there two economies in the state? You have the public service economy, which is of course government and you have the private sector economy. The private sector economy will do wonderfully well if we promote development, generates jobs, and attracts people into the area. (Sneeze) You can cut that.

The private sector economy will do wonderfully well if you generate development that creates jobs and brings people into the area because their property taxes go up and businesses do well. You sell more goods and services and furniture and insurance and hotel rooms. They’ll think you’re doing wonders for the state if you promote that sort of thing.

But the public service economy that has to provide for the services like education and police power and so forth is going down hill. It hasn’t generated enough revenue at the local level to feed into the public sector economy to offset those costs, but people are blind when it comes to that. And they’ll think maybe a timber production thing that subsidizes and industry provides roads and services that generates enormous benefits for that community, yet at a terrible cost to the state. But try to once they’re implanted in place to do anything about remedying the situation and you run into a firestorm of opposition.

Give you another example of firestorm of opposition being run into that we should remedy that gets back to the capped income tax I talked about and dividends and that is simply this. The legislature very imprudent – one of the things I wanted to do with the dividend is take a lot of people off of welfare. So a lot of people receiving dividends no longer qualify. So what did they do, they exempt dividends as income. Now that might be fine we’re exempting a thousand dollars or so in a family of four, maybe four, but what if we send out dividends as we may well be doing if we adopt the sort of scenario I’m talking about of five and six thousand dollars, are we still going to exempt that as income.

But when the legislature realizing what a stupid thing that was to do tried to make an adjustment, they were charged with being cruel to poor people. And of course once you’ve given people an expectation of that sort of thing it is cruel. What we should do however instead of exempting it, we should raise the poverty level. And say hey, if you want to exempt say a thousand dollar for cap and so far as that, fine, but not just across the board no matter what they earn.

So those are the sorts of things that have to be done to make this thing work and it is going to be a tough sell. It takes smarts to understand it. And I’m glad to see I think you have.

Terence: Well, Jay, one of the things I’m real interested is in this you know I didn’t know that about the – I wonder what the fish pay – see I don’t know what percentage the fish pays in taxes. Took all the fish business and what they take out – obviously it is tiny compared to oil.

Hammond: The fish tax now it pays of course the local governments 3%. It pays the state I’m not sure what. It may be – I think it is under 10, but I’m not sure.

Incidentally again this shows you how difficult it is to deal with public and to alert them to things that particularly me, being the world’s worse soap salesman. When we had the experience in Bristol Bay of generating this enormous wealth almost overnight, I went to the Municipal League and spoke to other mayors and borough managers from throughout the state, Kodiak, Peninsula, southeastern and so forth and I said hey guys you’re missing a pretty good deal here. I told them exactly what our experience had been, suggesting they might want to impose a fish use tax in their locale. Nobody did it for years, for years and finally all of them have done it. But that’s a glacial slow public awareness of the difficulty in selling things that are not – you got to think outside the box a little bit to do some of these things and that is tough for us to do. Because we have been so conditioned again we’re so blind sided with taxes who can want a tax. It is either cut government or you know get their money from some other source. And that’s fine if you can cut government to stay within the bounds that’s fine, but everybody agrees you can’t do that and bridge this budget gap.

So what are the alternatives? Many would like to rob your dividends to do it.

Terence: Now do you said one thing for me from looking at the historical you know before 1940’s and earlier, like I said the fish – the salmon packers paid on average about 3% of the gross value and then the miners paid 1-½, maybe 2, sometimes it was 1% or less. That was Kennecott Copper Mine. They paid –

Hammond: One and a half.

Terence: Yeah, of their gross value. So Rickey’s, when Rickey was Secretary of Interior – Hal Rickey’s and he came up here in 1939 and said this is the- this problem that he called the whole syndrome of Alaska was wrong in which they were using a renewable resource – fish, to subsidize the nonrenewable. And he had it totally backwards. So we’re sort of got this sort of funny situation now. It’s not exactly the same, but it is similarly screwed up. Like you were saying. So that is sort of a historic constant I think.

Hammond: Absolutely.

Terence: About the problems of tax policy.

Hammond: I think you’re right. When you said I think a 3% severance tax was imposed on fish, the raw fish tax. I think it was 3%. I think it may have been doubled to six. I put a bill in that – well I won’t elaborate on that, but when I suggested the 6% for nonrenewables and – I mean vice a versa that the reason being but would have Red Dog for example got into production otherwise. I don’t know.

But again you can twink it downward but you’ll have a terrible time twinking it upward once it is in place. And you’ve got people now working there and that’s the problem with again many of the southeastern logging situations suggest the probability it didn’t generate enough new wealth to offset the cost of service, but the communities involved thought it was great. And the idea that you have come back in and I remember the argument being made why not get in get their feet wet and then we can twink it up. I said you’ll never twink it up once they’re in place. Of course now you’ve got Alaskans working there and you know they’ll fight tooth and nail to protect their jobs and understandably so. Start out high and work your way down.

As I say I mentioned coal. At the time that I was talking about this Montana had 30% severance tax and we had a nickel a ton. I don’t know. Maybe if we were to impose a severance tax of proper magnitude it would stifle any sort of Korean export or all these things that have created jobs that are in place and they’ll scream in anguish and have all sorts of people protected. The problem is the people in the legislature cannot put the statewide interest paramount. They have to cater to their selective provincial constituents in order to get reelected.

And so don’t expect much in the way of change. That is why I so lamented when ELF was not immediately changed before the oil companies were conditioned to believe that this was their right to get a much bigger percentage and we get less. Cause now they’ve got so many people in the legislature are rather dependent upon the support of oil company and industry and there is nothing wrong with that as long as they’re able to vote the statewide interest and overcome their consideration, but the major consideration nowadays is reelection. And when you spend thousands and thousands and perhaps millions to win a public office, you’re going to cater a little more so than when it was like when I first went in you’re better off if you were not in the legislature.

– Break –

Terence: Oliver North before he was testifying for one of those Iran Contra Committees he said they did a Major David dump. I don’t know what that means exactly.

Hammond: A major what?

Terence: David dump, you know, sounds like using the outhouse but I don’t know. It’s like we giving an election or speech. Jay, do you go much in the economic, I mean the Chamber of Commerce, do you ever do that kind of stuff, I guess you probably don’t much around?

Hammond: Kodiak recently. I’ve been to a lot of speaking engagements, not the Chamber. The Chamber avoids me. They’re the ones that ought to be hearing some of this stuff perhaps more than anybody else.

Terence: You know I think, yeah, they ought to.

Hammond: If you can set it up the Fairbanks Chamber, I’ll go.

Terence: All right, all right I’ll do that.

Hammond: They’ll have to pay my way. It cost me 500 bucks every time I come to town.

Terence: I’ll do that, actually I will call them.

Hammond: If you want to I’d be glad to.

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

Hammond: Because whatever we do is going to require widespread education and so I’m accepting a lot more than I would normally do because I think this is an absolutely crucial point in the state’s history that can send us one way or the other. And I want to go down fighting at least.

Terence: Okay. All right. I will do that.

Hammond: If you want to do that.

Terence: Yeah cause you’d be back after the end of February?

Hammond: I’ll be back at the end of February.

Terence: Okay.

Hammond: About the 28th of February I’ll be back but maybe some time in March.

Terence: Okay, all right, all right. Because maybe if you come up if we think- cause we’re going to think of other stuff. We might even want to nab you and talk to a little bit in Fairbanks.

Hammond: Sure, sure.

Terence: So we might do that. What the hell did I – I want to ask you about 1974 and that campaign cause it is very improbable in a way isn’t it I mean you know Hickel.

Hammond: It was.

Terence: Running against Hickel and Egan, right? I mean the two.

Hammond: I was running against Hickel, Egan, and then Miller, all three of the governors and I had no business winning. I had no fear of winning. I frankly had no aspirations to win to be quite frank. I had a good life on the outside of politics and I recognized that whoever was governor in the coming years was going to be confronted with several major very divisive issues, but I was happy to have the opportunity to sound off on what I thought were key and important issues and since I didn’t really care whether I won I could say anything I wanted to and I very much liked that. And oddly enough as old Jake Kurtula, who was a constant politician who understands these things much better than I, he assumed somehow that I’m the most brilliant political mind he’d ever encounters said Hammond you do things that should be politically suicidal and they seem to turn around and accrue to your benefit. He was convinced that I carefully orchestrated and calculated what (inaudible). If he had any idea of what dumb luck went into everything I did. Nothing I planned to do in politics worked out. I really, as you are perhaps are one of the few who understand, I really didn’t want to win. And I have to confess election night was one of the most miserable nights of my life. It felt like prison doors were clanging shut behind me. And I had – I felt like a monstrous fraud because here my campaign people who were working so hard on my behalf, I’d surge ahead a little bit and I’d have to show elation when I ah no. Then I’d fall behind and I’d feel better about it, not a chance of winning and they’d be of course down in the dumps and I was just the opposite.

And I remember feeling – my first year or two in office I was a lousy governor. Lot of folk would say a lot more than that, but I felt sorry for myself and I was miserable in that job. To have to wear a necktie and go to the office every day and I had a very freewheeling lifestyle prior to that. And I knew what we were going to be confronted with, terrible controversy and certainly were. But the main thing was it was debilitating to – if you have the fire in the belly, the desire for the prominence and prestige and power and so forth, that’s one thing, but I didn’t have any of these things going for me, nothing that meant much to me. As a consequence taking all that guff and grief that went with it were pretty hard to do. But mainly because I felt sorry for myself – despicable. I had little respect, self-respect in life until I read an article – I felt like a monstrous fraud, perpetrated on the people of the state. And I remember reading something from one of the old philosophers, Aristotle or somebody, that said only he deserves to lead who just as soon would not. I thought well maybe it’s not a cardinal sin not to have that fire in the belly and not to aspire to the prominence, prestige, and power that go along with the trappings of office. And things started to get better. Then I – things started shaping up and shaking down and I got some awfully good people that I could turn most of the chores over with and was at least wise enough to go by their counsel and select people who could all do their thing better I could have ever done it. Probably my thing as well, but you know.

Terence: Who – let’s go – some of the – who would you pick out you know.

Hammond: John Katz would be one of the first. I said about John Katz if I would have had my druthers I would run him through a duplicating machine and put him into about six slots in government, including my own. But he is not alone.

I had some wonderful people working for me and they became like family. One of the reasons – I had not intended to run for more than one term. I almost announced I was only going to run for one term and even my wife said, nah, don’t do that because you never know. You may change your mind. And had I gone out in ’78 I would have gone out with a whimper. The permanent fund was shaped up right and the dividend program and a lot – the public perception was as I say 40 percent, 43 percent approval rating versus the two – four years later.

So I’m glad I stuck around for the second four years. And it became kind of fun, twisting the legislative tail and you can move and shake you know. They talk about lame duck being emasculated, you can move and shake in that second term so much better and without the distortions of what you’re up to that are now incumbent upon those who want to run against you, the newspapers may against you, why bother? They can afford to look at what you’re really up to and why, they don’t have to put their own spin on it to make you look bad you’re not going to be there anyhow. That’s where the big difference is and I started to enjoy the second term and maybe when you start enjoying it, it is the proper time to get out.

People ask me would you consider running again and I said only if I had total dictatorial powers. I don’t know if you ever saw the list of requirements that would be necessary for me to consider running again. An AP reporter asked me one time – would you ever consider running again? And I said, well, I suppose under certain conditions and he said what are those? And I said you got a pencil I said. Well, first I’d – Wally Hickel would have to agree to be my Lieutenant Governor. Bob Atfield or Bob Atwood would have to agree to be my Press Secretary. Jesse Carr would have to agree to be my Commissioner of Labor. Tom Fink would have to agree to donate a million dollars to my campaign. The polls would have to show I had 99.44 public support. Number five, the legislature would have to grant me total dictatorial powers on the passage of my programs. Let them counsel me, but for heavens sake not muck around with them. And number seven my wife would have to agree not to leave me. He writes all this stuff down. Lo and behold a few days later it’s in the paper. Hammond to consider running again. I got literally – I got checks in the mail and letters from people, man go I’m with you. And actually I did, I got two checks from people. They hadn’t read all this ridiculous stuff underneath. But I said thank heavens Tom Fink never came up with a million dollars so I’m not committed. I’m like some of these other things people say – you said.

Anyhow I got in – I had no business winning. I could run under today’s circumstances. People ask me what you spent on your campaign. What I contributed my own campaign. Nothing. I contributed a thousand dollars for one campaign and recouped it when I got – from return – I’m a little embarrassed and ashamed some of these people say well you do what your campaign was worth. You weren’t willing to contribute but still – you have probably heard this story about I went to a fundraiser or allegedly a fundraiser. I was sent to one and I was supposed to ask people for money. I said ah, the last thing in the world I could do is ask people for money. I’d rather wrestle naked on the courthouse lawn at high noon than ask anybody for money. And some guy in the audience says Hammond I wouldn’t give you a nickel to your campaign but I’ll pay fifty bucks for a ringside seat at the courthouse. Well I never found any worthy or willing opponent so fortunately I never had to fulfill that commitment.

But I’ve you know I’ve – when I ran the first time, I said I’m not spending a nickel of my own money, this is ridiculous not a chance of winning. And as you may or may not know I was conned into running because of a call from Ron Sommerville. Are you familiar with this story? Oh, you’re not.

Ron Sommerville was a biologist, Fish and Game Department. I didn’t know Ron very well, but I was weathered in down in Naknek with one of my clients fisherman. And I got this phone call and picked it up and Ron Sommerville. He said a few of us sitting around think you ought to run for governor. By the time I stopped laughing I said to him Ron, I’m not at all interested in bleeding myself white financially for the privilege of saying I ran unsuccessfully for governor. Forget it. And he said and he got to talking further and he said well would you consider if we put together a campaign organization and came up with some funding? I said well that’s the only way I’d ever consider it. He hung up.

I had a fisherman from California, very wealthy guy there. He said hey if you run you got a thousand-dollar check in the mail right now. I said forget it. That’s a check you’ll never have to write. Two weeks later Ron called me up and he said okay, we got an organization put together. We got some funds committed and you said – wait a minute. In his mind again consideration translated into commitment. And I argued against I said I never said I’d run if you’d do that. He said well will you come in and at least talk to us in town here.

So the next time I flew into town I met with my campaign organization, all six of them. I don’t even remember who they were. I think Ab Gross, Ron, maybe Terry Gardiner, Clint Tillion, about six people. And I could tell that all of them had been told by Ron that I would run if they’d do these things. And again being a sucker and not having guts enough to say, hey, I never promised and turning my back on it, I knew they’d all leave there thinking I had broken a commitment. So when I found what we had in the bank committed in the way of funds at that moment $800 I agreed to run. Thinking well I’ll run for a week and I’d go back to the hills where I belong.

And now they had said they would commit more money if I’d agree, but at that time I think it was $800 that was all that was in the kitty. And so I don’t remember what I did. I remember one thing I didn’t mind doing campaigning was going around beating on doors. Give me some exercise and I’ve always been kind of a physical fitness buff and that I didn’t mind doing.

But I had the briefest campaign pitch you can imagine. I’d go to the door, had a little flyer. I’d say hello I’m Jay Hammond I’m running for governor and I wonder if I could leave you this. That’s it. Usually they’d nod and say yes and I left on a positive note.

But where I thought – and I had no idea of winning this thing. This is ridiculous and the response of people when I’d go around the community. Who is this bearded yahoo that has the audacity to run against Wally Hickel and Bill Egan and then Terry Miller and so forth.

Terence: Was it Keith?

Hammond: Not Terry Miller, I mean Keith Miller.

Terence: Keith, yeah.

Hammond: But they were indulgent. Then it started to change. When Hickel and Atwood and Carr came up bombing me. I had more people tell me I don’t know anything about you but anybody that has got all those guys against him can’t be all bad. So I subsequently thanked them later when I became more comfortable with this for playing the key role in my election. But it was – you could sense the change. You could just feel it shifting. And I walked into a store one day and a guy looked up and he said, hey, you got my vote. I saw you on television. Let me tell you any guy that has got guts enough to wear a beard and run for governor has got to be different. Unlike these other guys who are clean shaven and try to convey the impression of honesty and integrity and we know they’re crooks.

Anyhow I sensed the change and I knew I was going to win the primary. A lot of people talk about Hickel, me beating Hickel by a very small margin, but they forget that in the primary I beat Hickel by a wholloping margin that time.

Then, but I still wasn’t fearful of winning, even though the polls initially, what happened is when I came out of the primary with a potential winner the pools showed that very close Bill Egan who I thought, shoot, I’ve no chance of bearing Bill Egan. But then – and then they came out with he and Red Bolcher came out with a charge that I was zero growth. Hammond will throw you all out of work and make the state into one huge national park, build a fence around it, throw away the key and zero growth clung out at me like a leech and phew – I plummeted in the polls.

Of course I didn’t help the cause any. I went before the Chamber of Commerce one time. You may probably heard this story, maybe it’s in my book, which I said – actually when I elected Senate President I had said I know there’s some apprehension on the part of the business community of Hammond and now assuming the position of obvious degree of power in a conservation orientation the rumor is that Hammond if he had his druthers would put the whole state into a huge national park, build a fence around it and throw away the key. Absolutely ridiculous. You people in Anchorage have nothing whatsoever to worry about. In the first place your community is degenerated beneath acceptable eligibility requirements. Wow, you could imagine what they thought when I was selected governor.

Anyhow, so you know I did a lot that caused that attitude to prevail. But then I won just barely. You know they had three recounts. The first recount had Egan very substantially ahead or was it vice a versa. No, I think I was ahead. And then they had recount to cut my lead in half. Then they had another recount and cut it in half again and then they had the third recount where I won by only 227 votes. That was it. Yeah.

And there I am and I’ll tell you I heard those prison doors clang. I was miserable the first two years. I hated it. I hated it. And worked like a dog. Kind of like Jimmy Carter. I tried to keep on top of everything and I burned the midnight oil, never took any time off. Worked weekends and Sundays and I hated it. And of course those first four years were tough.

You talk about fiscal gap. A lot of people don’t understand that. The governor made reference to it in his state of the state speech. He didn’t attribute to which governor he was referring but if you recall he said something to the effect that he had implied he had hired an agency to look at every state agency and counsel them on how to save money and how to cut costs and how to provide efficiencies. Says it hasn’t happened in 27 years, first time in 27 years. We did it. I hired an outfit to do that and we cut millions and millions out of the state budget. And millions back then were a lot of money. But and my first four years we – I got Chuck Hawley to agree to a severance tax on minerals. He was at that time – you know who Chuck Hawley is of course. And they agreed that they were going to have to pay a little bit more and fisheries I wanted – I doubled the fish tax on fisheries and proposed some other revenue generating devices and massive budget cuts. And then of course when oil came in that all went out the window. But oil didn’t come in – wasn’t even on the horizon until you know 1970 gave us the big 900 million but that was dissipated and many people think blown – it went in revenue sharing. So the people were benefited to the extent they didn’t pay high local government taxes but they didn’t see anything. And we didn’t get the big windfall until after that.

Terence: Do you think and also you had D2.

Hammond: D-2.

Terence: D-2 issue. You had the capitol move, well maybe the capitol move – okay.

Hammond: Capitol move, D-2.

– Break –

Terence: We were talking about –

Man: Chuck Hawley and taxes.

Hammond: Powers in the constitution.

Terence: Oh, yeah powers of the constitution and particularly because of the fact that Egan was a mean after all hell he was president of the convention so you know I don’t know if that played into this, but how do you figure out how the constitution is served Alaska and for your roles as former chief executive.

Hammond: When it comes to the constitution like statehood I voted against the constitution for various reasons, one of them being it didn’t clearly establish the sort of Fish and Game and educational hierarchy that I thought appropriate, although they go – they did make a provision for it but it wasn’t stipulated. That was one of the reasons.

There were some others, but by and large I think the constitution was an excellent document. I find a little bemusing however when I was in the legislature I used to lament all the enormous powers accorded the governor. When I became governor I wondered where they had all gone. Somehow it didn’t seem to be quite as adequate as I thought it might be and I would have preferred a benign dictatorship. Of course we all think we – for example, I am convinced that if you could do some of the things that we have been talking about by executive fiat without the impediment of running it through the legislative process the state would be ever so much better off. And when you start thinking like that you better get out of public office.

But nevertheless the document does provide very significant powers and it does one other thing that’s unique. Wally Hickel calls it the ownership state. I call it the ownership people. Not a great deal of distinction, except the manner in which we’d implement that. The constitution says in blessed it for – it says you shall manage your resources for the maximum benefit of its people. That means all its people. And my contention is there is only one program that meets that mandate with absolute equity and that’s the dividend program. All the other state programs inequitably do not manage in the maximum benefit of all the people. They may maximum benefit for this group or that group or some other. The only one that gives us a hat to hang on to create a dividend program and a permanent fund is that provision in the constitution. Article VIII, Section 8A.

Terence: Jay, would you see – cause it seems to me anyway that the constitution has implicit in the natural resources article the idea of keeping for the residents, doesn’t it? I mean it’s the idea that we’re not going to be exploited by outsiders, isn’t that one of the big themes?

Hammond: Absolutely. When it says you develop them for the maximum benefit of the people, that doesn’t mean that we make sanctioned to oil or timber or coal or zinc or whatever. We get every penny we can possibly get. Are we getting it? No. And because of political constraints we won’t get them, but we can move toward that by again creating this investment account spinning off dividends that will compel the legislature to look at these proposals and development projects and extract because the public will demand it. They’ll extract from that greater amounts of wealth than they otherwise would do. To put it crudely as I did initially I wanted the dividend program to pick selectively, collectively against selective. The people that want to get maximized of course their particular interests will bleed off through various programs and subsidiaries, benefits from the state that adversely impact the collective interests of Alaskans. The only way you can counter that is to give Alaskans a collective interest that demands that we encourage only healthy development. And what is healthy development? That which is environmentally sound. You got enough laws on the books already and that can pay its own way plus a premium to all the citizens of the state. And until we get back on that track we’re being shortchanged. And I see no better way of doing it than this POMV with a dividend attached to it and these other elements that I mentioned before. That will virtually demand that any new development we have pays its way. If it doesn’t, people will turn their thumbs down on it.

Let me give you an example of how I – a lot of people think it was a failure on the part of the Hammond Administration, but it was one thing that clearly demonstrated what I’m talking about. Several environmentalists or not several but a few told me one time why are you talking economics now, economics of your vision for the future and all these quality of life things that we were so inspired by? I said because people who could care less about the dickey birds will sit up and take notice if you tap their wallets. Prime example – Petco, remember that, Petco – Petco was a petrochemical proposal that would utilize, create a number of jobs but required according to those who evaluated it the companies that made proposals to use some of our royalty oil needed a discounted price in order to make it economically feasible.

And I said no, no, we’re not going to sell our resources in any bargain basement. Oh, but it will create jobs and do all sorts of things. It will cost us money unless we extracting enough money to offset the cost of the services provided. One company came to us and said we can do it without any subsidiary. And I remember Mark Nalberry (?) who was representing another group and Bob Ward representing a third group, said they can’t possibly do it without a subsidiary. I said but they say they can. So we’ll commit only on the condition that they pay the market rate and if they can do it, fine. Well as I expected, in fact predicted, I didn’t do it publicly except to a very few people. I said you watch in a year from now they’ll come back to say well now we’ve got Alaskans working putting this thing together and we find we really can’t do it without X dollars discount on the price of oil. Exactly what they did (break in sound) forget it and they folded. To me that was a perfect demonstration of what I talk about. Hold their feet to the fire and if they can meet the obligations to meet that constitutional mandate for the maximum benefit of the people so be it.

Another example, there is a proposal on the Kenai Peninsula to utilize some of our royalty oil, but it had to be discounted a dollar and a quarter a barrel, but it would provide jobs for I don’t remember how many people. I don’t remember what it was, but the number of jobs versus the discounting price for oil accounted for $240,000 in state subsidiary per job. This is an issue that Wally Hickel and I were at opposite ends. He was all for it. Create jobs. That’s a mantra of so many in politics. Man creates jobs for Alaskans. At what cost? They never bothered to figure the cost and with the income tax it can’t be. Gone – there can’t be anything other than cost under those conditions.

And of course I opposed it and it went down in flames. And those are but two examples of what I call unhealthy economic development proposals that probably would have flown had I not objected to them.

Terence: Like you call them uneconomic development, that’s a good phrase.

Hammond: Uneconomic development.

Terence: Yeah, yeah. Do you think then that you know looking – well I’ll ask one more question.

Terence: I was going to ask you – the other – one other big mandatory borough act when that came in from the legislators. So was yours the first borough is that right?

Hammond: First one.

Terence: Yes, so maybe we should talk about that cause that you saw clearly the –

Terence: Okay, Jay we’re talking about the local governance, the borough, the whole thing about. Now you told us that story already about in your minority report but what did you see in the fact that the borough, we should articulate that a little bit, cause that’s – I think in retrospect one of the most controversial articles of the convention. Maybe one of the most bitterly divisive.

Hammond: Well it certainly the borough act was one of the most controversial aspects of the constitution and it was sorely resisted by those in the legislature for a number of years after we became a state. And only when the mandatory borough act was passed that obligated people to assume certain functions and authorities and responsibilities and powers did it have any legs at all. I recognized in the borough the possibility to impose a sort of tax regimen that ultimately in the final end product yielded the permanent fund dividend program at the local level in Naknek using fish as the source of wealth and therefore supported the act.

But one of the provisions was that the legislature would act as the unorganized borough assembly therefore exercising the powers to extract taxes and revenues and things of that nature normally accorded to a local government. And of course the legislature has never and will never do that because it will affront whomever they impose their tax regimen on.

So that was one of the major deficiencies. I think again if we were to do something as Governor Hickel has suggested. One of the things this approach to resolving the fiscal gap might provide is that a portion of the moneys gleaned from taxing back your dividends be disbursed in Wally Hickel’s community dividend approach. Now why that approach is better in my view to let the locals determine how to spend their money than having central government do it but there is another factor. If communities that are not now organized without any taxing authority are denied a community dividend because they have no governing entity, they are going to be much more inclined to see the wisdom of so organizing and acquiring those powers, which they then would have the wherewithal to exercise. Now you can’t expect the community in rural area to organize or tax themselves. They don’t have the wherewithal, but if they get the money through that process, the community dividend I think it would spur that.

Now of the problems with manner in which we handled the funding for that I wanted to promote to I think encourage the formulation of boroughs would work thusly. You’re dredging all sorts of stuff out of the past that I haven’t thought about for a long time, but one of the arguments against organizing the rural areas is they didn’t have sufficient property tax base to generate the wealth. And it’s certainly true. Other places like the North Slope Borough would have substantial properties but say a Bethel Borough would not. So my suggestion was this. Why don’t we impose a say a three-percent property tax across the board? However, if you had property values in excess, if that three percent – boy – of your property values generated much less than required to fund your schools, the state would shell out the difference, but you have to impose it. Similarly if it generated much more the state would back off of its participation and let the locals do it. In order words, the North Slope Borough would get far less assistance from the state than would the Bethel borough. It is a little vague in my mind. I thought that way they would not have the argument that well we don’t have enough property values to accord it. If you don’t have it, then the state comes in and helps out more. In other words, a varicated system.

Well, like most of my proposals it didn’t fly and of course as a consequence, not necessarily as a consequent, but we made it much more difficult for those people to see the desirability of organizing. I still think going back to something like that makes some sense, but I’ve got other things on my mind and they’re too confused on issues before them to accept anything else on their platter.

Terence: I think that’s right. Jay, do you – what about Gruening, how did you run crosswise with – how did you cross swords with Gruening?

Hammond: Well I crossed swords with Ernest Gruening when I was Chairman of the Resource Committee in the House and a bill that he had introduced in the State Senate vicarious, I mean not vicariously but by request had passed the Senate unanimously I believe advocating appropriations of money to build Rampart Dam. And it read something like this – Whereas, the benefit to Rampart would do all these wonderful things and Whereas, these interminable studies had gone on and on should be terminated instead of appropriating more money for them – appropriate money to start the initial construction. Well it came into my committee and of course it was virtually unanimously supported by – I think unanimously in the Senate – came over to the house and I got it in my clutches in the Resource Committee. And I hung onto it and I hung onto, and hung onto it. The heat started building. The newspapers were thumping on me to bring it out and I remember Bogg and Baker and Binkley, the three B boys from – great guys and they came to me and said hey look we’re getting killed because they don’t understand you don’t bolt bills out of the committee and would you please bring it out and let us vote on it or against it if you want to. I said well there’s some errors in it. They said well correct them as you sit fit, but please at least get it out of your committee.

So I agreed to do that. I said I’ll let the committee decide and I kind of rewrote – they said rewrite it and I rewrote it. And I think the original language says the development and resources agency has issued a comprehensive study demonstrating the marketable of Rampart power, now therefore be it resolved terminate these ridiculous ongoing studies and appropriate moneys for construction. So I changed it slightly. I left the boilerplate in but it said whereas the development resources corporation David Lillenthal outfit has suggested the marketability of Rampart, now therefore be it resolved we appropriate more money to complete these studies. Slightly different, but it was all in the tension span of the legislature about 30 seconds and then the (inaudible) dropped down or off into space some place else.

Anyhow John Reger, who is an ardent of Rampart, had a crewcut back then. And I remember this had to be read because it was changed and the Senate or the secretary or the clerk of the house reading – Warren Taylor is speaker. And droning away and as I say I left a lot of the – said whereas if this would be a wonderful project if the advocates are correct in their assertions and if the opponents are wrong in theirs and so forth, blah, blah, blah. And John Reger is listening a little more closely than others and I would swear his crewcut started to rise up like the bristles on a porcupine. And he stood up and he said now wait a minute, then the speaker, old Warren Taylor who was getting a little senile or over the hill at that time rapped his gavel and said sit down John I’ve read it, it’s okay. And John sat down and I had counseled Tinney (?) beforehand. I said now look when we let it out of committee he read it and his eyes boggled when he understood it very quickly. And I said but you and I voted against bringing it out of committee, the rest of them – I think John Holm voted against it bringing it out too. Anyhow it passed out of committee and then Tillion and Hammond those flaming environmentalists opposed to it, it has got to be all right. Went up for floor vote and the House passed – only ones opposed were Tillion, Hammond, and I think Art Arnetz from the Aleutians. I think only three of us. Passed unanimously.

Gordy Watson, who worked for Riverbanks and Fish and Wildlife Service was back in Washington at the time. He was an ardent opponent of Rampart and Gruening hated it. He came back up here and he told me he said you know I was back in Washington when your resolution hit back there because the Senate concurred with our amendments. He said you could hear – what was the other Udall – Stuart Udall scream from two blocks away. You mean to tell me the Alaska State Legislature passed this. It is the first intelligent thing they’ve had to say about Rampart. And of course Gruening was (inaudible), but of course Tillion and I are on the side of the angels we voted against Ernest, but he knew full well what had happened. Well he subsequently I don’t know – well then I got off on the – I proposed the resolution that would rename the proposed Devil Canyon project the Ernest Craig Gruening Memorial Dam. Ernie wanted to leave some monument in his wake, but oh he was infuriated. And he focused in on me and big ad in the paper – the only – Jay Hammond opposed Rampart Dam. Of course the fisherman I could do these things and take much guts down home, the fisherman weren’t that entranced with a big dam that would stifle salmon development in the Yukon River.

But he and Bartlett I remember had campaign signs in Naknek when I was running one year for office and I cut one in half. It was vote for Bartlett, vote for Gruening. I cut one in half and pasted both in half and pasted them together. Vote for Gruenlatt. Oh dear. Anyhow that’s getting –

Terence: Well did he ever forgive you?

Hammond: Oh, no I don’t think he ever did.

Terence: Cause that’s right, he died in April of ’74, so he died before you got elected governor I think.

Hammond: No I don’t think he did. I had great admiration for Ernest Gruening, but he you know it would have been a horrendous boondoggle.

Terence: Well he I think Rampart Dam was Ernest Gruening’s capitol move. You know what I mean – the capitol move –

Hammond: But I’ve always been on the wrong side of the popular political issue of the moment. Statehood, the constitution, Rampart Dam, you name it. I don’t know.

Terence: Well Jay I think there was something right because when you got elected in ’74 cause maybe it was only that time because the people started coming in you know and I just think that had something to do with it you know.

Hammond: Yeah it was a certain point in history that the only time that I could have snuck in. A few years before – what had happened it was in the wake of Watergate. People were really turned off on traditional politicians for one thing. They were very apprehensive about what the pipeline was going to do and the Native land claims were going to do. There was a lot more environmental concern than ever had been evidenced up here and I of course again suggested we should buy back the Kachemak Bay leases because there was in improper process in my view of public input and so forth. And of course that was terribly controversial and when I bought them back I was dammed as the prince of darkness by many folk, but have you ever heard a subsequent candidate say if elected I shall reissue leases in Kachemak bay – no. And even Don Young and Stevens and Kopenne(?) ardently supported to buy back in Bristol Bay at one time. Now that’s kind of quiet but – so things have changed.

But I’m always out of cycle and it is kind of – be awfully nice to be – the same thing with the income tax. I was the only political voice that I heard in opposition to it.

Terence: Opposition to the repeal you mean – to the repeal?

Hammond: Repeal.

Terence: Repeal, yeah. And of course you became a Republican at a time when Alaska was pretty much Democratic?

Hammond: I ran as an Independent initially and there was a certain wooing from both sides of the aisle. When they changed the election code to make it almost impossible for an Independent to win. And I remember being counseled by some of the Democrat – (inaudible) Louie Dishner (?), some of the other guys there, but hey you know you’re reasonably smart guy. If you want to get elected without having to worry about it too much, get that magic D behind your name. And I must confess there was a certain attraction to that. I hadn’t had any party affiliation and I realized you could probably have – join either party and vote pretty much the way you wanted to. But on the other hand I made this comment.

Down in Bristol Bay it seemed like every stumblebum and nare-do-well and freeloader was a Democrat. I didn’t realize that was because they were only Democrats down there at the time. I subsequently learned that nobody has got the market cornered down to that quality of people. And I thought about you know, not very seriously, about declaring as a Democrat because it would have been so much easier. But then I thought hey you know my folks are Republican. I kind of was inculcated with what was then the Republican philosophy. And I’m at odds very much many times with Republicans today, but not all. And one of them being the fact that they seem to be totally opposed to anything that smacks of environmental constraints and on par with being branded the child molester to be termed an environmentalist, I say I’m an environmentalist but I’m equally concerned about the social and economic environment. Many so-called physical environmentalists are not or not to the extent they should be, but – and to me I – the old Republican conservation mode of Teddy Roosevelt represented is the sort of – but these people seem to think there’s nothing to some of these concerns and others. And that troubles me, but be that as it may that was the – one of the reasons I knew that I would always – the only reason I really –

Hammond: – time around you got screened so much more closely because you never won because you were a Republican back in those days. It was in spite of the fact. And I think that’s a healthy condition.

Terence: What was your relationship like with Stevens over the year when you came in?

Hammond: Stevens, that’s interesting you ask that. Stevens was ardently opposed to me the first time around, yet supported me the second time around. It was quite helpful. Yeah, and I have great admiration for Ted Stevens. A lot of folks say you know there was a suggestion one time that I might want to go back to Washington and run for either Congress. In fact Mike Coletta came to me one time after a meeting with Republican chair in Anchorage and said we’ve got 250,000 if you’ll file for a seat against Begech. And forget it. I’ve got no interest going back to Washington. I refused to move backward to anything that would take me out of Alaska and bring me to Washington is retrogression. Forget it. Don Young, who had an apartment next to us there in what they call the mink pens I think it was in Juneau was over visiting me that evening a night or two later. And I told Don about Coletta’s overtures and I said Don, you ought to check that out. Don did so and see what happened. I don’t think he got the 250,000 but the spark was ignited, probably there all the time smoldering but he did and Don – but anyhow I couldn’t go back there. Stevens has done a masterful job of course of acquiring benefits for the state. Has it been at expense of the nation? I don’t know. Certainly that’s the way the game is played and he has done it in spades masterfully. I don’t know if I could – I wouldn’t have been nearly as successful. I wouldn’t have been as nearly successful. And while he could have done anything I had done. I couldn’t begin to do many of the things Ted has done. And he justly deserves the appellation as Alaskan of the century. And I disagree with naming the airport after him, not that he doesn’t warrant it, but I don’t like the renaming of things that people are conditioned to accept. At one time Steve Cooper of all people proposed renaming the Titchek State Park, the Hammond State Park. Why I attended I don’t know. Somebody asked me about it, I said forget it. It will incur a firestorm of resentment and opposition and people are conditioned to accept. I don’t believe in renaming things that are – and the irony of it was that person who expressed the only outrage that I heard was in a letter to the editor from the then mayor of Dillingham said Hammond doesn’t deserve that he was the guy who repealed the income tax. This guy happened to oppose the repeal of the income tax not realizing that I thought it was the most (inaudible) thing we had ever done.

Then Halford suggested renaming the Spenard Lake Hood float plane base and the same thing – Commonwealth North Jeff Lowenfels got a hold of it and he said – I said don’t do it. And he said well is this something you’d like to have named after you? I said if there’s a new sewer lagoon or something maybe that would be appropriate. Well I just don’t believe in that, but again taking nothing from Ted if they’re going to name it after anybody, that’s the worthy monitor.

Terence: Well I always thought we should name a building at the University after you actually so that’s what I think that would be a nice thing.

Hammond: Well, somebody had suggested this new high school here, but they don’t name high schools and I – something in the academic educational realm I would not object to, but taking and renaming something no.

Terence: Because it’s asking for trouble. Do – so what about Bartlett, did you have any, ever run into him?

Hammond: I have an enormous respect for Bob Bartlett. I didn’t know him all that well, but I think he was a tremendous asset to the state and boy a monumental figure in Alaskan history, but I really back in those days I wasn’t interested in politics pre-statehood so I wasn’t paying the attention to the thing. And of course he didn’t survive too long after I got involved in politics. But what little I know about Bob Bartlett and Ernest Gruening, save for Rampart Dam, I had great admiration for Ernest.

Terence: Well what about with Egan? What was your – I mean –

Hammond: Bill Egan was a warm mamonkelar (?) figure who of course endeared himself to Alaskans by his recalling names as much as anything. And being the total opposite I stood in awe of his capabilities cause I forget names and faces, the whole smash. You probably have heard my story about during the campaign a fellow came up to me and stuck out his hand and he said, hi, Jay, how are you? No, he said, hi Jay and then noticed my black look of non-recognition. And he says you don’t remember my name do you? I said the heck I don’t I just can’t place your face. I’m sure Egan got another vote, but I was terrible at it, terrible at it. And he was superb. I had many people say I don’t know anything about Bill Egan but he never forgets my name. But Bill had enormous concern and passion for serving the state and did a magnificent job of it and warrants a huge niche in the history of Alaska.

And I had great admiration for Bill Egan and certainly I told him one time, oh my, one time in Fairbanks. I got cross (inaudible) with Bill on more than one occasion. One occasion happened to be when he had made a comment to the effect that Hammond professes to be a conservationist. Why look at here he voted against my bill to create a Department of Environmental Conservation. The reason I had done so it was an absolute toothless tiger. It didn’t do anything. I wanted something with a great deal more capability and force and prominence than what he had proposed. So I countered it by saying this is when we were running for governor – countered it by saying well Bill Egan assertion that I oppose his conservation department because I was really not an ardent conservationist would be as ludicrous as me saying that Bill Egan was opposed to higher education because he vetoed a portion of the budget destined to the University of Alaska. And oh I knew what the response would be, he was outraged, saying Hammond that I (inaudible).

We were scheduled to meet in Fairbanks at a PTA or something, there were hundreds of people there. And I knew exactly what Bill would do. He came armed to the teeth and prepared to really work me over. Do you remember this? So anyhow I got to speak first. He was going to be cleanup. And he’s sitting there just kind of glowering at me and I started off. The audience knowing there is going to be firestorm between us. So I started off by saying well you know I want to tell you of the enormous regard and respect I have for Governor Bill Egan. And if I have to be defeated by anybody, there is no one that I’d prefer to be and I outlined some of the things he had done for the state. I could see the audience visually warming up. This isn’t going to be a firestorm after all. And I kept plumping his cushions and saying all these kindly things about him and then I finally walked over to him, so all I can say Governor I want to wish you luck but not too much. So I sat – he got up and of course Bill had this prepared speech in hand. Got up and started reading this thing, lampacing (?) me, excoriated. The audience is sitting there aghast, how can this guy respond like that to this kindly – I bet he didn’t get a vote other than his own.

That’s the sort of thing that makes campaigning fun and I love it when that opportunity presents itself. But because – and Wally was a wonderful, wonderful opponent for the same reason. Took himself so seriously.

Terence: Did you have any – ever recall any events like that with Wally?

Hammond: Oh, one time I was at a press conference that asked all the governors about their qualifications and desires for running for governor. I was a tail end Charlie. And they go through – Wally Hickel, why he thought he was most qualified to be governor and he outlined the fact that he had been governor and Secretary of the Interior, successful businessman. And Tom Fink when through his drill. And I think Chancey Croft and Jay – there was a little black guy who was running, and I was the last guy. And they said why do you think you’re most qualified? And I don’t think for a moment I’m the most qualified Alaskan to be governor. I’m sure there’s a multitude out there more qualified than I. Isn’t it a shame none of them are running? Oh they had Wally and Ernalee on camera and he’s listening indulgently until that moment and they both (inaudible).

Then another time they asked the same question in another so-called press conference and it was why do you think you’re most qualified to administer the state? Here Governor Hickel has had enormous administrative capability or experience and all the rest of these people and you’ve run a little flying and guiding business and so forth. And I said yes, but I have an unfair advantage over those other fellows. Well what in the world is that? I said well the prime hallmark of run- of an administrator is capability of selecting persons of greater competence than themselves to fill positions of authority beneath him. And I have a much broader range to choose from than do those other – and you know it proved true in a way because they were kind of high bound to play to the partisan. I could pick anybody I wanted to. I wasn’t dependent on the Republicans for election. It was in spite of the Republicans that I was elected. It was dissident Democrats and the so-called, what do they call the young turks and a whole bunch of kind of oddballs that put me into office and the public apprehension over what was coming up. So I did have that advantage. I didn’t have to cater to anybody.

Terence: You had a lot of Democrats in your –

Hammond: Oh, I did, I did. And again I plowed trench when I went to the what do you call it – what is the – the Republican group –

Terence: The Lincoln Day thing or the –

Hammond: Well it was something – maybe it was the Lincoln Day thing. It was in Fairbanks again. And I was being castigated for having appointed Democrats – Ab Gross and two or three others to my – or some others to my administration. And I said well I wanted to bring disparity – not disparity, yeah –

Terence: Diversity.

Hammond: Diversity into my cabinet and so I calculated these – selected some developers and conservationists and developers and conservationists, Democrats and Republicans and I brought both of the latter here with me. I only had two Republicans in my entire cabinet. Rest of them were either Independents or Democrats.

Well that – but then a lot of folk cussed me out for appointing Ab Gross. And I said well I think it is the obligation to appoint the best legal talent available to fill position of attorney general. And to me Ab Gross is right up there at the top even as cohorts and colleagues agree. Oh well yeah he’s a brilliant attorney but he’s a Democrat. You know longhaired hippy type Democrat from New York. And but do you know this who the Republicans hired whenever they were in trouble during past years when Fritz Pettyjohn and some of these other folks they would hire Ab Gross. They all agreed he probably had the best mind available for that job. But I did not – both parties claimed me. They don’t either have much use for me and I don’t have much use for them. Party structures – I don’t know. I think they yield disservice more often than a service and they incline people to play to the gallery and their constituency at the expense of the state in many instances.

Terence: Okay you know that’s another thing though that you should.

Terence: And then Wally you know that’s all –

Hammond: Statehood, oh.

Terence: I think he would have been awful.

Hammond: They were totally. Tony opposed the Permanent Fund much less the dividend.

Terence: Yeah, he’s awful.

Hammond: Hated it.

Terence: Yeah.

Hammond: His idea you shouldn’t tax the oil companies any more than what you need for this year’s budget period.

Terence: Yeah.

Hammond:Oh, think of where we’d be.

Terence: I know.

Hammond: I would have hated seeing Wally with all that money. Frankly, we’d have bricks and concrete roads and stuff we couldn’t maintain.

Terence: We would have had a lot of bridges. No, it’s like that joke the guy in the Permanent Fund think –

Hammond: Walking down the road –

Terence: You want to say something else about Wally, you were thinking.

Hammond: Yeah, about the vision.

Terence: Oh, vision, that’s what we were saying, about the vision, sort of a vision.

Hammond: Yeah, well the problem is the vision for the future had been beclouded I think in recent years because of the desire to become re-elected. Most legislators’ concept of infinity is two or four years away at the next election, 20 years down the pike. They really could care less. A great exception of that and one reason I admire him immensely is Wally Hickel, had a long-term vision for the state. And while Wally and I cross swords on more than one occasion, we have ended up I think warm friends and are much more in accord I think than discord on a lot of issues, even the Permanent Fund.

I think he has recognized or understands and agrees with the creation of the fund was wisdom. Had some small departure as how we would dispose of the dividend. He would do it in a community dividend program. I would do it in an individual dividend program. But the basic essence meets that constitutional mandate what is in the best interests of the people. I feel the best interests of the people is decided by the individual not a political entity, even a local entity such as a borough or city, and certainly better than the state government. The state government already can determine how the great bulk of our oil wealth is distributed. Why should they distribute as well the – tiny – it isn’t even 12-½% that is distributed. It is only half of the earnings of that 12-½%. And they want to take that to reduce it and put into the 87-½%.

Anyhow is beclouded because again too many people are concerned about the immediate future and re-election. And if you take something again such as reinstitution of even a capped income tax, which may have initially – I don’t know who is going to impose that. What is the argument against it? I’ve asked people to punch holes and tell me what’s wrong, nobody has. But when you say income tax that is so inflammatory that – I read an editorial in the Anchorage Times the other day saying oh, we’ve got to do away with the Permanent Fund and dividend program is terrible because it might inclined to re-impose an income tax.

And Wally had that vision. Wally made his millions and stayed up here with them and again is dedicated to what he perceives as long-term interest of the state. And thank heaven for it and while my vision may be a little different than him, I think overall the final focus is almost precisely the same.

Terence: Yeah and I think it is, Jay. I mean the idea of there is sort of a local control or the resources for the benefit of the people of Alaska. In a way you guys sort of differ on tools. I mean your view of the tool is the dividend and his view of the tool you know dividend is a tool to achieve this end and he kind of sees it – I guess he has different views on it you know.

Hammond: Somebody told me the other day their disagreement with the dividend was their belief that government could deliver services more efficiently than could a collection of people having money in their pocket. And I said ah, maybe more efficiently but not more equitably. You can deliver efficiently with the 87-½% of the oil wealth you got now, why do you want to take one-half the earnings of the other 12-½%? And you may deliver them efficiently but it still will be inequitably. The dividend delivers equitably and that is my major reason for haranguing and harassing people and beating the drum. And thank heaven I’ve got stalwarts like Halford and Tillion that agree wholeheartedly and now with this Vernon Smith, who I think carries a lot of prestige among his cohorts. I talked to economists that virtually deify him. And if he could come up here and explain to this group that are dealing with the endowment language I think he will persuade a lot of folk that his approach and our approach advocated years ago makes a lot more sense than what not only what did happen but would have happened. It would have been horrendous by contrast.

Terence: Jay, let me ask you about Clem, because he is probably one of your oldest friends I mean. So what is your relation with him go back?

Hammond: Well Clem Tillion I recall well my first vision of Clem Tillion. I learned during the campaign that there was a fellow fisherman from Halibut Cove that was running for the state legislature. I’d never met him. He was known as Red Tillion by many folk back then. And when I came to Juneau after being elected for my – it was the third term in the house. Clem didn’t get in until the third state legislature I believe. Nobody would have had to told me who Clem Tillion was. I went into the floor of the house and there were six or eight legislators sitting around and here’s a guy in a dirty hat, shoes off, suspenders, 1927 model suit – tweed suit that belonged to his father. I swear it was – it had a bronze patina on it, it was so ancient and a big shock of hair like Brillo and a booming voice that I say enables Clem Tillion to communicate from Halibut Cover to Homer without aid of electronic devices. I mean nobody else could have been Clem Tillion but Clem Tillion.

And I’m almost alienated Clem badly the first time. We got to know each other a little bit, but during the early days of that session back then they didn’t have the push button voting devices. And they had instead where you actually took were asked to poll by the clerk. And I found that I could say things in verse form that you couldn’t say straight out and get away with it. And for some reason or other I was inspired by something that happened during roll call vote on a certain issue. Speaker Taylor was polling the group as to how they stood on various Kendall, I, so and so nay, all down the line. Got to Tillion – Mr. Tillion, Mr. Tillion – here. He had been snoozing. And Taylor said Mr. Tillion the vote is on whether or not you approve the measure, not establishing your absence of which we are already aware or something like that. And that prompted me to do something, poor guy, he sat right in front of me. And I said – I asked for privilege of the floor. And I said I want to make an observation. Mr. Tillion, please answer when your name is called. Could it be that you are sleeping or simply enthralled by the summer attire of those bits of fluff that pass by the window while you’re on your doff dealing with laws about cooth and decorum knowing full well you tend to ignore them or something like that. And old Tillion was sitting there like that. He came up to me later and he said, oh, you had to do that to me when the first time I’ve had a constituent in the gallery.

But Clem was wonderful and he saved my sanity on more than one occasion by permitting me to defuse or decamp my insane inspirations to Clem. He sat right in front of me. And I probably told you this. All I had to do was dream up some outrageous action and knuckle Clem would say why don’t you do this Clem. And he leaps up and do it. And of course everybody be shocked and dismayed, including me. How could he say that?

Wonderful release valve, but he was a tremendous friend and cohort and responsible in very large measure for the Permanent Fund dividend. He was – I had legislative delegations that came to my office and get off that kick. We’re not going to do it. It doesn’t stand a chance. And I said I don’t care how you vote for it. The final analysis was that if you lock it up in committee I kick you not I’m going to call you back into special session. The day after you adjourn you’re going to see everybody that votes to keep it in committee is going to see his goodies stripped out of the budget. And they went out of there grumbling, complaining, and Clem re-amplified that message with gusto as only Clem could do. So they very reluctantly put it out on the floor where it passed almost unanimously.

But the irony of it is many who opposed it at that time now speak with pride for the role they played in establishing the Permanent Fund Dividend. But without Clem I don’t know how far we’d have gotten on a lot of issues. He was what I call my strong right arm and my swift left foot.

Terence: Well Jay one thing you told me we were talking back in November about people mistaking you, remember that? When somebody thought you were Norman Vaughn and –

Hammond: Oh, yeah.

Terence: So why don’t we – remember you ran into somebody in the grocery store or something, right?

Hammond: Well, yeah, I first became aware of the fact that I had an identity crisis when somebody during the Exxon Valdez trial came up to me in the store, an elderly gentleman stuck out his hand and said compassionately good luck Captain Haselton. And I didn’t want to disabuse him this kindly gesture. So I never straightened him out.

Then not long after that I’m in a restaurant. A couple of women are sitting over at a table looking over at this suspicious looking bearded character. Finally one of them came over and said aren’t you Norman Vaughn? I said no, not yet but I’m working at it. Do I look like a 90 some years old? And neither does Norm and I’m flattered to be mistaken for Norman Vaughn.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Then I’m in a store here about three years ago and some young fellow comes up to me and he says oh, I’ve always wanted to shake your hand. Thank you for all the wonderful things you’ve done for the state and let me tell you I think you’re the finest governor we ever had. And I’m standing there trying to toe the ground, accept his accolades with appropriate humility. And finally gets through verbal and sticks out his hand again and says great to meet you Wally. And I didn’t straighten him out either.

That still wasn’t the end of it. I’ve been mistaken for Norman dozens of times, dozens of times literally. I was – Norman’s wife Caroline called me up here – called my daughter up Heidi up here and said it has come full circle. Somebody came up to Norman and said the other day aren’t you Jay Hickel?

I’ve been mistaken I went to Fairbanks Republican do here when Bill Hudson was there and I told that story and somebody said I thought you were Bill Hudson. And somebody else said I thought you were Herb Shalum. I said what next, Theresa Overmeyer. I said, no, I’m – but it’s kind of nice in a way because whenever I get into trouble I can always blame on either Joe, Norman, or Wally.

Terence: Everybody thinks you’re somebody. Everybody thinks you’re something, just not maybe – they don’t what they think that something is exactly or somebody. So that’s pretty wonderful. Jay, what would you think looking back what has been your biggest disappointment in sort of politics?

Hammond: Disappointment. One of my biggest disappointments was not forging the last link in the chain of the Delta Project, Delta Agricultural Project. Had we done that I suspect we might have had a flourishing barley project and a flourishing believe it or not McKenzie Point Dairy Project, which was contingent on the Delta Project. The McKenzie Point dairy thing was not my baby. It was (inaudible) to the Delta Project but it was contingent on cheap feed coming down the railroad from the Delta area. And when of course the Delta Project was torpedoed they did not complete the grain terminal in Seward, which could have been completed at less money that I found later than it cost to store it. Instead it was argued by the Teamsters and the mayor of Valdez and some legislators and Bill Sheffield. I can understand why he might have been persuaded to think hey this makes sense. We can build it in Valdez. It won’t cost the state a nickel. Everybody that knew anything about agriculture on the Agriculture Action Council said that can’t fly. It has to go to Seward. We had everything in shape. We had the holding facilities at Delta. We had the grounds available. We had the people willing to farm it. We had the method of transportation to a port on the seacoast at Seward. We had the hopper cars for hauling it. We had the actual grain terminal itself and the foundation built. Three million dollars would have completed it. It absolutely got torpedoed when they persuaded them to back off of funding it, built it at Valdez. It was predicted and proved to be true that not one bushel of barley would ever go through Valdez. It made no sense.

Now would it have flown? I don’t know. I used to accept it as a mea culpa when people would say your biggest lament, biggest mistake. Biggest mistake was not the Delta Project it was not completing every chain of the link or link in the chain. If you recall Steve Cooper went to the orient to – incidentally we had every bit of barley they were willing to buy. The Asian marketplace said it is the finest most high protein content barley that we’ve looked at. They’ll buy every bit of it we can get to them. The thing was all in place, except that terminal. What happened when Steve Cooper went to the orient to sell coal, timber, and wood – and fish, he came back saying the only thing they’re interested in is the Delta barley. The Koreans wanted to take over the whole project. So those people will tell you that was a fiasco and a big mistake, should focus on the big mistake of the fiasco was not completing it. It may have fallen and if it had fallen under the proper circumstances I’d accept full responsibility.

I was in Fairbanks not long ago. There had been a group of Russians that had been out there looking at the area. They had with them some people from the University. And I – this was some years ago before I knew all these factors. And they said – I started to go through my drill maybe it was a big mistake. We’d give anything to have the potential you people had there. People from the grain states and provinces of Canada said the same thing to me. That has wonderful potential. Now there are some folk up there that hung tough that have done quite well in agriculture. They can do a lot better and when it got torpedoed, it caused devastation. It cost – it bankrupted people. There were suicides committed. Tragic the way that thing was handled and torpedoed.

There are potentials in Delta of new product or to me anyhow. Hybrid called Sun Spuds. A gentleman presented me a very persuasive documentation of a product that Delta farmers are agitating to have permission to try on for size that would allegedly produce three times the amount of ethanol that would say corn or some other ethanol producing grain products at one-third the cost. And one of the unique features is that it requires two hard freezes to maturate or whatever is required and the feed stocks left over from the ethanol extraction is supposed to be wonderful high protein content, insulation.

It is something worth looking at. And I would urge the governor and have urged the governor to take a look at it. I don’t know if it makes sense or not but the gentleman that presented it to me was no kook. Chemical engineer that had done vast and extensive research into it, a fellow by the name of Harvey Prickett and obviously has done an awful lot of exploration of this. It got stifled when it was proposed some years ago because of a nematode into station in the type of – it’s a cross between a Jerusalem artichoke and a sunflower. Grows to enormous height and at that time was infested with nematodes, the type that they were utilizing. Subsequently I’m told they both Maine and then I think Idaho has developed a strain that is totally nematode free.

And it sure is – that’s the sort of development we ought to be generating, but again without an income tax who wants the 900 jobs and the families intended would go up there if it is going to cost the state money. But put a tax on of the nature I talked about (inaudible) dividend and that thing pays its way.

Terence: I think Jay there is one thing I just realized you may have some comments on this off the top of your head but what would sort of your review looking back on ANCSA and ANILCA, I mean you know that’s too complicated to go into your plan, but we’ll talk about that some other day, but what about – maybe let’s look at ANCSA first. What do you think that’s –

Hammond: Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

Terence: Yeah. Yeah.

Hammond: Well Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, some of my constituents I was in the legislature at the time when that was being bandied about. They came to me and said what do you think we ought to do with that perspective million dollars, lands that will be made available to us and I said hey, don’t ask me if (inaudible) tell you guys what to do with your assets. They said no, you’re our representative you ought to – did I tell you this?

Terence: Yeah, you told me just a little bit about that. But how about – how would your view be of say you know how it has worked out, you know.

Hammond: Okay.

Terence: That’s what I meant. But you told us a little bit about that similar to your last –

Hammond: I think that had they to do it over again and the Native people were polled on whether they should have created the 210, what I call mini-bureaucracies with the intended legal administrative costs or created a Permanent Fund spinning off dividends to each and every Native of an equal amount. They might have preferred to have gone Permanent Fund dividend concept. The problem you know while to its credit it has developed a number of very powerful and knowledgeable and very successful Native leaders and has accrued enormous benefits to certain select groups, the little guy you really try to help is still waiting at the end of the – watching for something to drop into his lap.

Had they done it in the manner of a Permanent Fund Dividend Program and experienced exactly the same results as the Permanent Fund has in spinning off revenues. According to Johnny Sackett, I could be wrong on these figures, Johnny Sackett did a study one time, but first initially we figured it would have yielded $1,154 dividend for each and every Alaska Native, right off the bat, if it had again experienced the same at that time with 10 or 12% earnings. Subsequently Johnny Sackett did a study that I think it was John, and I wouldn’t want to be held to this and I don’t know how accurate it is, but if some years later it would have been something like $5,400. What it would be now I don’t know. But you would have taken every Native off of welfare. You’d have given them the wherewithal to handle all your village programs, educational obligations and so forth. Sure some of them might have blown it but I suspect they would have recognized the potential and the majority view would have prevailed and that would be to manage their assets prudently.

The other thing that it would have avoided is the necessity to sell off these assets, sometimes at a loss or in a manner that is disturbing to a number of people because their land is their life and for them to have to dispose of it, which many of them are having to do now in order to sustain the many bureaucracies that were created. You could have avoided that. I don’t know whether it would have been better or not, but I wouldn’t want to prejudge for them. But to me it is a shame that they weren’t given the opportunity to look at one package versus another and things might have been different.

Now as far as the –

Terence: ANILCA you were thinking of.

Hammond: ANILCA. That, as you recall, was an extremely divisive issue. The idea of creating parks and refuges in the state and I got into big trouble there by being partially quoted. One of the most famous was when they were talking about parks and refuges locking up lands, I said, well of course the ultimate lockup is private land ownership. They forgot to put the additional language in there, which is as it of course should be. If you own a piece of property you ought to be able to keep people off of it and constrain certain activities thereon. Therefore, we should be very careful about taking lands upon which there are enormous public interests and dispose even to private ownership. Rick Halford talked about that the other day. He said man – where was he at? Where everything was, gosh where was that? Scotland I know – you got to pay enormous prices to go out trout fishing or doing whatever. And the same thing in Africa, South Africa and he said man, now I know exactly what you’re talking about – in South Africa.

Terence: And Jay –

Hammond: Well the irony of it is I was branded of course as anti-private ownership because of that statement, private ownership the ultimate lockup. And of course I tried to counter it in the most inappropriate manner possible. I said ah in the contrary I’m a great believer in private ownership. That is why I got a homestead and a cabin site or something of that nature. And of course that scored even greater contempt because Hammond’s got his, he doesn’t want us to have ours.

The irony was also if you remember Mike Burn put in a bill to dispose of all state lands and put them up for grabs, which would have been horrendous. The Arabs were already cocked and wired to come over here with helicopters and the little guy thinking he is going to get a trout stream and a moose pasture in his backyard would be the last guy to get it. But the irony was that I was being condemned for being opposed to private ownership.

Yet do you know I put more land under my administration into private ownership than all the prior governors combined? Same thing with highways. We made more miles of highway than all the other governors combined. Of course it was the Parks Highway, but nevertheless you know it is the way you look at things that distort the image. And my opponents were perfectly right to look at them in a manner. Of course I see them I’m sure distortedly to excuse my inappropriate actions or whatever.

Terence: Well and I think that you know it was such a struggle. How do you think now looking back on 20 some years does the ANILCA fare?
Because this is related to the question I have to ask you about subsistence. I’ve got to ask you about that.

Hammond: Fine.

Terence: Cause it resolved to that, okay.

Hammond: ANILCA I thought was done all wrong. The reason I felt that instead of parceling out areas that were selected parks and refuges that had certain varying degrees of protection for whatever resources were inherent therein could have been better handled by what I call a cooperative management system, creating again for lack of a better term co-mans, which would be ecosystem management. In other words, you would have lands which encompassed Native owned, federal owned, state owned, private owned lands agreeing hopefully to a plan that would elevate the protections to the degree necessary to assure the perpetuation of be it caribou or salmon that can’t read boundary signs. They don’t know when they’re crossing from a park to a refuge to private lands and so forth. In other words have instead of a park fence or boundary going up to here you’d lower it to there to allow activities that didn’t do violence to that basic resource value found within the park as long as the adjacent landowners elevated their protected devices to assure an overall plan provided that protection.

And all out congressional delegation, Gravel at the time, Stevens, and Young were all in accord with this. I went to every congressmen and senator back there, along with John Katz, trying to sell it. Mo Udall and John Sybrook, who were most ardent environmentalists back there at the time, they said hey that makes a lot of sense, but can you sell it to the conservation organizations. I couldn’t with the exception of Bob Wheaton. A few of them up here that saw the merits, but the outside conservation organizations. They were (inaudible) sighted and that has to be a park. This has to be a refuge. One of the reasons – if we had not called, well of course the refuge of ANWR was a refuge before this occurred. But once you put those polarizing terms out, I don’t think for example you should – we now modify actions.

Terence: And that’s amazing when you said about John Katz too, Jay, cause since he is still back there you know, isn’t it something I mean? Every governor since you – you were the guy that brought him thought, right? I think –

Hammond: Yeah.

Terence: Yeah, so –

Hammond: What I had him as my commissioner of natural resources. I wasn’t the first one appointed. He was in there for Egan.

Terence: Was he? Oh, okay.

Hammond: I think. Maybe – D2.

Terence: D2

Hammond: Subsistence.

Robert: ANILCA.

Terence: ANILCA and subsistence, yeah. Oh, that’s right, you couldn’t sell it –

Hammond: Well the co-mans concept again I had was unable to sell it so we came up with a proposal, my administration, that would have allocated to the federal government 40 million acres for parks and refuges and so forth. I preferred the cooperative management thing but you consisted upon creating parks and refuges here is what we thought appropriate. And what the state would be willing to consider and it involved 40 million acres. Oh, outrageous giveaway ranted. A group of folk went back to Washington that were shrieking in anguish over this suggestion.

And Tony Motley ironically turned the propeller heads. I termed them the secret weapon of the Sierra Club because no group did more to convince congress they had to protect Alaska from Alaskans and (inaudible). They went back there telling them to keep their nose out of our business. They had no business in telling us what to do with our lands and forgetting these were national lands in many instances. Torpedoed my 40 million acres and ended with 105.

But be that as it may Cec Andrus told me during the deliberations he says we’re going to do your cooperative management thing in Bristol Bay persuaded to make sense the ecosystem management concept. And he showed me his plan. Incidentally one of the plans you had the park boundaries running right through my living room practically down there at Lake Clark. And said this cooperative management all right Cec, but ain’t quite what I had in mind. You do all the managing. We do all the cooperating. And – but he tried to do something of that nature and set up a mechanism for doing it back in Bristol Bay.

Well Bruce Babbitt, when he got into office, if you recall he tried to do an ecosystem, but to go back to that after you’ve once established these things is virtually impossible. But I would much prefer rather than have a little enclave here in which there is 100% protection for caribou or salmon or whatever and right adjacent to it the degree of desecration’s left at the whims of the owner, have 70% protection over the whole thing.

And as I say, our congressional delegation all were in accord with it. It would have been a showcase for the country. And again the world’s worst soap salesman fellows. It didn’t happen.

Terence: Well now to what extent did the differences of opinion though between Gravel and Stevens you know in the final –

Hammond: They were if anything Gravel was more supportive of putting more lands under cooperative management concept than – now one of the things that –

Terence: You haven’t talked about Gravel. We should say something about him, you know just his –

Hammond: Gravel was a very interesting fellow and I used to shudder every time I’d be back in Washington and I’d get a call from Peggy Hackett or somebody who was running the office back there that Senator Gravel wished to speak with you because I would go up and he invariably would have some scheme, be it antigravitational transportation devices or domed Teflon tented city or something of that nature, which if only I would render my support would fly. And I’d listen to these – very imaginative guy I’ll hand that to him, but totally off the wall in regard to some of those things.

And but I will say on the cooperative management thing he was ardently supportive of that, saw the merits of an ecosystem management concept, which I think in retrospect many agree had it been done prior to establishment of refuge in the Arctic – Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which was before all this of course came about. But had that been termed the (inaudible) for example and people say well we’re going to allow oil development only if it does not do violence to the Porcupine caribou as determined by the biologist, not the petroleum engineers I think people would have been acceptant.

It is when you start doing things in areas that are in people’s mind so pristine that you shouldn’t allow anything. And what we’ve tried to do subsequently we’ve modified what traditionally a park doesn’t allow hunting, ah, but we’re going to allow it. And by that action it permits me by virtue of my rural residency in Lake Clark. I can go sheep hunting in Lake Clark. Only wish I could, but I couldn’t do it anymore, but by virtue of my rural residence. Not that I need it, not that I’m any more (inaudible). Hey, there’s something wrong with that. I by virtue of my rural residency theoretically if there were a caribou subsistence use only season imposed on the North Slope, I could go up there and participate. A Barrow Native who has done it all his life now is living in Fairbanks couldn’t. There is something really wrong with that.

There are means of adjusting remedying that which I think – I don’t know whether a governor wants to resurrect it, but he when I was asked by him to meet with him here during the last legislative session and over which I expressed apprehension having not supported him in the campaign I thought there might be a little residual resentment but for my (inaudible) and so forth. And he was very convivial and much more open minded than I expected him to be.

In fact when we got through he said I’d like to hire you as a consultant. At no pay of course but transportation per diem. First thing I’d like you to do is give me a history of subsistence. So I ferreted out about a dozen articles I had done, filled in the blanks and so forth and he was very appreciative of that. I hope he’s not going to take that up I hope in the near future.

But there are ways of solving that rather simply that would accommodate the concerns of both the true subsistence needs and the legitimate concerns of the Dick Bishop’s and some of the outdoor council that again appreciate the outrageous disparity between letting someone like myself, not needful of going on the North Slope and they can’t. You know there are qualifications we can’t – Wally Hickel to credit him came very close. He had my idea the subsistence issue solved if the legislature had only gone along with his proposal and it did require however a small constitutional amendment.

He had appointed a subsistence task force of which sat heavy hitters from the Native community Mitch Demientieff, Mancy Etta (?), Byron Mallott; on the other side Dick Bishop, John Burns, Charlie Cole. We came up with a plan that a 100% support of everybody on that, unanimous. But it required a small constitutional amendment. The Natives, some of the more (inaudible) Natives frankly want federal management because the feds could say the Natives only. And if you think we got disruption in the ranks now, you do something like that and the cooler heads prevail.

Well these gentlemen on that task force recognized that. They were willing to support this thing but they said we still would like the constitutional amendment to amplify the subsistence uses or the prime use. And Wally said I’m going to hold that as a bargaining chip with Manuel Lujan, the then Secretary of Interior. I’m not sure what his motives were but he didn’t submit that amendment and the Natives backed off then in supporting the basic provision before the legislature and it went down hill. I think resurrecting Wally’s initial approach with some modifications could resolve this subsistence issue to the point you wouldn’t even be talking about five years.

Terence: Jay, so do you think that the – cause you had – what was your thing – eat it where you shoot it didn’t was that you?

Hammond: Eat it where you shoot it?

Terence: Yeah.

Hammond: That was – I had said that what we should do is not deny anybody from elsewhere the opportunity to come down say hunt and fish in the Lake Clark area, but you don’t haul it back to where you came from. You stay there and consume it. And that’s where the eat it where you shoot it or something came out, yeah.

But the last plan that I presented – I was back in Washington. My wife and I were walking past the Interior Department. Bella said why don’t you go up and see Babbitt. I had known Babbitt long before he was Secretary of – before he was governor. We were both governors at the same time. And I said you can’t just go off the street and see the Secretary of Interior. You got to get an appointment. If you know Bella, she said go ahead. So we went in, went through security and he called us to come on up. Gave us his whole lunch hour.

And while there I bounced off of him the proposed subsistence amendment. He said hey (inaudible) I can buy that but where are the Natives. I said I don’t know, but I’ll find out. I went to Julie Kitka and Byron Mallott. Byron was pretty receptive. It was along the lines of ecosystem management as I mentioned before. And Julie had been locked onto an AFN position, no amendments to ANILCA. This required a slight amendment to ANILCA, but now it is going to be that much tougher to solve because too many of the Native people are perfectly happy with federal management. They don’t want to go back to state management. I think I the long term that is a disservice to the state’s resources because it is a bifurcated management system that is going to get increasingly chaotic.

Terence: And I think Jay looking back I think that’s the biggest failure in (inaudible) statehood, losing the right to control you know I mean more than anything else, but that’s –

Hammond: And I would suggest this. Insofar as to adopt, incidentally the amendment I’m talking about (inaudible) off guys like Fred Dyson, who was all for it; Bishop who went back as I say to the ecosystem management thing didn’t preclude the possibility of people from elsewhere participating and that they could jump through certain hoops which was the basis of all of these proposals. And my counsel to the governor would be that put that out in the form of a constitutional amendment. Along with the legislature which would implement it.

See one of the problems; let me give you an example of the abuses that could occur if we don’t do this. We don’t want to say the only time that they can impose this subsistence use only (inaudible) is when the harvest, traditional harvest, over say the past five years cannot be met. If they do as the feds said, that you have to set aside the opportunity for every resident in one of these areas to harvest say a moose. In the Lake Clark, Iliamna area where there may be a thousand people and their average moose harvest over the year has been say 50, suddenly you have to reserve a thousand moose before everybody, including women and children, have an opportunity to harvest one. That way, before anybody else could come in and participate. Total abuse of the intent. That has to be structured into the implementing legislature. That is what is going to prevent abuses.

It can be done and almost everybody I’ve talked is pretty much in accord with it. But the Natives will never collectively support it. Individually I think those that recognize that bifurcated system and the hazards it poses for the future will, but I’d say governor put out the ecosystem management – not ecosystem management but the subsistence approach that I mentioned before, along with the implementing legislature. Let it stand or fall. If they vote it down, fine. If they vote it in, you’ve got in place a system that I think would take care of everybody’s legitimate concerns. Now those that want to grab it all for themselves aren’t going to be accommodated under that so they are going to fight it.

Terence: I think you’re right. The only way that most of the Native groups would give up the federal management is that they feel that that federal management is more of a threat than state management. You know, I mean who knows the federal could always change and they could change their policies and say no you know Friends of the Earth you know.

Hammond: One of the aggravations that led to the Natives’ position and I can understand this, I put in the bill that created the local Advisory Committees. The problem with the local Advisory Committees is they perceive in themselves as having virtually no meaningful input. We make our recommendations and the main board ignores us. Somehow we should upgrade the capability of local people making local decisions that don’t adversely impact the interests of statewide.

Give an example. Down in Bristol Bay one year there were five regulations dealing with such things as how far a set net should go out from the beach, whether they ought to be perpendicular to the beach. Things that nobody – who cares – Barrow and Fairbanks. The board deliberated these things for who knows how long. I have suggested and I demanded it when I was governor because I thought it might create too much of a bureaucratic structure, but if we had given these areas, say seven areas of the state regional boards comprised of seven – the chairman of seven Advisory Committees with powers to enact and actually implement legislation that had no adverse impact on folks from elsewhere. If it did, then it went to a master board comprised of the chairman of each of these groups.

Sounded like two ponderous political complex. But that I think would have alleviated much of the concern on the part of the Natives now because they would have a say as to how these things are managed to a much greater degree than they experienced in the past. The frustration is what has led them to believe we want state management. Too late to do anything about it? I don’t know. I think it is worth a try but let’s lay some of these other things to rest like fiscal gaps.

Terence: Oh, just two more things. One is I didn’t ask you about Joe Vogler.

Hammond:Joe Vogler.

Terence: We should say something about him. What – because he ran against you, did he run in ’74, did he? I don’t know if he ran in ’74.

Hammond: I think he – he may have run twice. Joe Vogler – my first encounter with Joe came at one of these so-called press conferences with – who was the little guy that had the newspaper in Fairbanks?

Terence: Or Tom Snap.

Hammond: Yeah, Tom, yeah, Tom Snap. And all the gubernatorial candidates were there. And I had read some of Joe’s Letters to the Editor and knew something about him but not very much. And old Joe got up and we all made our presentations and at the end of it Joe came past me and he says, Hammond, you know if I can’t win this thing, I kind of hope you do cause you the least worst of those other guys, least worst.

Then I said something to the effect later on – at some gathering other you know I’ve heard something that Joe had said about me that I was supposing he was posy-sniffing swine and I thought that was a colorful appellation. I kind of appreciated Joe’s use thereof. Maybe a Tom Snap thing and he came up later. But I found out only a short time before – I think it was after Joe’s death I saw a congressional – where that statement of his had originated was at a congressional hearing that Joe was attending. And what he had said in full context was this – though Hammond may be a posy-sniffing swine; he still was not in the hind pockets of the oil companies. And from Joe that was praise indeed, but how a little bit of shift and Joe and I really became quite good friends. I saw him about two weeks before he was murdered at some function up there and I admired the old guy – gutsy, cantankerous, and maybe off base –

– Break –

Hammond: Providing access to different locals but he had in his last campaign he was much more reasonable and he also – he and I shared another very significant interest and that was that of commonwealth status. Joe was an advocate, fervent advocate of commonwealth status. All I wanted to look at it. When I become suspicious when people won’t lift up the rocks and look at things and because they wouldn’t even let us talk about it virtually back then was another reason I voted against statehood. I did not idealistically, but I didn’t like what I felt was being obscured.

Terence: And right there’s no doubt that statehood was like a religious fervor wasn’t it I mean in the 50’s, wasn’t it I mean?

Hammond: Well yeah, it was the kiss of death to oppose statehood theoretically and you know again Rampart Dam was of the same magnitude and again I’ve always been on the opposing side of the issue of the moment.

Terence: Okay, I want to ask you now – this is one form of question, but how do you, you know, particular your kids and the people of Alaska because you know you’re really well so admired and you’re probably the most admired politician, you know against your better wishes, in Alaska, but probably in Alaska history, probably the most beloved I’d say. But how would you like to be remembered? What do you think that – how should Jay Hammond be remembered? What – because we’re talking to the teacher here now, so that is what this is supposed to be?

Hammond: Well I would hope that if I’m remembered at all that it be on the basis of having put the concerns, future concerns of the state ahead of either of my election or the short-term interests of the state and hopefully had persuaded us to adhere to that mandate in the constitution to develop our resources to the maximum benefit of all Alaskans and if we make a few small steps towards that objective that will be worth enough to me.

But I – you mentioned some time – one time somebody asked me – he said geez to what do you attribute your late found popularity? Polls seem to indicate that you’re much more popular than you were back in the days when the Anchorage Times and the Teamsters and all sorts of folk were bombing you. Clem Tillion said that he had the quick answer for that and that is that nobody knew exactly where Hammond stood. Everybody thinks you’re with them.

And Lee Jordan, the frontiersman had a newspaper up here in Palmer, wrote an editorial. I’ve got a framed copy of it and it is my wife’s favorite and it is along that same vein. He said I first went to hear Hammond speak I was fascinated. I sat there and I would write things down and I’d listen a little further and I’d cross them out and I’d listen further and I’d cross it out and I’d listen further and cross it out, but I came away bedazzled with what he had to say. And I’m riding back with Sam Cotten and Randy Phillips (doorbell).

– Break, doorbell –

Hammond: And Lee Jordan and Randy Phillips and Sam Cotten are riding back and talking about the presentation I’d made. And they all were very much impressed and favorably disposed of what I had to say. The only thing none of them could agree as to just what it was.

And perfect example of that is the Kanagan blast. I don’t do this calculatedly, but the Kanagan blast. Do you remember that? When they were going to detonate an atomic device in the Amchitka Island. Well I had spent some time years ago incidentally transplanting sea otter – capturing and transplanting sea otter. Anyhow, the legislature was being caught in a bind. Hey kids.

Terence: Wait.

Hammond: Kids.

– Break, kids arrive home –

Terence: So we were talking Kanagan blast, anyhow the legislature is being bombed by both newspapers for not taking a stance either in support of or opposition to. The development oriented Anchorage Times of course was of course demanding they come out with a resolution in support. The conservation oriented Anchorage News said they come up in opposition. And we’re doing our usual dithering dance not wanting to offend anybody and not coming down on either side and getting hammered unmercifully by both papers and all sorts of interests throughout the state.

So I wrote a resolution and I took it first developmental interests – Ron Redrick and Jack White and Carl Brady and what about this? And they looked at it, yeah, that’s fine. I can go with that. And then I took it to Lowell Thomas, who headed the conservation minded types, and said how about that, Lowell? Yeah, great, I can go with that. Passed unanimously. Passed unanimously.

The Anchorage Times, that of course came out in the afternoon, wrote their banner headline – Legislature Supports Kanagan. The Anchorage News that comes out in the morning – Legislature Opposes Kanagan. The Anchorage Times literally took their first edition off the shelves and restructured their headline – Legislature Didn’t Know What They Were Doing or something. Well they knew exactly what we were doing.

What I did I handled it the same way I did ANWR with the Audubon people. You lay out what everybody on each side subjectives are and cite instances that if they are accommodated of course and the essence of the Kanagan thing was if it didn’t do what the environmentalists were concerned about, which of course the developmental people were assured it did not and consequently if it showed or demonstrated the feasibility without doing environmental damage everybody – there was nothing in it you could attack piecemeal.

As a consequence that happened at that level. Then when I was back as a member of the National Audubon, another prime example of exactly the same thing. Audubon was being hammered on by Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society come out with an adamant opposition to ANWR.

And a fellow by the name of Scott Reed, an attorney from Idaho and myself who had kindred kind of perverse sense of humor, wrote a – mind you now on the Audubon Board there are two oil development – John Whitaker who worked for Wally Hickel was an interior one and I don’t remember the other one, we wrote a resolution which passed unanimously. These guys did essentially the same thing. Hey, if this occurs and that doesn’t and so forth who can object and so forth.

And they went back to their corporate board rooms and got thumped about the head and shoulders. That is like saying no to ANWR. Because while everybody agreed and individually each of these should be done, the likelihood of them being done was virtually nil. So it was conditional yes or conditional no, but it was defensible. I could come back to Alaska because everybody up here would agree that you should do these things, but the likelihood of them occurring frankly was not very great.

Anyhow they came back then these oil company guys determined to amend that resolution and change it around. We marched them through this drill again piecemeal, well don’t you agree? Well yeah. Well don’t you agree now? Well – passed unanimously again.

Liz Razback, who was a lobbyist for Audubon, wrote me a letter. She said would you write that up. I was really impressed with your arguments. Would you write them up in a form of a letter to every congressman? I’ll present each congressman and senator. I said Liz you remember what those arguments were. I don’t. I had too much on my platter t the moment, you write up what you think is an appropriate letter and I’ll review it and if it’s appropriate, sign it. And she did and did a pretty job. I edited it slightly and it went to every congressman and senator.

The first thing I heard when I thought boy I’m going to be in real big trouble. I get a letter from Mo Udall. Mo Udall, bring in this note and it said, hey, right on target as usual. Great idea. And I thought oh, wait a minute, what am I going to hear from Don Young. The next thing I heard was from Ed Weber, the president emeritus of the Sierra Club in San Francisco. Just saw your letter in the San Francisco Chronicle or whatever to Don Young. Wonderful.

Woo, I never heard a heard a word from anybody. I thought the congressional delegation or the Anchorage Times would thump or bang me about the head and shoulders, never did. But because you could piecemeal it and each individual item you couldn’t oppose.

Well subsequently the Sierra Club, I mean Audubon, after I left, they knuckled under. They came out with an ad, but no, the things I had in that resolution are things that all should be done. In other words whereas one of the things was a study by National Science Foundation verified the fact that ANWR oil was crucial to the nation’s energy needs and whereas congress was persuaded that it could be developed in such a way as not to endanger the Porcupine caribou herd and whereas which congress of course has been so – but who can object to that. And that’s the way you get things done of that nature rather than coming down adamantly on one side or another. And hopefully the same thing – I’ve developed 20, 20 positive actions that would occur in the wake of fiscal gap resolution that I proposed, that Halford most recently said tell me one of those things that wouldn’t occur or couldn’t occur under that rather than simplistically arguing pro or con you got to develop the pieces and put them together finally.

Terence: Well you know Jay that’s an interesting cause –

Terence: Okay. Why I think that we’re about done. But that is just skills of legislator though too and executive. You know your time in the legislature really –

Alaska Statehood Pioneers: In Their Own Words

Episode 10: Jay Hammond (part 2)

Episode transcript

Opening Titles.

Narrator: By 1974, Jay Hammond had put in 12 years as a state representative, senator, and senate president. He was mayor of the Bristol Bay Borough, where he flew and ran a guiding business on the side. Despite his ambivalence about being a politician, Hammond went on to be a two-term governor who oversaw the creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund, the dividend program and, to his chagrin, the repeal of the personal income tax.

Intertitle: 1974 – “Conned” into Running for Governor

Jay Hammond: When I ran the first time, I said I’m not spending a nickel of my own money, this is ridiculous not a chance of winning. And as you may or may not know I was conned into running because of a call from Ron Somerville. …

Ron Somerville was a biologist, Fish and Game Department. I didn’t know Ron very well, but I was weathered in down in Naknek with one of my clients fisherman. And I got this phone call and picked it up and Ron Somerville. He said a few of us sitting around think you ought to run for governor. By the time I stopped laughing I said to him Ron, I’m not at all interested in bleeding myself white financially for the privilege of saying I ran unsuccessfully for governor. Forget it. And he said and he got to talking further and he said well would you consider it if we put together a campaign organization and came up with some funding? I said well that’s the only way I’d ever consider it. He hung up.

So the next time I flew into town I met with my campaign organization, all six of them. I don’t even remember who they were. I think Av Gross, Ron, maybe Terry Gardiner, Clem Tillion, about six people. And I could tell that all of them had been told by Ron that I would run if they’d do these things. And again being a sucker and not having guts enough to say, hey, I never promised and turning my back on it, I knew they’d all leave there thinking I had broken a commitment. So when I found what we had in the bank committed in the way of funds at that moment $800 I agreed to run. Thinking well I’ll run for a week and I’d go back to the hills where I belong.

I was running against Hickel, Egan, and then Miller, all three of the governors and I had no business winning. I had no fear of winning. I frankly had no aspirations to win to be quite frank. I had a good life on the outside of politics and I recognized that whoever was governor in the coming years was going to be confronted with several major very divisive issues, but I was happy to have the opportunity to sound off on what I thought were key and important issues and since I didn’t really care whether I won I could say anything I wanted to and I very much liked that. And oddly enough as old Jay Kerttula, who was a consummate politician who understands these things much better than I, he assumed somehow that I’m the most brilliant political mind he’d ever encounters said, “Hammond you do things that should be politically suicidal and they seem to turn around and accrue to your benefit.” He was convinced that I carefully orchestrated and calculated what this move — if he had any idea of what dumb luck went into everything I did. Nothing I planned to do in politics worked out.

But they were indulgent. Then it started to change. When Hickel and Atwood and Carr came up bombing me. I had more people tell me I don’t know anything about you but anybody that has got all those guys against him can’t be all bad. So I subsequently thanked them later when I became more comfortable with this for playing the key role in my election. But it was – you could sense the change. You could just feel it shifting. And I walked into a store one day and a guy looked up and he said, hey, you got my vote. I saw you on television. Let me tell you any guy that has got guts enough to wear a beard and run for governor has got to be different. Unlike these other guys who are clean shaven and try to convey the impression of honesty and integrity and we know they’re crooks.

Anyhow I sensed the change and I knew I was going to win the primary.

Bill Egan was a warm avuncular figure who of course endeared himself to Alaskans by his recall of names as much as anything. And being the total opposite I stood in awe of his capabilities cause I forget names and faces, the whole smash. You probably have heard my story about during the campaign a fellow came up to me and stuck out his hand and he said, hi, Jay, how are you? No, he said, hi Jay and then noticed my blank look of non-recognition. And he says you don’t remember my name do you? I said the heck I don’t I just can’t place your face. I’m sure Egan got another vote, but I was terrible at it, terrible at it. And he was superb. I had many people say I don’t know anything about Bill Egan but he never forgets my name. But Bill had enormous concern and passion for serving the state and did a magnificent job of it and warrants a huge niche in the history of Alaska.

We were scheduled to meet in Fairbanks at a PTA or some gathering, there were hundreds of people there. And I knew exactly what Bill would do. He came armed to the teeth and prepared to really work me over. Do you remember this? So anyhow I got to speak first. He was going to be cleanup. And he’s sitting there just kind of glowering at me and I started off. The audience knowing there is going to be firestorm between us. So I started off by saying well you know I want to tell you of the enormous regard and respect I have for Governor Bill Egan. And if I have to be defeated by anybody, there is no one that I’d prefer to be and I outlined some of the things he had done for the state. I could see the audience visually warming up. This isn’t going to be a firestorm after all. And I kept plumping his cushions and saying all these kindly things about him and then I finally walked over to him, so all I can say Governor I want to wish you luck but not too much. So I sat – he got up and of course Bill had this prepared speech in hand. Got up and started reading this thing, lambasting me, excoriated. The audience is sitting there aghast, how can this guy respond like that to this kindly – I bet he didn’t get a vote other than his own.

That’s the sort of thing that makes campaigning fun and I love it when that opportunity presents itself.

These guys — Wally was a wonderful, wonderful opponent because he took himself so seriously. And of course viewed me as an irreverent clown of course and which I’m sure a lot of folk did. But most of us take us too seriously and pose tempting targets because there is nothing I prefer to do then prick pomposity’s including my own and they are in abundant array as you know out there on the political horizon.

Oh, one time I was at a press conference that asked all the governors about their qualifications and desires for running for governor. I was a tail end Charlie. And they go through – Wally Hickel, why he thought he was most qualified to be governor and he outlined the fact that he had been governor and Secretary of the Interior, successful businessman. And Tom Fink when through his drill. And I think Chancey Croft and Jay – there was a little black guy who was running, and I was the last guy. And they said why do you think you’re most qualified? And I don’t think for a moment I’m the most qualified Alaskan to be governor. I’m sure there’s a multitude out there more qualified than I. Isn’t it a shame none of them are running? Oh they had Wally and Ernalee on camera and he’s listening indulgently until that moment and they both just clapped.

Intertitle: Governor Jay Hammond, 1974-1982

Jay Hammond: I really didn’t want to win. And I have to confess election night was one of the most miserable nights of my life. It felt like prison doors were clanging shut behind me. And I had – I felt like a monstrous fraud because here my campaign people who were working so hard on my behalf, I’d surge ahead a little bit and I’d have to show elation when I ah no. Then I’d fall behind and I’d feel better about it, not a chance of winning and they’d be of course down in the dumps and I was just the opposite.
Then I won just barely.

I could never win under today’s circumstances. People ask me what you spent on your campaign. What I contributed my own campaign. Nothing. I contributed a thousand dollars for one campaign and recouped it when I got – from return – I’m a little embarrassed and ashamed some of these people say well you knew what your campaign was worth. You weren’t willing to contribute but still – you have probably heard this story about I went to a fundraiser or allegedly a fundraiser. I was sent to one and I was supposed to ask people for money. I said ah, the last thing in the world I could do is ask people for money. I’d rather wrestle naked on the courthouse lawn at high noon than ask anybody for money. And some guy in the audience says Hammond I wouldn’t give you a nickel to your campaign but I’ll pay fifty bucks for a ringside seat at the courthouse. Well I never found any worthy or willing opponent so fortunately I never had to fulfill that commitment.

It was a certain point in history that the only time that I could have snuck in. A few years before – what had happened it was in the wake of Watergate. People were really turned off on traditional politicians for one thing. They were very apprehensive about what the pipeline was going to do and the Native land claims were going to do. There was a lot more environmental concern than ever had been evidenced up here and I of course again suggested we should buy back the Kachemak Bay leases because there was in improper process in my view of public input and so forth. And of course that was terribly controversial and when I bought them back I was dammed roundly as the prince of darkness by many folk, but have you ever heard a subsequent candidate say if elected I shall reissue leases in Kachemak bay – no. And even Don Young and Stevens and company ardently supported to buy back in Bristol Bay at one time. Now that’s kind of quiet but – so things have changed.

But I’m always out of cycle.

And I was being castigated for having appointed Democrats – Ab Gross and two or three others to my – or some others to my administration. And I said well I wanted …

Diversity into my cabinet and so I calculated these – selected some developers and conservationists and developers and conservationists, Democrats and Republicans and I brought both of the latter here with me. I only had two Republicans in my entire cabinet. Rest of them were either Independents or Democrats. …

But I’m glad I did now. I tell you had I gone out in that first year, gone with a whimper. I had a 43% approval rating is all. Didn’t have a high disapproval rating, but I don’t know if you’re familiar with what happened during the interim so far as approval ratings. David Sawyer, is that name familiar to you – internationally famous pollster. He come up and he done a poll during the ’78 election. He said he came up with 43%, I had something like a 9 or 18% disapproval. He said your disapproval isn’t high, but your approval – you can win but it is going to be tough.

And anyhow we won it as you know and then he came back four years later to do a poll for Terry Miller, who was contemplating running. Same questions asked. He came into my office and he said I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of experience. You went from 43% approval rating to 82% in four years time. He said it almost doubled – your approval and I was doing the same things, saying the same things, but I was saying it directly. Bob Clark got me on television. It was the first – we’re going to have you saying it in everybody’s living room directly so they hear it from you rather than the Anchorage Times likes to translate it and so forth. And I was doing the same thing, saying the same things, but the people were understanding it and apparently far less disapproving.

So I’m glad I stuck around for the second four years. And it became kind of fun, twisting the legislative tail and you can move and shake you know. They talk about lame duck being emasculated, you can move and shake in that second term so much better and without the distortions of what you’re up to that are now incumbent upon those who want to run against you, the newspapers may be against you, why bother? They can afford to look at what you’re really up to and why, they don’t have to put their own spin on it to make you look bad you’re not going to be there anyhow. That’s where the big difference is and I started to enjoy the second term and maybe when you start enjoying it, it is the proper time to get out.

Intertitle: Creating the Permanent Fund

Jay Hammond: When I was campaigning for governor I tried to promote the idea of Alaska, Inc., which was a shareholder owned investment account and spun off dividends. Every Alaskan would receive a share – I wanted to actually issue shares of stock and each year you’d accumulate another share and you would earn more dividends. And when I became governor I formed what I called the Alaska Public Forum, primarily to showcase that throughout the state. And I went throughout the State arguing in behalf of that approach and the public response was a massive yawn. There was no interest in there at all. Crackpot idea, crazy.

Well there were a few people in the legislature that saw the wisdom of taking some of the money off the legislature smorgasbord and put it into an investment account. And among them primarily were people like Oral Freeman and of course Hugh Malone and Clark Gruening, and Terry Gardner and a number of people in the legislature, Chancey Croft. And they discarded the name Alaska, Inc. And put out their own bill, which they called the Alaska Permanent Fund, had no dividend appended to it.

And I remember Johnny Sackett came up to my office. He was not favorable disposed at that time to the whole concept I don’t believe, as many politicians are not because if they don’t have the money to spend they have to extract it back in some form or cut budgets. So naturally it is not very popular with those in the legislature. But he came up and he kind of growled in my ear and he said that’s nothing more than that permanent fund – that’s nothing more than your damn Alaska, Inc. I said on the contrary John it is nowhere near Alaska, Inc. It has no dividend and it by no means permanent in my view because statutorily constructed fund will be invaded the minute they need money. It has to go in the constitution.

So then we wrote a bill that put it in the constitution requiring a vote of the people before they could touch a nickel. But I thought about trying to put dividends in the constitution, but I was biting off much too much. I knew it would never fly with that….

Anyhow it did go on the ballot. The people to their great credit voted it in.

As far as financial, just funding anything was a real, real problem. As it was when I first went into office a lot of people don’t realize that in my first four years in office we spent less money than Bill Sheffield’s first term all together my first five years in office. Now of course we had the money and in my last years of office we spent much, too much and the only reason why I didn’t veto more than I did out of some of the legislative proposals, which one year incidentally came – if all the legislation that had been introduced passed came according to Chuck Cleshoal. He was my walking computer, 18 billion dollars worth of appropriations. Now mercifully most never saw the light of day but of those which passed I vetoed a billion six million, which again according to Cleshoal is more than any probably all the other governors combined. And we still spent too much. Why – because we couldn’t put as much as I would have liked to put into the permanent fund. In order to get any permanent fund we had to let them spend some, save some, and invest some.

Intertitle: Impermanent Dividends

Jay Hammond: I had pondered how to distribute benefits from the earnings of the permanent fund. And I thought what is it everybody needs, everybody has to have food, shelter, power generation, probably gasoline and so forth. Maybe we ought to parcel these dollars out in some form of health insurance or some universally required service. But then I thought wait a minute you know your needs are different than his, than hers, and so forth. The easiest way to do it is just give everybody the wherewithal to select for themselves how to do it.

What I think — we had another incidence of a dividend program that many people forgot about. The permanent fund dividend program was not the first one. …

It related to gas, a gas tax. We had a severance tax on gas that I think was half the national average on natural gas. And there were suggestions that the gas tax be raised to at least the national average because while some of the gas was being utilized here in Alaska, most of it went to Asia as I recall at that time. Why was the severance tax kept so low? It was to accommodate the prime users here in Anchorage. And when I suggested we double the gas price, the Anchorage legislators came out of the woodwork to say that is outrageous. We can’t support that it would affect our constituents.

So I drew up something that I called, it was kind of an offer they couldn’t refuse. …

I said okay if you vote this tax in we’ll give you 100 percent residential property tax exemption. They had voted to tax it. Okay, so I thought well wait a minute why don’t we do this. Why don’t we raise the gas tax up to the national average, which I think was double, we will then give everybody in the state, not just the Anchorage gas user. Why shouldn’t the people in Fairbanks or Ketchikan, Juneau, Barrow get the same sort of benefit. We’ll give everybody a $150 credit against their income tax.

But I did see a potential for doing something that I failed to do in Bristol Bay and that is creating a stockholder owned if you will investment account that spun off dividends using as the basis our resource wealth that in my view belongs to the people.

And I tried to do it in Bristol Bay, was successful in establishing quote what you might call a permanent fund but they didn’t append the dividend program to it. And as a consequence as I fear will happen to the State if they somehow damage the dividend program, which is the major protector against invasion and dissolution of that fund, it went out the window. They ultimately spent their $12 million permanent fund on a swimming pool in Bristol Bay or Naknek and now they’re broke. They have 41 homes for sale and people are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship in many instances.

Then we have to fight to get the dividend. And the dividend that first went into place unfortunately where I made my mistake was to presume that why shouldn’t the old-timers that have owned “those resources” since statehood in ’59 get one share of stock for each year their residency just like the new timers will get them for their share of ownership. That’s where it fell down. A couple of new comers came up here and concluded that they would not get as much as the old-timers would initially. Although in the long term ironically in the long term the old-timer for example we arbitrarily set the value of the dividend at $50. So 21 years before that bill went into affect would have accrued $1,150 to every old-timer the first year whereas the new comer would only get 50 bucks. Outrageously discriminatory was their conclusion.

Anyhow they failed in the State Supreme Court that supported our position and Justice Rabinowitz at the time said have you gone prospectively, you should share as a thought earning dividends into the future rather than in retrospectively. No problem. That subsequently was repeated by other attorneys as recently as a couple of months ago.

But there are other ways of doing clearly, clearly legally. I think I mentioned before what we could do and what we should do we announce this year this is the last time for the foreseeable future anybody can qualify for the permanent fund dividend. Let’s call it dividend A. Open the door everybody has to have the chance to come in and qualify. Then we close the door after next year and we don’t know when we’re going to issue dividend B. It may be when the permanent fund grows by a certain percentage. But it does so, and then we divide the number of people, Dividend A recipients, and the new comers into the overage, that 10 percent or whatever increase in the permanent fund’s market value, and that is dividend B. Old-timers get dividend A and B. New timers only B and so far into the future. You do that you have eliminated the magnetic attraction of many people think have lured a bunch of freeloaders up here. And embarked on a program that I think gets back to my original intent I hear people say well original intent of permanent funds rainy day account. Bull feathers. That word was never even mentioned back then to my knowledge. Why would we call it permanent fund? The CBR is what the rainy day account is. And look how it’s being treated. You’re obliged by law theoretically to repay any moneys loaned from the permanent fund. Since no dividend appends to it, who cares. Nobody pays any attention. It is going down and down and down, but if your dividend went down at the same time the way those people spent that money, the public would rise up in outrage. That’s why you have to have a dividend program to protect the permanent fund.

We did get something and we did get a dividend program but then it got what I call zovolized which totally distorted and abused it in — to the degree where I even thought about after the Supreme Court decision, I very briefly thought about vetoing the bill. But then I concluded it was far better than nothing and – but I refused to sign the – I’m the only governor that has never signed their permanent fund dividend check. I don’t know if you know that. I had my commissioner of administration sign them.

… I didn’t sign them. I was that disgusted in the manner in which it went.

According to the World Bank, every other state and nation, except Alaska, has made mistakes in handling their oil wealth. We have done the best job because of the dividend program largely.

And as Vernon Smith, economist, says it should be an example for the world to emulate and Alaskans ought to be extremely proud of it because it is a whole new concept of people owning the resources and government having to take the money back from the people instead of government getting the money and parceling it out in socialistic programs. It is exactly the opposite of what some people term the dividend be socialistic, it’s capitalistic in extreme. And of all people who want to be supporting it are the so-called conservative Republicans. Ironically, who do I find most supportive are the Democrats. These so-called tax and spend. It’s all screwed up in people’s minds.

Intertitle: 1979 – The Income Tax Repeal

Jay Hammond: When it was proposed that the income tax be repealed, the legislature of course was almost unanimously aboard. I think only one other person than Clem Tillion. Clem Tillion opposed repeal, somebody else, who neither Clem nor I could remember who it was. But I remember arguing before the Chambers of Commerce at both in Anchorage and Fairbanks. I said you people condemn us for living beyond our means. Now how do you correct that? You either reduce your living or you increase your means. You repeal the income tax you’ll do just the opposite. You’ll not only reduce your means, but you’ll cut the major constraint on spending. You’ll severe the connection between the public’s purse and the politicians. And spending will soar into the stratosphere.

Oh, no, and somebody came to me – so we – I said suspend it, reduce it, but don’t eliminate it. So Michael Coletta, Clem Tillion, and I conjured up a bill that would have in essence suspended it in this manner. It said the first year you pay three-thirds of your income tax. The next year two-thirds, the next year one-third, and then it is suspended for you. So newcomers, pipeline transient workers, so forth would pay the full rate but then it would gradually decline. And some news reporter came to me and said well what will you do if the court strikes that down? Will you permit the income tax to become law? And I had said at the time repeatedly I thought repeal of income tax was downright stupid. Well it wasn’t a very popular (inaudible) as you may recall.

Well you know I find it a little ironic that those prime advocates of income tax repeal frequently are those most opposed to the dividend program asserting that it lures freeloaders up here and so forth. My heavens the freeloading we get because of repeal of the income tax outweighs the freeloading you get from dividends tenfold; 87-½ percent of our oil revenue goes out in what I call dove — government dividends, hidden dividends, hidden dividends that affect you differently than he, than she, than him. And I never hear them complaining about that being an attraction that brings folk up here. To me the best way to remedy that sort of thing not to take from the one program that equitably distributes our oil benefits to shift money from it as some of these people would do with the type of endowment they would have to ship money from the equitably distributed program into the inequitably distributed programs that affect different people differenly. We should do exactly the opposite as Vernon Smith suggested. Cremo suggested. I suggested. Tillion and Halford. Take the money out of the pot the legislature can spend – we should put the 87-½ percent into the permanent fund and the 12-½ percent instead of vice a versa if anything. But they are so, so scared of an income tax and so determined to not pay anything directly that they’ll kill the dividend. And in the process if they kill the dividend, even if they pass the 50/50 split of this endowment, five years from now everybody will receive roughly $600 less in dividend. Has exactly the same effect as imposing a flat income tax on every Alaskan and only Alaskan. The most outrageous income tax imaginable is the reversely graduated income tax that takes more of these less money you make takes a greater percentage. …

If they only understood it, they wouldn’t dream of not reimposing some sort of tax and leaving the dividend alone.

But boy, I read an editorial in the Voice of the Times. Worst thing we ever did was that dividend program. Terrible because – why do politicians dislike it? Because it compels them to look at either budget cuts or new revenue enhancements, and how much more comfortable not to have to do any of that. If they get rid of that dividend, and the door to that permanent fund swings open, and nobody’s gonna care when they dip into it. And its as I say, nirvana for them for years to come.

Intertitle: Hammond’s Tax Proposal

Jay Hammond: You know a lot of people say, huh, terrible the public has suddenly assumed that this is the permanent dividend fund, outrageous. They better recognize that’s exactly the way the public perceives it and play to that in this manner.

A bonus is given to you by your state for your ownership share. It does not penalize productivity in any way, shape, or form. And if we did that we might have on paper what appears to be one of the highest income taxes in the nature, most Alaskans would pay nothing. And it would – but you have to then do something to dissuade people from coming up here attracted by that big dividend. So it’s a three-part deal. You do an endowment that generates nothing the dividend dollars, you put in place a feature that would what I call demagnetize the attraction and also provide for a mechanism to call all those moneys back, which could span those things alone could span the entire fiscal gap right now, right now.

The situation with resident and nonresident right now is allegedly that roughly 25% of the payday made in Alaska is made by nonresident, fisherman – transient pipeline – construction works, and so forth. And they are of course paying anything for the price of admission. And to me that was one of the reasons for retention of an income tax if structured properly. An income tax could capture that. For example, what would you think of an income tax that took not one red cent from Alaskans’ earned incomes, only from those nonresident transients? We could do that. The capped income tax could do that. It wouldn’t take a nickel of their earned income. It would only draw down on — depending on the size of the dividend of course — the more you get in dividends the greater under capped tax would be the amounts of money gleaned from that capped tax.

Now why I concluded the capped tax might have some viability is when in 1999 when the question of whether or not the legislature should be allowed to use some of the Permanent Fund earnings went down by a smashing 84% or 83%. A number – I was at a Rotary Club meeting and some fellow stood up and he said I don’t mind losing my dividend but I’ll be darned if I want to pay an income tax in order that the great unwashed can get theirs. He didn’t put it quite that crudely, but that’s what he meant. And I said well how many agree with him? And almost every hand went up. And I said what if we capped your income tax so you didn’t pay any more than your dividend. You’re willing to lose your dividend, but why take everybody else’s along with it that can’t afford to lose it. Well, he said I could live with that. How many agree? Virtually every hand went up.

You want to talk about local hire and the impact of how we address it or couldn’t address it. That’s another beauty of this capped income tax. Think of what it would do in conjunction with an endowment program spun off an everly increasing dividends. That is one of the concerns of many people. What if the dividend grows to thousands and thousands of dollars? No problem. We might have what on paper appeared to be the highest income tax in the nation, but no Alaskans would be paying a nickel of their earned income, but think of what the outsider. He could not compete with the Alaskan labor market who could work at a much lower rate than the outsider. Wait I’m not going to Alaska my gosh they are going to take 50% of my pay. He pays in spades. I think that would have an enormous impact on local hire. I don’t know, but that’s another spin off. But again you would – you have to let that dividend go upward and upward and upward, but a very substantial tax to bring it back.

So I don’t know it is going to be a tough to do, but I know there is no question in my mind that if the public understood it, 90% would support even those who are fearful of an income tax because a capped tax how can you argue that it is taking stifling productivity and taking away my sweat of the brow income. If it doesn’t and it would not, but how do you get that across in the brief period of time we have.

So those are the sorts of things that have to be done to make this thing work and it is going to be a tough sell. It takes smarts to understand it.

Intertitle: Another Hammond Administration?

Jay Hammond: One time somebody asked me – he said geez to what do you attribute your late found popularity? Polls seem to indicate that you’re much more popular than you were back in the days when the Anchorage Times and the Teamsters and all sorts of folk were bombing you. Clem Tillion said that he had the perfect answer for that and that is that nobody knew exactly where Hammond stood. Everybody thinks you’re with them.

And Lee Jordan and Randy Phillips and Sam Cotten are riding back and talking about the presentation I’d made. And they all were very much impressed and favorably disposed of what I had to say. The only thing none of them could agree as to just what it was.

I would hope that if I’m remembered at all that it be on the basis of having put the concerns, future concerns of the state ahead of either of my election or the short-term interests of the state and hopefully had persuaded us to adhere to that mandate in the constitution to develop our resources to the maximum benefit of all Alaskans and if we make a few small steps towards that objective that will be worth enough to me.

Closing titles.

Credits:
Recorded January 4, 2004, in Anchorage.
Hammond Died August 2, 2005.

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Episode 8: George Sundborg

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Episode 9: Jay Hammond (part 1)

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Episode 10: Jay Hammond (part 2)

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