History

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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. …

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.

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. …

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 wasn’t shaped up right, no dividend program.

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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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 permanent 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 –

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 on 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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. I asked for fighters. I got assigned to flying those old OST2U that were catapulted off a battle ships and actually float planes, actually good training, but everything I got I didn’t ask.

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. 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.

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 (inaudible).

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.

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.

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.

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 (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.

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. Let’s get on to something else.

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.

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. Fixed it up and then Fish and Wildlife Service decided to charge me rent.

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

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 –

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).

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.

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 formed a borough.

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.

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 hold 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 $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 –

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.

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.

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.

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 … 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.

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. And another one that worked there with me was a great basketball player Pete Anginsich. A great big tall giant of a man.

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.

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 while I was head of the Development Board. And that created a lot of antipathy you know. You know how in a small town like Juneau everybody is measuring people against one another you know. What did they make and how come and so on and so, it became difficult.

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.

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.

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.

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 and in that fight Gruening was persuaded by Republicans most of whom lived in Fairbanks, but also by people like the then Secretary of the Interior –

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.

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 and she would remember our getting that telegram and so on. So they subpoenaed her.

– 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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

– 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.

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, but.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. And of course it was informal enough that you could do that too.

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 –
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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 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 (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 –

Episode transcript

George Rogers: I said I want to get an island that the things that are brought in and out are defined, that I can simple enough that I can grasp how the whole thing operates and then I got to Alaska and said… This is my island.We were building a state and it just inspired all kinds of people and all kinds of people came here.

And I think that statehood sort of lifted us from the colonial status because we had rights, we had things that we could enforce, we could control our own destiny.

So that was bringing together Alaskans that had never had a voice before. That’s what made it so remarkable.

Narrator: George and Jean Rogers came to Alaska in 1945. They built a home, raised a family and were very active community members in Juneau, where they lived.

George’s academic background and advanced degrees allowed him to work as an economist, professor and researcher. During his long career he held local public office, worked for the federal and territorial governments and started an academic institute. He was one of those who helped pen the state constitution and was a Pioneer of Alaska Statehood.

George Rogers: I was born in San Francisco in the Patrilla District. If you know San Francisco, you know what that is, in 1917
I went through the usual school system, which in those days was not the sort of thing we have. The Patrillo District was a place where new Americans came in – Irish and Italian. And my mother was Australian and my father was of Cornish descent. So I spoke with an Australian accent which they assumed was English, which gave me trouble on the playground, but I became an Italian and I survived.

The Irish bullies move around in a group, but one thing about a bully he never stands alone. And they would pick out someone like myself who was different than the others and the whole thing was that they make a circle and knock you down and kick you. And then if you fought back then they could really clean up on you, say well he hit me first. Well this time I landed and my hand fell on a rock and I stood up and swung up – his name was Glen Noland, I hit him on the left temple. And head wounds bleed and all of a sudden blood was squirting and I dropped the rock, stood there, he started crying. Everybody was horrified. The playground monitor grabbed me, walked me into the school and I had to stand in front of the class this is a vicious person stay away. Well, the next thing I knew I was put in a speech correction class. And I came in and there were just Italian boys there and I said what are we doing here. He said well you talk funny too. So we became very good friends and it was a long story. I’d go into about how the head of the Italian boys – they had the poor young woman who was the only lessons she had was for stutters. So she went through this whole thing of having us sit at desks, pull down the blinds, and we said slow speech is easy. She said now imagine you’re in some sort of situation very peaceful and you’re walking along into the woods and it is all quiet and then she said now one of you tell what is happening. And the leader of the Italian says I was walking along and the birds were singing and I walked into this river and all of a sudden there was a rustling and a tiger lept out at me. And we all started laughing and she said no, no and she burst into tears. That was the last speech correction class I was in, but I had bonded with the Italians so I could stand over with the Italian boys with my hands on my hips and say okay you Irishmen come over here we’ll take care of you. So at that point I had an escort home. I was never bothered and I also had the reputation of being a very vicious person, but I have loved Italians ever since.

At age 12 we moved out of the district into the Sunset District and unfortunately this high school was a polytechnic high school and the name tells it all. I majored in mathematics, architectural drafting, and physics. The rest of it was Mickey Mouse work or working on the lathe or in a foundry or something like that. But that gave me the basis for my future education, the math particularly. I had inspiring teachers, two of them. And I never forget Ms. Worman, who was an old lady said children mathematics will make it possible for you to see the unknown or the unseeable, invisible. And that stuck with me all these years. Yes, that’s right. So I really rolled up my sleeves and went all the way through calculus before I went to college. I was into college in mathematics.

That’s 1934 I graduated, after the depression. My dad was only working part time. I had two younger brothers. So my job was to go out and find a job and that was very difficult. But I wandered into Standard Oil Company in their downtown office. I was answering an ad for messenger boys, Western Union messenger boy. I didn’t have a bicycle. I didn’t know the difference. But I walked across there thinking I might get a job in a service station. And the man behind the desk said well son this is the headquarters, but let me see your high school transcript. And he looked at it. I had straight A’s in math. He said if you don’t have anything to do we’d like to give you some tests and that was the beginning of my whole career. I took two hours of tests. I got home and my mom said they want you.

So I put what they call the Economics Department. I didn’t know what economics was, but was part of a human computer. There were half a dozen kids like myself that were picked up because of our aptitude and analytical abilities and we processed statistical data. And I was there until 1939. The war started. My dad was working in the shipyards. My two brothers were drafted and so I said now I can go to college.
I actually started the spring semester which was in 1940 and the courses they were still teaching post Kings, I mean pre Kings and as a matter of fact it was almost as though they were forbidden to talk about Kings in economics. I had already read his books so I knew what they were. We were back at the turn of the century neoclassical economics. And I thought this is ridiculous. Fortunately, the only thing that kept me is they opened up an Institute of Business Economic Research and I applied for a job. Well they said you’re a freshman, we’re looking for graduate students, but I showed them my Visa and it happened that if a freshman was doing an in-depth study of the Pacific Coast Petroleum Industry. So I was hired as one of the first – one of their first research assistants to work on this three volume study of the Pacific Coast Petroleum Industry. So I leaped frogged into graduate work right there. Then I got to talk to the faculty on a person-to-person basis and because of my architectural drafting ability I could make beautiful charts and diagrams for their learned articles. So I was in great demand for that too. Everything I did I was able to use later on. And then the next professor that took over was a young graduate Ph.D. from Columbia who had done studies of business cycles and broken down into sub national levels. And they didn’t even have a course in business cycles at that time and he instituted that. So he became my mentor for the rest of the time that I was at Berkeley. He went to the office of price administration. He pulled me over there with him and that is how I got into the war work with Office of Price Administration.

What happened at Berkeley you had no student housing provided by the state or by the federal government except if you were foreign student you had international house. So that the only alternatives you had was to go to one of the Greek houses, the flats for the sororities or you were at the mercy of the private sector so called which were little old ladies who had rooming houses and they were pretty tough little old ladies.

Well during the 30’s some of the students that were there before decided to set up a student co-ops and the ones that we were in one was the Methodist Church were into what they call social action Christianity so they decided that co-ops were the way to go, the middle wave (inaudible) and that sort of stuff. Good old days before people were scared away by being branded as a communist because you thought of something different. Once they did they turned their recreation dining area which wasn’t being used anyhow to the student co-op. They found themselves the Three Squares. And there was an eating co-op and then they picked up houses. The boys were in a what had been a frat house back in the 1870’s and 80’s. And they went to work and fixed it up. We all did chores and so that is where we got by. But I became – because I knew double entry bookkeeping I became the treasurer for both the co-ops. Kept the books. I didn’t have to do any work shifts. I was a white-collar worker. I was part of management.

George Rogers: And Jean arrived from Idaho. She sent her money in early and she –

A $10 deposit.
They had a get together you know the way they do to introduce everybody around and there were a lot of junior transfers to Berkeley. They encouraged that and when I met George I said isn’t it fun for you to put the faces to those ten dollars you got? And he said yes.

And of course the way he tells it he made up his mind to marry me early on but my – the girls at the girls house think I just chased him right down into a corner. You see he was a mutual thing, been kind of a mutual thing ever since.
And when she walked in, I said to my roommate. He said well what was she like? I said well she has the body of a high-class model. I’m sorry Jean. She has the best looking legs this side of Marlena Dietrich and she has a smile that lights up the whole room. And Vernon said to me, George, I think you’re in love. And I was. Then we got to know each other-
I had my studies all worked out. I was going to do it in two years. The reason I could do it – is I thought I could do it, is if you read the fine print if you maintain a B plus, A minus average you can take as many credits as you could work in, but you are supposed to get your faculty advisor to approve this. Well my faculty advisor was a dolt, he said he took my thing, I was taking chemistry. He scratched it out and he said astronomy for non-major. And I said why? He said well it is a snap course and it is full of sorority girls. I said well that is not exactly what I was looking for but okay I’ll do that. And sure enough it was full of sorority girls. Jean kept saying George why are all these pretty girls talking to you, but that’s another story.

But I had put as my minor not political science cause I read some of the things this is Mickey Mouse. I took English literature. He said why are you taking English lit? Because I want to get an education while I’m getting my degree. And I had signed up for the course – it was a survey course for majors. It was a five-minute course and Jean was a junior transfer from Idaho. She had decided she better audit that course. So I came into chemistry auditorium and a huge crowd there and I looked around for a seat. And Jean was wearing a purple sweater and a big smile and she had a seat next to her so I went right there and sat down. Then so after class she would sit – my class is a (inaudible). Well mine is too. Well her class was down at the other end but she walked up with me and from that point on we got closer and closer. I said I had already pretty much made up my mind.

But I was interested in getting away from economics that was being taught. I said I want to get an island that the things that are brought in and out are defined, that I can simple enough that I can grasp how the whole thing operates and then I got to Alaska. I said this is my island. Because everything that came in and out was measured and then I can just concentrate on understanding how the thing operated. How it adjusted to these forces and it was a very abnormal thing.

One of my professors said to me that you don’t want to study the normal, the successful economy, you learn nothing from that. Study the malfunctioning economy because you learn from what’s going wrong. And that’s exactly, yes right, but my idea of Alaska I knew after the war it is going to change. It was going no place before. Over 80% of the value of output was canned salmon and gold. The rest of it was just like miscellaneous stuff like halibut and a few a things. It was a two-crop economy, which is not a very stable economy. And it was dominated by absentee interests and it was sort of a traditional colony.

George Rogers: I was sent to Alaska because they had discovered that I could understand accounting, I could read what the Ph. D.’s couldn’t, so I had to teach them how to read balance sheets and that sort of thing. Then I was a troubleshooter. I went all over the Pacific Coast, took Jean alone, so we visited her parents in Phoenix and so on. And my final assignment was to go to Alaska. They said George the Department of the Army said we have a lot of Catholic boys in the Army, they want fish for Friday, you haven’t put a ceiling price on raw fish. We can’t afford to provide raw fish. Do something about it. So they said George go to Alaska and roll back the ceiling price, roll back the price of raw fish. Well fortunately for me I arrived and it was January 7th, wasn’t it Jean?

Jean: Uh-huh.

1945

George Rogers: So we came up with the Princess North, which was a lovely experience. It was like going back in the last century. The war was on but they had all the food that they used to have in the P&O, the Pacific and Orient. And they had full staff of the servants. The silverware was spread out and we had a wonderful time. And you got to know everybody on board.

That was a wonderful experience. By the time we got to Juneau we had learned a lot about Alaska just talking to all the other Alaskans that were going home.
Well it was a wonderful adventure and we thought we were doing we were doing our war duty and actually got here and there was all sorts of things that we hadn’t seen in Berkeley for a long time. Like steaks and eggs and whipped cream and even if it was Abescet.

Well we had signed on for two years, like all government employees do you know. And we found out that not only was it a (inaudible) town, although it was only about 6,000 people you know, but it had a flavor to it and besides as you know George found this to be an ideal spot to do this research was wanting to do. So it was just a terrific happenstance. We thought we were just really fortunate. And Mildred Herman took right a hold of me and said now just because you’re going to be housewife and a mother doesn’t mean that you can’t do public duties and volunteer your time and so on and so I’ve been doing that ever since.

But the streets weren’t paved. There were wooden sidewalks. We had a volunteer fire department, which we still have. And the way the volunteers were called is having at the top of City Hall there was a big horn that blasted out and they had a code you could tell where you were supposed to go. That’s where the fire was. You all jumped into your cars or you ran on foot to that place and you became a fireman.

We built our first house ourselves and we came back to Alaska with a book that George had that said How to Build Your Own Home for $3,000. And he can do anything he can read about, except plumbing. He said he wasn’t going to do the plumbing. So we managed to pay for the plumber to come, but he did all the wiring and he did it right. And I was only allowed to hammer things where it didn’t show because I was not very good with a hammer. Second under coatings but never anything on the surface that was going to show.

But let’s see when I went North at Anchorage the plane it was a Fairchild Load Star two engine. It landed – we had land at Yakutat. We had to land at Cordova. And each time we landed we had to stay for about an hour while the pilot got up his nerve to fly on to the next thing. We flew past the Fairweather Range and had to look up at the mountains. We thought we landed in the middle of town and we stopped right in front of a pie bakery. I hope they weren’t raising anything in the way of souffles and things. But that’s the way it was. The military establishment was there and they had their stuff, but this was a civilian thing. There were still 1930 vintage planes being flown.

And then from there I flew up to Fairbanks. I could have taken the railroad, but that was – took too long and besides it was the roadbed wasn’t too reliable. Fairbanks was just like landing in – back in the last century some place. The gold was closed down but the big dredges were all like a bunch of pasture full of dinosaurs sitting out there waiting to start chewing again.

George Rogers: The idea of a University in Alaska was one that appealed to me. Sure you could as one of the (inaudible) you could afford to give an area kid scholarship to any University of his choice and it wouldn’t cost as much as having a University and somehow we needed the University. I still believe that.

’45 I came up there – came into the main building and I was looking around for – and there was an old man with a push broom pushing and he had overalls on and I said I’m trying to find Dr. Bunnell and he said well he said you go down to the end of the hall there and turn left and that’s his office. So I went down the hall and turned left and here was this janitor sitting behind the desk. I was flabbergasted he said, well he said I’m trying to save money by doing the janitor work you know. But it was that sort of operation.

Well he was very impressed and I was impressed too because he was the governor. You could talk to him. He was a brilliant man. There is no question about it. And he convinced me that Alaska needed statehood and second reply was what the economic consequences of that were. And so what he wanted me to do is to work on a tax system with the territory. There are three taxes. He wanted income tax, property tax, and business license tax. The income tax he said this is the last one. I can’t get this passed. It was 120 pages long. I read the thing. I said governor you have been taken. This took the federal regulations and almost verbatim made them Alaska’s income tax.

I said why don’t we do this. Your income tax will be X percentage of what the federal tax would be on the income you are earning within Alaska. And I reduced it to 12 pages. It took two tries. The second try was passed by the legislature. I said no legislator in his right mind is going to pass a tax bill that is that thick that he can’t understand. And the governor bought that idea and it worked. It was written up in the Harvard Law Review. It was challenged. It went to the San Francisco Court and the judge there said this is a brilliant idea. And he said all the states should learn something from this. And a number of states have done versions of that.

When I went to work for Gruening it was with the understanding I would work for just three years to get the revenue program underway. I did other jobs too, odd jobs you know. Like the Mafia hires a hit man that’s the sort of thing I did. No, I didn’t, but basically he said to me George what are you going to do after this? I said I’m going back to Berkeley to get my doctorate. He said don’t do that. I’ll give you a recommendation to Harvard. They have a program of the Littower Foundation has a program that you could use. So I said okay. I’ll switch. I can go – where do you go from Berkeley, you go to Harvard. That’s pretty good. Then I went from Harvard to Cambridge, England and the Sorbohn too.

But the thing is that he did, but he didn’t want me go when the time came. And he was very reluctant to let me go. He said there is a lot of work here. I said well I’ll come back.
I got what they call a joint degree and it was called Doctor of Political Economy. And in Cambridge, England they don’t have economics they have political economy because they look upon economics not as a stand-alone science but as a means of managing things which makes a lot more sense.

Well Frank was a career man. He was highly ethical in everything he did. I have nothing but greatest respect for him, but he did everything by the book, which drove me crazy sometimes when I had worked for him. But he was a very principled man and he was dedicated to the beliefs of Gilford Pinchot and brought the tablets down from heaven. But yes I had nothing but respect for Frank.

In a way he was – I worked for him briefly for about two or three years. That’s another story, but he said that he was afraid that we couldn’t afford to support statehood. I said I agree with you, but that we are not going to be able to afford statehood until we get it because we don’t have control over our own destiny. So the legislature absolutely everything they did had to be approved by the congress. We couldn’t incur any indebtedness. There were lots of things we couldn’t do and you were in a straight jacket. You had to get rid of that. We had no lands that we could draw upon to get revenues from. So statehood would bring those things in. So I tried to argue with him that statehood would make it possible to afford statehood. He didn’t quite buy that.

For a while there was a commonwealth idea that was circulated. And Puerto Rico was a commonwealth and he said George research this for me. I have some friends who think we should become a commonwealth. So I did. I went to the (inaudible) and they said well what they do Frank is that you have charge – the local people have charge of everything. Defense is provided by the federal government. Everything else and he said well does that mean that the Forest Service would become a local? I said yes. That changed his mind immediately.

He was Republican and the Republicans as a whole were anti-statehood. Although during the Constitutional Convention they – very concerned Republicans worked very well on that..

We referred to Fairbanks as the heart remember, the heart of Alaska and that was sort of a symbolic thing was in the center of the land mass. And I think Juneau is ideal for the capitol because the capitol should be a place like in Australia they put it in Cambera in sheep country and in Brazil they put it in the middle of the jungles some place to get it away from the big centers so they could look at the whole thing.

George Rogers: The University was just beginning to feel its growth going there. When I first saw the University it looked like a Siberian penal institution. We had these wooden structures with a water tower which had a (inaudible) was tape playing up on top there and just reminded me of pictures I’ve seen in Siberian of these buildings. And this was this territorial days so they couldn’t go into debt.

He was very important in the first place in getting the whole thing going cause fair amount Tom Stewart. He had originally he was having been in the war he was looking for a way to eternal peace and he thought – he took up Russian studies. And then he abandoned them when he realized that he was dealing with more than he could handle taking on the Soviet Union. And he came back and he decided to push for statehood

Tom is the one who sort of went into local and territorial politics in order to promote statehood and he did it very systematically and very thorough and he worked very hard on this. He worked up the idea of the convention. He also worked up the idea on staffing it and bringing in a consulting firm that was top flight to tell us. He was determined to have what he considered to be a model constitution. We could learn from what mistakes had been made in the past. So he had devoted a lot of his time to that. When he was in the legislature he worked very hard to get the legislation for the convention, the appropriations, all those sort of things. And it was almost a single-handed job. He did it.

And I say this is what I think the fact that he was overworked. And then when he came to the convention and he was expected to be appointed to the secretary there were a couple of people stepped forward and set themselves up as candidates for this and for a while he thought he might lose out at the last moment, but that didn’t happen. He had that anxiety too.

But he did a terrific job on putting the convention together and this sort of thing was just overexertion. The doctor said to him he said you don’t have a heart attack. He described like there were iron bands across my chest. I couldn’t breathe. And he said what you should do is marry Jane. Jane Stewart he was sort of courting her and so he proposed to marry her and he came back and was a whole man.

Well actually the first month Tom Stewart had what they thought was a heart attack and Egan and Brovonovich appointed me to take over as acting secretary while he was gone. So it turned out it was just overworked himself to the point of collapse and then he was in good shape to finish up with his term but so I had part of the organization of it, the household things. The liaison with the military about providing color guard to come and open the sessions and things. I knew just exactly who to appoint to do that for me. I didn’t do it. Kept them out of my hair, but you pick out the ones that are going to be a nuisance and give them jobs to do and they are just delighted. When Tom came over it was all the nitty gritty stuff was put together, then the thing really went it and the second month is when things got done.

He was president and he was an unusual politician. He had this phenomenal memory. He would meet you in a crowd and come back 10 years later and say he remembered oh you had kids and how is so and so doing. He could remember these details. He didn’t have somebody prompting him. He was just incredible. When he was governor he would dress up like Santa Claus and go down to the supermarket and greet everybody. Things like this. He was the common man. He had a lot of good common sense and on the whole he was very trustworthy. He was just right for the job. He had his shortcomings too. We all do, but they weren’t – he was not corrupt in any way, just a – that to me is the bottom line with this guy. Real, this guy is honest, and he is ethical and he met all those things.

But Bill was able to let everybody speak their piece and he also knew when bring the – his gavel down and say you’ve had your talk now. Let’s move on to somebody else. He ran a very good show.

George Rogers: I was working for Frank Heintzleman. He just turned me over to them and said do whatever they want. And I did a lot of work on the natural resources provision on the apportionment (inaudible) because I was also – well I didn’t take any formal courses in geography, but I did a lot of reading on that. So I had this little handbook, regional handbook, which I designed, had reproduced for the legislators so they could – most people who were Alaskans only thought of the area in which they lived. Then they went outside. There was no sense of how we fit into this – the rest of Alaska. And bringing these people together because on the basis for the election to the legislature the distance for the judicial district – the Fourth Judicial District, which meant that the dominant city or town in each of the divisions voted everybody in, except for Bill Egan. He was voted from Valdez instead of Anchorage. There were exceptions, but for the most part it was like Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Nome. So this was the first time that the rural population was represented in any body like this. The people from Dillingham. You had a mix of people from the Eskimo community and Frank Baronvich was the vice president and the Tlingits are great orators. They know how to speak formally and he was – he added dignity to the whole proceeding.
So that was bringing together Alaskans that had never had a voice before. That’s what made it so remarkable.
not everybody at the convention was in favor of Alaska becoming a state but they went along with this idea because it was an opportunity to examine what was possible here and I got some very interesting feedback from some very conservative people on that. That was what that whole experience was just marvelous.

Statehood proponents were looking at the history of how other states came in. Tennessee, what they did – they didn’t wait for congress to act. They wrote a constitution. They elected their delegation to congress, sent the delegation to Washington, DC and demanded that they be seated. And then while congress recovered from this blow, they lobbied individual members of congress and it worked. They got it. So we decided that we would try that and it did work.

We had Ernest Gruening, Ralph Rivers, and Bob Bartlett. And they were all very good. Bob Bartlett was particularly good at politics you know. He was a master politician. Ernest Gruening was a showboated quite a bit and offended some people but nonetheless he was brilliant and when he spoke people listened. He was worth listening to. Ralph Rivers went along with the other two and he was okay. He was a common man out there. He could relate to a lot of people. We had a good delegation, a good mix of types.
this was before we had achieved statehood. We wrote the constitution at first and then use that as a gimmick to elect the convention delegation and sent them back demanding that they be seated. And then they hung around and were lobbyists for the – and it worked.

The field people for the most part that I knew managed the rules and a few other people like that were very sincere in trying to manage the fisheries. But when their recommendations were sent to back to Washington, DC representatives of the processors went back there and between them and the bureaucrats back there they determined what the management plan would be, regardless of what the biological research said about the resources. So they over fished and it was because of the federal mismanagement and I say I exempt the people that were working at the field level because they were totally frustrated by this being overridden by somebody who was making a profit from over fishing.

George Rogers: The other thing I was interested in that was why this was the management was by the federal government. There was no input from Alaskans in the fish management program in those days. So that gave me sort of a symbol of what Alaska was like under territorial operation.
This was a very efficient way of harvesting the fish. In fact, in my view it was the only way that salmon should have been harvested because the fish worked out to the runs. You could manage. You knew what was coming and going. You could control the escapement of the fish. You could then control the harvest. You didn’t have to chase mobile gear all over the place. And it was just perfect, but the trouble with the fish trap was that it was owned by the processors, the canners, and they were all outside interests. they were putting resident fisherman out of work.

Their – if they weren’t there my father could be fishing and that money would come to us not somebody back there. The trap was impersonal. It caught the fish and they referred as fish killers, well the fishermen were too, but it was a little bit rubbed off on them and they got a little bit of money from us, but the trap was too automatic.

It is interesting that when they repealed the – when they outlawed the fish trap, they let the Indians retain their traps. Traditionally Indians used the equivalent of a trap. They built a dam across the river that salmon would school up and when they had what they wanted, they then let the salmon out. Of course the Indians gave this a mythical sort of thing. These were the salmon people. If we didn’t allow some of them to go up, they wouldn’t come back again. So they went up to some never-never land where they became human, took human form. And so they had a sense of this and the fish trap that would be operated the same way. It would corral the fish into the stream. They would all sort out. You knew where they were going. It was ideal for management, but it was the ownership of the traps that made them mad.

The fish trap therefore is looked upon by most Alaskans as the dipper with which the large absentee owner appeared to skim with relative ease the cream of one of the regions most valuable natural resources and then carried away to the outside the fullest part of the wealth so guarded. That’s pretty poetic.

The theme of absentee ownership on the means of production and control over natural resources and the intended resident, nonresident conflict and resentment is a classic one inevitable in any area with natural resources to be developed and without local capital adequate to the job. This frequently as rational as it is inevitable for without the outside capital and the intended control of influence with local affairs there would be no development. And it is unlikely that even the alleged half loaf would be available to the residents. But it is nonetheless a real force in regional affairs in southeast Alaska this broad and almost abstract conflict has been given a sharp focus by the existence of a tangible object – the fish trap, which has come to represent the very quintessence of absenteeism.

The traps had long been the principal bete noire of Alaskan political demonology. The anti trap case has been emotionally elaborated and distorted to the point where even Alaskans who had never seen one really would readily brand them as fish killers. And at times would seem to look upon them as a very embodiment of the evil in this world. The story of the repeated efforts of Alaskans through their territorial legislature and territorial delegate to congress to have fish traps abolished as illegal gear or to equalize the alleged private and social costs through a differential taxation may not be decided here. The measurement of the popular sentiment regarding this controversial gear was taken by a referendum at the 1948 general election, which resulted in a territorial wide vote of 19,712 to 2,624 for trap abolition. The ratio of almost eight to one.

But now what is bete noire anyway?

Well that’s a black –
Black sheep or black –
Black – Raven a little bit.

No, that’s a terrible – that’s a beast – black beast.

Cause George says it is the Betenwah of Alaska.

I was showing off that I understand French.

Interviewer: I mean, did you think that there was a federal you know it was sort of incompetence on some of the agencies or what was you know like your view or Gruening’s view on because so many Alaskans want to blame out the feds.

George Rogers: Yes, yeah.

Interviewer: Do you think any of that is fair I mean that idea about the.

George Rogers: It’s one of the things you can’t generalize on. My first book, what I was studying there was the operation, the rule a bureaucracy plays in economic change and development. And I took the southeast region because it was one of the most bureaucratic ridden. Practically all the mining resources were under the forest service. The fisheries were under the Fish & Wildlife Service and then the Bureau of Land Management picked up the rest of it. So then the people, the Indians were all under Bureau of Indian Affairs. In those days they were a minority, but they are a very large minority, as you know.

So that representing – by studying those bureaucracies each one was totally different. Totally different in the way they were structured, in what their ideology was. The forest service wore Smoky the Bear uniforms you know. On the other hand they were the most decentralized. The regional forest was the one where the buck stopped. The Fish and Wildlife service they had agents in the field but everything was done in Washington, DC. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was organized on the basis of well most of their employees were former schoolteachers and their whole objective was to keep the Natives on the other side of the counter. I remember the first Native employees were brought in they were struck up in the balcony of the store front office so they would be out of sight.

So you had these different type bureaucracies all working at counter to each other. And so I couldn’t generalize on that. Actually I questioned it. I think the Forest Service were the best organized because they were organized on military grounds.

Also Gilford Pinchot was a saint. He knew what he was doing. He organized the whole resource thing with the working circle concept which was you look at the resource that this – at the hub there would be a community and this would be harvested so that by the time you finished the circle the new growth had come in so there would be a perpetual source of support for that hub. That’s the ideal and you did – had to do primary processing within the region. You couldn’t export logs. Exceptions were made later and – but it had an objective. You looked at the forest resource, it’s an old growth forest, which means that it is a mix of stands and so in order to really get at the good timber you couldn’t harvest it, you had to have a pulp mill which would use anything. That cleared it up and then you could harvest – you could afford to harvest the timber. At least that was the theory.

Phil Holtz and I were working at the Constitution Convention and he says, George, it is a good thing we’re doing – we’re writing this article now when the oil industry comes on the scene, they’d we writing the article. I think that would have been true.

If Alaska hadn’t become a state, the oil industry would have just come in and negotiated with the federal government with their buddies and they would have got a much better deal than they had here. They wouldn’t have to worry about taxation. They wouldn’t have an income tax on their earnings. They would have cut a better deal on the royalties and their leases. I doubt whether the Natives would have gotten anything out of this. Statehood did provide because they were citizens. They got a better status that many indigenous peoples under a territory. So I think it was beneficial. It created – well my dissertation at Harvard was the creating of an American polity. My faculty advisor suggested that title politic brings in the Aristotle and all the rest of it. But the idea that we created a government up here, a community up here, rather than just leaving it just a place you came up like a warehouse and took things out as you needed them, which is what we would have been.

George Rogers: When I was working for Standard Oil Company in the 1930’s the oil companies knew about the oil at Prudhoe Bay and I spoke to my boss about this. Why aren’t we developing that? He says George that is like having – saying that there is oil on the moon. We don’t know how to get it out of there. The seas would be frozen. The sea is too shallow for a tanker to come in to shore, which we discovered. I don’t know why they didn’t know that in the first place before they had that tanker come around and anchored miles offshore. They said it is there. We know it’s there and then we know that it is very rich. The Navy withdrew, but they always do when there is some new discovery, withdrew their reserves, but again that was just to be in case of an emergency. We’ll figure out how to get it out later.

And after 1950 something I decided that I would run for the local government. I was involved in local government for about 17 years. People just ignored local government in those days. It was and there weren’t a lot of things about government because it wasn’t as dominant as it became.
This was right after the statehood Constitutional Convention. I decided we’re not paying enough attention to local government. That’s where the government is as far as most people are concerned. And generally you had people who had – they were merchants they wanted to be sure that they didn’t put a no parking zone in front of their store and things like that, very earth shaking things. So I decided I would run. I got elected. Jean, took $25 out of her grocery fund so I could buy an ad.

And that’s when I discovered they didn’t have a double entry bookkeeping system. Literally the clerk had shoeboxes. And then the other thing I discovered is that they had – they didn’t have – I had more personal liability insurance than the city had. And the reason was that they wanted to do it on the cheap.

Well I made a few major changes there. I got a double entry bookkeeping. And they said well George we always have it audited every year. So I said let me see the audits. Well the first page says we cannot really do a proper audit on this with the records that you have on hand. We recommend that you institute you know. I said didn’t anybody read this. Oh, no, we just assumed that they signed off on it.

But again the state and then we had borough government too. And I also Mildred Herman with my boss at OPA insisted that we draft a charter, a proper charter, which I worked on the charter commission too. So I was in the business of designing of the local government also. And then we became the city and borough. I came from San Francisco which the city and county of San Francisco. So I knew how that worked and we could do the same thing here, which we did. So then I went on the borough assembly too. But it was total of about 17 years of local government I put in. And I said okay now it is time for some young person to come in and take over. I was still a young person but I felt somebody should take a turn. I had urged – I came out in public and said that any Alaskan who has any time should get into local government and make a contribution. And I think we have had pretty good government since then. And it was good. We have grown a lot. We had to become better.

It was right after statehood and the legislature directed me and the University to set up an institute of both business and economic research. So they turned to me and said would you do that? I said sure. So I designed this thing and for a while I ran it by myself. And I transferred the grant that I had from Resources for the Future with their approval to the University. And so we set up a pattern that I would bring in research money for my own research, they would take their overhead which was like 40 percent of what I brought in and I would be a faculty member.

That was an interesting experience too, but it was the University in transition. We just got Wickersham Hall that was built for the girls and then we had Chena Ridge was where the students would go and dig a hole in the hill and put a sod roof on it and they’d come in and use the gymnasium to take their showers and do their laundry and it was – but there was a sense of people trying to get an education there in that sort of rough situation, which I liked very much.

I retired at full retirement. I became an adjunct officio which was I would be paid when I worked on a piece basis.
They gave me an emeritus status, which was an honorary status as you know.

The term colony is a very tricky thing. You could say that the West today is a colony of the continent – of the rest of the United States and would be only partly true. A true colony is one in which the indigenous people had no say in what is being done to them and to their land.

George Rogers: In Alaska that’s not true. We have a lot to say, particularly with statehood. And I think that statehood sort of lifted us from the colonial status because we had rights, we had things that we could enforce, we could control our own destiny. A true colony was one which you simply go in and I use the idea of warehouse, pull it out, forget about the people who were there. They don’t count. They are just part of the wallpaper, but Alaska was never that sort of colony.

Under Russian rule, under the initial US rule, it was probably true because the indigenous peoples base of survival was wiped out or seriously damaged by the harvesting of salmon for example. It wasn’t until the White Act was passed – I think it was 1923 that the salmon resource was managed on the basis of its going to its source and coming back again, otherwise it was simply treated like a wasting resource, which it was. It was mined in other words, not harvested.

The big change came when we got the big money from the oil – Prudhoe Bay and it just all of a sudden things started changing. We lost our idealism. We lost the idea that we were working together, conservatists, liberals, everybody, creating a beautiful state and it became money grubbing on the natural element. You had the greed taking over in the 1990’s. You saw what happened to accounting. That sacred thing that I started with is no longer sacred. They know how to cook the books.

The state needed the natural resources economics, as well as special corner of the economic studies and there you look at a resource, renewable resources is one that you grow it back again – fisheries, forest, and so on and that sort of thing.

And minerals, petroleum, that sort of thing is a wasting resource. When you dig it out, you get rid of it, it is gone. It doesn’t reproduce itself. But if you look upon it when you sell the resource, not as income but rather a changing of the resource, a crude oil in the ground or metal to a resource cash that you invest and then the income from the investment becomes your income. And of course that is the basic underlying theory of a Permanent Fund, although it got all screwed up with other things like rainy day fund and a lot of other things, but as a economist I looked upon it as that it gave petroleum a life after death. And in theory at least if you knew how to manage your money it could go on in a permanent way. It became a permanent asset rather than a wasting asset. That’s the basic difference between a renewable and a wasting asset.

Well of course it was really fun when we adopted our first little girl. It was really fun when we adopted our last little boy. I don’t know I think there’s a state of mind in which you decide to be happy with what you have and I was certainly of that state of mind. Besides he’s a great guy.

Well he’s thoughtful. He’s courteous. He’s kind. He’s loving. He’s smart. He’s talented you know. He’s just a great guy. And he likes me. We still like each other.

Oh, it was a time of real thrill because we were building a state and it just inspired all kinds of people and all kinds of people came here. We met all sorts of interesting people here and I must have invited a lot of them to dinner. It was just a great and glorious time.

 

Full interview transcript

George and Jean Rogers
Interviewed by Dr. Terrence ColeTerence: Okay, today is, what day is today? September 22nd, right. Tomorrow is my birthday. Okay. And so we’re in Juneau at the home of George and Jean Rogers, where they have graciously allowed us to invade and talk with us. So first we’re talking to George Rogers. George, maybe you could just tell us a little about where you were born, where you grew up and …..George: That’s dangerous to ask an old man a question like that because we’ve become very garrulous when we get old.

Terence: That’s okay.

George: I was born in San Francisco in the Patrilla District. If you know San Francisco, you know what that is, in 1917 – April 15th, which used to be the Ides of – no that wasn’t the Ides of March that’s tax day, like the same thing.

Terence: Ides of April, yeah, right. And so you grew up in the San Francisco area right?

George: Yes, right.

Terence: How long did you stay – what was your early your education and stuff?

George: Well I went through the usual school system, which in those days was not the sort of thing we have. The Patrillo District was a place where new Americans came in – Irish and Italian. And my mother was Australian and my father was of Cornish descent. So I spoke with an Australian accent which they assumed was English, which gave me trouble on the playground, but I became an Italian and I survived.

But the other thing is that at age 12 we moved out of the district into the Sunset District and unfortunately this high school was a polytechnic high school and the name tells it all. I majored in mathematics, architectural drafting, and physics. The rest of it was Mickey Mouse work or working on the lathe or in a foundry or something like that. But that gave me the basis for my future education, the math particularly. I had inspiring teachers, two of them. And I never forget Ms. Worman, who was an old lady said children mathematics will make it possible for you to see the unknown or the unseeable, invisible. And that stuck with me all these years. Yes, that’s right. So I really rolled up my sleeves and went all the way through calculus before I went to college. I was into college in mathematics.

That’s 1934 I graduated, after the depression. My dad was only working part time. I had two younger brothers. So my job was to go out and find a job and that was very difficult. But I wandered into Standard Oil Company in their downtown office. I was answering an ad for messenger boys, Western Union messenger boy. I didn’t have a bicycle. I didn’t know the difference. But I walked across there thinking I might get a job in a service station. And the man behind the desk said well son this is the headquarters, but let me see your high school transcript. And he looked at it. I had straight A’s in math. He said if you don’t have anything to do we’d like to give you some tests and that was the beginning of my whole career. I took two hours of tests. I got home and my mom said they want you.

So I put what they call the Economics Department. I didn’t know what economics was, but was part of a human computer. There were half a dozen kids like myself that were picked up because of our aptitude and analytical abilities and we processed statistical data. And I was there until 1939. The war started. My dad was working in the shipyards. My two brothers were drafted and so I said now I can go to college. And that’s the nutshell of my getting up to that point.

Terence: So and it was just like you say a human computer (inaudible).

George: Uh-huh.

Terence: Doing the calculations, that’s interesting.

George: Well for example I learned all my economics there because we didn’t make models. We didn’t even touch a model. We just started with raw data, processed it, and worked out all of the (inaudible) variations and other things so that you got what basic trends of these statisticals. We didn’t know what they were but then we plotted them on semi log paper and we had stacks of these. And then the analysts came into the room and we watched as they put these all up. They looked for patterns that were similar by association and then they say what’s the connection between these two? What they were searching for were what were the things that were causing the economy to change. And from that they got some insights into what was happening, which I have always kept that became part of my education in economics.

Terence: Looking for the pattern.

George: The patterns, yes. And looking for strategic factors. Most economists – well I think they’re coming to that now. They have caught up with what I was doing back in the 30’s. And it was very important for me to do that because I also realized that we have a free enterprise system. It’s a market economy, but as I said later in my life it was a designer’s market. It was the major oil companies sat down and we gave them information that they sat down and negotiated. They looked long term. They weren’t interested in maximizing a profit but expanding the demand for petroleum products.

Terence: So not maximizing immediately?

George: Immediate profits, that’s right, yes. They would sell things. For example they kept the price of crude down at $3 a barrel until right just before the pipeline was built. Now that was unusual to do that, but it meant that they were in control. Then they divided the market up.

Terence: Well after you – this early experience, you went to UC Berkeley, right?

George: Berkeley, that’s right, yes. That’s where I wanted to in the first place but by this time I thought well I probably missed the boat I’ll be drafted. Of course I wasn’t, I was a 4F, but I went there and I came in.

Terence: What did you get the exemption for, George?

George: My eyes.

Terence: Yeah. Do you know what your eyesight was, what was it?

George: Well I was – if I took my glasses off, I had trouble seeing. I could see that you were there but you were a glob. I put my glasses on and that helped a bit, but I was never going to be a sharpshooter. I wouldn’t be very much use. In those days they actually shot rifles.

Terence: That wouldn’t be so great.

George: I took one semester of ROTC and then they decided I was hopeless. We were using World War I equipment and I loved the Springfield rifle. We had to learn how to take it apart blindfolded and put it back together again. Things that are very helpful in the sort of war that we were fighting then.

Terence: Yeah, the Army is always looking ahead isn’t it and they were fighting the last war.

Terence: I forgot, how did you become an Italian?

George: Oh, that was very interesting. The Irish bullies move around in a group, but one thing about a bully he never stands alone. And they would pick out someone like myself who was different than the others and the whole thing was that they make a circle and knock you down and kick you. And then if you fought back then they could really clean up on you, say well he hit me first. Well this time I landed and my hand fell on a rock and I stood up and swung up – his name was Glen Noland, I hit him on the left temple. And head wounds bleed and all of a sudden blood was squirting and I dropped the rock, stood there, he started crying. Everybody was horrified. The playground monitor grabbed me, walked me into the school and I had to stand in front of the class this is a vicious person stay away. Well, the next thing I knew I was put in a speech correction class. And I came in and there were just Italian boys there and I said what are we doing here. He said well you talk funny too. So we became very good friends and it was a long story. I’d go into about how the head of the Italian boys – they had the poor young woman who was the only lessons she had was for stutters. So she went through this whole thing of having us sit at desks, pull down the blinds, and we said slow speech is easy. She said now imagine you’re in some sort of situation very peaceful and you’re walking along into the woods and it is all quiet and then she said now one of you tell what is happening. And the leader of the Italian says I was walking along and the birds were singing and I walked into this river and all of a sudden there was a rustling and a tiger lept out at me. And we all started laughing and she said no, no and she burst into tears. That was the last speech correction class I was in, but I had bonded with the Italians so I could stand over with the Italian boys with my hands on my hips and say okay you Irishmen come over here we’ll take care of you. So at that point I had an escort home. I was never bothered and I also had the reputation of being a very vicious person, but I have loved Italians ever since.

Terence: Naturally. Okay. So you went to – go back to Berkeley, so you were there after your distinguished military career –

George: Yes, one semester.

Terence: – and so did you graduate in econ?

George: Yes. I graduated with (inaudible). I actually started the spring semester which was in 1940 and the courses they were still teaching post Kings, I mean pre Kings and as a matter of fact it was almost as though they were forbidden to talk about Kings in economics. I had already read his books so I knew what they were. We were back at the turn of the century neoclassical economics. And I thought this is ridiculous. Fortunately, the only thing that kept me is they opened up an Institute of Business Economic Research and I applied for a job. Well they said you’re a freshman, we’re looking for graduate students, but I showed them my Visa and it happened that if a freshman was doing an in-depth study of the Pacific Coast Petroleum Industry. So I was hired as one of the first – one of their first research assistants to work on this three volume study of the Pacific Coast Petroleum Industry. So I leaped frogged into graduate work right there. Then I got to talk to the faculty on a person-to-person basis and because of my architectural drafting ability I could make beautiful charts and diagrams for their learned articles. So I was in great demand for that too. Everything I did I was able to use later on. And then the next professor that took over was a young graduate Ph.D. from Columbia who had done studies of business cycles and broken down into sub national levels. And they didn’t even have a course in business cycles at that time and he instituted that. So he became my mentor for the rest of the time that I was at Berkeley. He went to the office of price administration. He pulled me over there with him and that is how I got into the war work with Office of Price Administration.

Terence: Who was that George? Remember his name?

George: That was Frank Kidner. He became –

Terence: How do you spell that – K-I-N-

George: You know Frank, good old Frank with a K. Like Frank Murkowski only without the Murkowski. And the Kid was K-I-D-N-E-R, yeah.

Terence: Okay.

George: And his great thing was that he was a labor economist. He became the great mediator that they used him a lot in labor disputes. He became a vice chancellor and he tried to get me to come back to Berkeley. In fact I was planning to come back and get my Ph.D. under him, but fate determined differently. I was going to do this. But I was interested in getting away from economics that was being taught. I said I want to get an island that the things that are brought in and out are defined, that I can simple enough that I can grasp how the whole thing operates and then I got to Alaska. I said this is my island. Because everything that came in and out was measured and then I can just concentrate on understanding how the thing operated. How it adjusted to these forces and it was a very abnormal thing.

One of my professors said to me that you don’t want to study the normal, the successful economy, you learn nothing from that. Study the malfunctioning economy because you learn from what’s going wrong. And that’s exactly, yes right, but my idea of Alaska I knew after the war it is going to change. It was going no place before. Over 80% of the value of output was canned salmon and gold. The rest of it was just like miscellaneous stuff like halibut and a few a things. It was a two-crop economy, which is not a very stable economy. And it was dominated by absentee interests and it was sort of a traditional colony. It outgrew that later. It became like one of the mountain states afterward, with oil and other things.

Terence: George, what is it – why was it like a traditional colony?

George: Well it was exploited. The indigenous people their basis of subsistence, which was primarily salmon, and fish was being completely exploited and actually people starved to death up river because the salmon didn’t get up to the interior and it wasn’t until the White Act. I think it was 1924 came in that the management of the resources so that the whole resource was managed not just the coastal fishing of it. And it left the Native people what the Russians didn’t do United States finished. And they just almost wiped them out because their resource base was wiped out.

Terence: How did it when you first came up, what year did you first arrive, I mean with OPA a little bit and then cause I wanted to ask you something about fishing and the difference the way the territory treated fishing and mining? Because I looked at the tax statistics, fish production versus mining was three to one.

George: Uh-huh.

Terence: By 1959, but taxing fish to mining was nine to one. Fishing was taxed at a rate three times I mean so but anyway before we get to that let’s a little bit about OPA and what was it?

George: I’ll back up.

Terence: Okay.

George: I was sent to Alaska because they had discovered that I could understand accounting, I could read what the Ph. D.’s couldn’t, so I had to teach them how to read balance sheets and that sort of thing. Then I was a troubleshooter. I went all over the Pacific Coast, took Jean alone, so we visited her parents in Phoenix and so on. And my final assignment was to go to Alaska. They said George the Department of the Army said we have a lot of Catholic boys in the Army, they want fish for Friday, you haven’t put a ceiling price on raw fish. We can’t afford to provide raw fish. Do something about it. So they said George go to Alaska and roll back the ceiling price, roll back the price of raw fish. Well fortunately for me I arrived and it was January 7th, wasn’t it Jean?

Jean: Uh-huh.

George: 1945. I just had time to do a quick study of the existing fishing industry, which this was completely new territory. I got a quick grand tour of Alaska and I settled down. I said oh my God, but they dropped the two bombs so the war was over so I didn’t have to admit that I couldn’t do it. But Ernest Gruening then picked me up and wanted me to stay on for three years as his economist and work on a revenue program for the territory.

Terence: So let’s when did you and Jean leave, we should go back and talk about Gruening and the economy. You guys met in 19 – you were married in ’42 is that right?

George: ’42, yeah. And –

Terence: Well how did you first meet?

George: Well this is a long story too. All my stories are long. Old men do this. And it is just one of those things, you can cut this out later. But what happened at Berkeley you had no student housing provided by the state or by the federal government except if you were foreign student you had international house. So that the only alternatives you had was to go to one of the Greek houses, the flats for the sororities or you were at the mercy of the private sector so called which were little old ladies who had rooming houses and they were pretty tough little old ladies.

Well during the 30’s some of the students that were there before decided to set up a student co-ops and the ones that we were in one was the Methodist Church were into what they call social action Christianity so they decided that co-ops were the way to go, the middle wave (inaudible) and that sort of stuff. Good old days before people were scared away by being branded as a communist because you thought of something different. Once they did they turned their recreation dining area which wasn’t being used anyhow to the student co-op. They found themselves the Three Squares. And there was an eating co-op and then they picked up houses. The boys were in a what had been a frat house back in the 1870’s and 80’s. And they went to work and fixed it up. We all did chores and so that is where we got by. But I became – because I knew double entry bookkeeping I became the treasurer for both the co-ops. Kept the books. I didn’t have to do any work shifts. I was a white-collar worker. I was part of management.

And Jean arrived from Idaho. She sent her money in early and she –

Jean: A $10 deposit.

George: A $10 deposit and there was something about the way she wrote that little thing. This sounds like an interesting lady. And when she walked in, I said to my roommate. He said well what was she like? I said well she has the body of a high-class model. I’m sorry Jean. She has the best looking legs this side of Marlena Dietrich and she has a smile that lights up the whole room. And Vernon said to me, George, I think you’re in love. And I was. Then we got to know each other –

Jean: In an English class.

George: In an English class, yeah. I took English as my minor because my –

Terence: Did you take that class intentionally?

George: No, no. This was part of my – when I had my studies all worked out. I was going to do it in two years. The reason I could do it – is I thought I could do it, is if you read the fine print if you maintain a B plus, A minus average you can take as many credits as you could work in, but you are supposed to get your faculty advisor to approve this. Well my faculty advisor was a dolt, he said he took my thing, I was taking chemistry. He scratched it out and he said astronomy for non-major. And I said why? He said well it is a snap course and it is full of sorority girls. I said well that is not exactly what I was looking for but okay I’ll do that. And sure enough it was full of sorority girls. Jean kept saying George why are all these pretty girls talking to you, but that’s another story.

But I had put as my minor not political science cause I read some of the things this is Mickey Mouse. I took English literature. He said why are you taking English lit? Because I want to get an education while I’m getting my degree. And I had signed up for the course – it was a survey course for majors. It was a five-minute course and Jean was a junior transfer from Idaho. She had decided she better audit that course. So I came into chemistry auditorium and a huge crowd there and I looked around for a seat. And Jean was wearing a purple sweater and a big smile and she had a seat next to her so I went right there and sat down. Then so after class she would sit – my class is a (inaudible). Well mine is too. Well her class was down at the other end but she walked up with me and from that point on we got closer and closer. I said I had already pretty much made up my mind.

Terence: Because of the bookkeeping?

George: Yes.

Terence: With the bookkeeping?

George: Yes, right.

Terence: The whole expression of your life, bookkeeping.

George: Yes, double entry bookkeeping, I’m for that. And I’ll give a little plug, LaSalle International Correspondence School.

Terence: Because that is how you learned it?

George: That’s right, I learned it. Very good.

Terence: When you were still a teenager, right?

George: Yeah, I was only out of diapers.

Terence: So let’s talk about – so when you came to – so you guys were married in ’42?

George: Yeah.

Terence: And then your first trip – was that your first trip to Alaska in January ’47?

George: Yes, that’s right, ’45.

Terence: ’45. So and did you and Jean come up on the boat together?

George: Oh, yes.

Terence: So by then did the rules against women sending them outside were relaxed and stuff?

George: That’s right.

Terence: Okay. So you came in on January ’47 – why don’t you tell us about coming up on the ship?

George: January and in those days the military had the preference of air – flying machines and we were stuck with ground and water transportation. So we came up with the Princess North, which was a lovely experience. It was like going back in the last century. The war was on but they had all the food that they used to have in the P&O, the Pacific and Orient. And they had full staff of the servants. The silverware was spread out and we had a wonderful time. And you got to know everybody on board because you were thrown together for a week wasn’t it, huh, three days. I thought it was longer than that, it just seemed like it. But we wanted it to go on.

Terence: So it was three days?

George: My wife says three days, it must have been three days. It was a very fast boat, but that was a wonderful experience. By the time we got to Juneau we had learned a lot about Alaska just talking to all the other Alaskans that were going home. They went on across the gulf and on up the railroad and so on.

Terence: Did you do any studying before you came up? I mean you know have to do any reading or background work for?

George: Well I did a little. There wasn’t much time. This was a fast thing. In 1937, the Natural Resources Committee was asked by congress to it an appraisal of Alaska and its resources and what the prospects were. That was the most valuable book I read. It was a really hardhearted look at Alaska and they sum it all up. The conclusion was that Alaska is no place and it is not going any place in the foreseeable future. And they were against trying to subsidize any growth. They said just leave it there. Let the market and normal economic forces to take care. Don’t provide any subsidies.

Well interestingly right after the war the successor to the Natural Resources Committee was directed by the President and the Department of Defense by that time to consider Alaska as a critically important outpost and that we should develop Alaska immediately as a national security thing. Now I’m getting way ahead of the story, but that is what they were going to do, use subsidies necessary.

Terence: But what was the successor to the National Resources Planning Board? That wasn’t the (inaudible)?

George: No, no, no. That was different entirely. This was one that – now my memory – it was the Natural – I think it was called the Natural Resources Committee. I can look it up but it was about in 19 – the war was still on when they came on so before ’45.

Terence: Okay.

George: But they changed totally they flip flopped from the ’37 report to this report. This is in the interest of national defense. We should subsidize the development of Alaska.

Terence: Right. Yeah.

George: As a strategically important thing.

Terence: Well you know even if – well let’s talk about the – you arrived in January ’45 and what were the conditions like when you arrived? Just tell us about the blackout and situations.

George: Yeah. Most of that had been over by that time because the war had changed dramatically, as you know. In fact the war was over back here. So that a lot of those restrictions were gone, but you still were in the sense of a wartime. This was a rest and recreation for the troops area and you had a very lively line down here, the red light district, which by the way was run by the city. All pimps were kicked out and the girls had to report every Wednesday to the medical clinic and they were allowed to operate openly.

Terence: Was there a tax up here? Did they have a city tax like they do –

George: They did a property tax, yes.

Terence: No I mean no prostitution?

George: No, no. They were considered as an asset to the community because they kept the boys away from the girls that were not prostitutes, but that’s part of it. But the streets weren’t paved. There were wooden sidewalks. We had a volunteer fire department, which we still have. And the way the volunteers were called is having at the top of City Hall there was a big horn that blasted out and they had a code you could tell where you were supposed to go. That’s where the fire was. You all jumped into your cars or you ran on foot to that place and you became a fireman.

And after 1950 something I decided that I would run for the local government. I was involved in local government for about 17 years. People just ignored local government in those days. It was and there weren’t a lot of things about government because it wasn’t as dominant as it became.

But let’s see when I went North at Anchorage the plane it was a Fairchild Load Star two engine. It landed – we had land at Yakutat. We had to land at Cordova. And each time we landed we had to stay for about an hour while the pilot got up his nerve to fly on to the next thing. We flew past the Fairweather Range and had to look up at the mountains. We thought we landed in the middle of town and we stopped right in front of a pie bakery. I hope they weren’t raising anything in the way of souffles and things. But that’s the way it was. The military establishment was there and they had their stuff, but this was a civilian thing. There were still 1930 vintage planes being flown.

And then from there I flew up to Fairbanks. I could have taken the railroad, but that was – took too long and besides it was the roadbed wasn’t too reliable. Fairbanks was just like landing in – back in the last century some place. The gold was closed down but the big dredges were all like a bunch of pasture full of dinosaurs sitting out there waiting to start chewing again.

Terence: What year of that?

George: That trip was almost immediately, wasn’t it Jean?

Jean: (Inaudible)

George: We didn’t know it at the time. We didn’t know anything about the bombs.

Jean: (Inaudible).

George: It was a little tiny (inaudible). Well I did it.

Jean: No, it wasn’t. (Inaudible).

George: Well the 26th was the – what I would do –

Terence: That’s terrible –

George: Well what I would do I would do –

Terence: What kind of advice was that?

Jean: (Inaudible).

George: The general theory – the general theory. And I had that under my belt and they weren’t even teaching it there.

Terence: That’s amazing George of not teaching (inaudible). It just shows how especially by the 1930’s how ridiculous that is you know.

George: I couldn’t believe it when I was asked. I almost dropped out of the whole program, but my friends who were on the faculty said hang around George it is going to change and it did.

Terence: We’re talking about fighting the last war.

George: Yeah.

Terence: You know I mean teaching 19th century economics, the eve of WWII you know. Okay. You mentioned something about being involved in city politics. Did you actually run for office?

George: Yes I did, oh, yes.

Terence: When was that?

George: This was right after the statehood Constitutional Convention. I decided we’re not paying enough attention to local government. That’s where the government is as far as most people are concerned. And generally you had people who had – they were merchants they wanted to be sure that they didn’t put a no parking zone in front of their store and things like that, very earth shaking things. So I decided I would run. I got elected. Jean, took $25 out of her grocery fund so I could buy an ad. Is that right, Jean?

Jean: That’s right. (Inaudible).

George: I think it was on that transportation thing. We were going crazy trying – the scene of the dog team. The jet planes kept flying out, yeah. Do it over again.

Terence: Okay, so you ran after the convention. You had thought about running for city – city council, what was it?

George: City Council at that time. We – this was before we had achieved statehood. We wrote the constitution at first and then use that as a gimmick to elect the convention delegation and sent them back demanding that they be seated. And then they hung around and were lobbyists for the – and it worked.

Terence: The Tennessee Plan?

George: The Tennessee Plan, yes, that was what that was.

Terence: But let’s catch that but let’s talk about the city. So you were elected to the City Council?

George: Yes.

Terence: What year was that, George?

George: Couldn’t say.

Terence: So after ’56 anyway?

Jean: ’48 or ’49.

George: No, no, it was after the convention. So you got the convention date, you’ve got it.

Terence: Yeah ’55.

George: When I came back I said I’m going to run for local government and that’s when I discovered they didn’t have a double entry bookkeeping system. Literally the clerk had shoeboxes. And then the other thing I discovered is that they had – they didn’t have – I had more personal liability insurance than the city had. And the reason was that they wanted to do it on the cheap. And they had the airport – this was a municipal airport by that time and I said this is insane. And fortunately at that time the insurance company that the local agent had bought from, a Texas outfit that went into bankruptcy. So I said let’s get all the insurance agencies together, which I did. We sat down and between them and myself drafted up what the requirements were for a proper bookkeeping system for the city. And then they all bid on that. They told me they said George the only requirement was that we get the cheapest insurance you could get. They never even looked at the policy.

Well I made a few major changes there. I got a double entry bookkeeping. And they said well George we always have it audited every year. So I said let me see the audits. Well the first page says we cannot really do a proper audit on this with the records that you have on hand. We recommend that you institute you know. I said didn’t anybody read this. Oh, no, we just assumed that they signed off on it. So I mean that’s – I had my work cut out for me.

Terence: Story of Alaska government, that’s a local government. So how long were you on the council for a couple of terms or how?

George: Oh, yeah. I went on then –

Terence: We’ll figure out whatever year.

George: Yeah, I can get you the itinerary there, but again the state and then we had borough government too. And I also Mildred Herman with my boss at OPA insisted that we draft a charter, a proper charter, which I worked on the charter commission too. So I was in the business of designing of the local government also. And then we became the city and borough. I came from San Francisco which the city and county of San Francisco. So I knew how that worked and we could do the same thing here, which we did. So then I went on the borough assembly too. But it was total of about 17 years of local government I put in. And I said okay now it is time for some young person to come in and take over. I was still a young person but I felt somebody should take a turn. I had urged – I came out in public and said that any Alaskan who has any time should get into local government and make a contribution. And I think we have had pretty good government since then. And it was good. We have grown a lot. We had to become better.

Terence: Oh, sure, yes, especially going from the shoe box to –

George: Shoe box. Had some cigar boxes too.

Terence: Well that’s much better.

George: All he did was make what we call a trial balance. If the columns added up that was fine.

Terence: Yeah, that’s an awful – well let’s go back to now when Gruening, first, in ’45, so you came with OPA.

George: Yes.

Terence: Was there a guy named Price? Wasn’t he the guy – no that would be too appropriate. He was the OPA. Who was the head of OPA? I forget. Ron Price?

George: No, it wasn’t Price. That was – for a while it was, oh my God I can’t think of the names of them now. There was quite a turnover of heads of the OPA.

Terence: Well there was a guy in Seattle right?

George: The guy in Seattle, yes.

Terence: I can’t remember what his name was.

George: His name might have been Price, yes.

Terence: Yeah, but it just occurs to me now Ron, his name is Price, but you’re right, yeah. But anyway, so you came in ’45. You were with OPA. And so you obviously met Gruening. So what was this – was that the first meeting with him in ’45 then?

George: Yes. Yes.

Terence: So what was that? And you hadn’t been to Harvard yet at that time?

George: No, no.

Terence: Okay. So what was your meeting like with him and your impressions of him?

George: Well he was very impressed and I was impressed too because he was the governor. You could talk to him. He was a brilliant man. There is no question about it. And he convinced me that Alaska needed statehood and second reply was what the economic consequences of that were. And so what he wanted me to do is to work on a tax system with the territory. There are three taxes. He wanted income tax, property tax, and business license tax. The income tax he said this is the last one. I can’t get this passed. It was 120 pages long. I read the thing. I said governor you have been taken. This took the federal regulations and almost verbatim made them Alaska’s income tax.

I said why don’t we do this. Your income tax will be X percentage of what the federal tax would be on the income you are earning within Alaska. And I reduced it to 12 pages. It took two tries. The second try was passed by the legislature. I said no legislator in his right mind is going to pass a tax bill that is that thick that he can’t understand. And the governor bought that idea and it worked. It was written up in the Harvard Law Review. It was challenged. It went to the San Francisco Court and the judge there said this is a brilliant idea. And he said all the states should learn something from this. And a number of states have done versions of that.

So when you’re doing your federal tax before you – while you’re still deep in that go back and change your gross income to represent the income you earned within the state and then use the same regulations and forms. The only thing that was required each year the legislature had to vote on delegating that bit of process to the congress. That was no problem.

So we had a tax that was understandable and it covered everything. The sales tax was voted – didn’t – its purpose was to try to tax income from nonresident seasonal workers. That didn’t pass muster. Oh there was a property tax but that didn’t pass muster because the canning industry knew that they were being targeted because they were outside the city limits. And so that – the business license tax is still on the books by the way so one of them survived.

Terence: The property tax – remember – it was repealed after four or five years. I can’t remember how long, but largely because the salmon opposition right?

George: They said it was unequal taxation or some sort of – lawyers have ways of doing this and they did. They got rid of it. Besides I thought that was a good thing anyhow. That should be reserved for local governments to use and the sales tax the same way too. I was against having a state or territorial wide sales tax.

Terence: Well what was the tax situation you know how could you sort of describe the tax situation that faced you when you first looked at it before we – what did you make of it, cause it looks like it was kind of a mess?

George: It was mess and things were outdated. Like dance halls were taxed on their square footage of the dance floor. Well who the hell had a dance floor these days? Breweries were taxed on the population on the area served by the brewery. And a whole lot of things. Undertakers were taxed on the population of the area. A series of little licenses like that. It just covered parts of the thing. There was no sense to this and there was – the only taxes that were really sensible were the mining taxes and the pack tax on the salmon industry.

And the salmon industry was really the backbone of the whole territorial revenues and Judge Arnold was the one who was – each session that I was there when they came to the final review of the budget they would say – the Judge would be on the stand and they would treat him like he was a member of the legislature. They’d say Judge do you have any suggestions what our budget should be? Yes, I just happen to have in my pocket and he would put it out and they would vote on it with him still sitting on the stand. I couldn’t believe that. But he was a very sharp guy. I kind of admired him in a way. He was able to talk them into almost anything. And he was one of those characters that you admire in spite of what he is doing.

Terence: As far as you mean he had the legislature in his hands?

George: Yes, he did, yes.

Terence: Of course not Gruening certainly?

George: No, no.

Terence: Gruening was –

George: Oh, no, no. He was the Satan of the whole thing.

Terence: Well now I’m curious, this – cause just as these numbers I’ve been looking at so if this doesn’t – wasn’t something you ever thought about or occurred to you. I’m just curious on your reflection on it. I found that the mining taxes were just a fraction of the fish taxes.

George: Yeah.

Terence: I guess it was a three to one total value and I know that’s probably not a fair way of looking at this gross value.

George: No, I think, yeah.

Terence: Because operating expenses were much different. I mean there is a lot of very heavy operating expenses in the mining, but the slight taxes on mining was this gross gold tax put in in 1938 and that these guys squealed like this was the most awful tax in the history of mankind. There was one had – Alaska Miners Association, as you may recall, the gross poll tax is a tax on courage. I thought that was a great thing to tax.

George: Yeah.

Terence: Courage.

George: That’s courage.

Terence: But why would there be they look at this differently. I mean what was fishing seen more as a nonresident occupation, is that fair to say or do you know?

George: Well, it was. I mean there was no tax. There was a head tax. Everybody that came to Alaska that was employed got hit with that, a couple of dollars I think, that was about all. And the mining industry was a hangover from the days when the syndicate ran Alaska, which was primarily mining – the Guggenheims and a couple of other mining operators. And so they had a stranglehold on the territory and on the revenue system. So the fishing industry never was quite organized that way. They also – the fishing industry did have control of the shipping because they were, but the Guggenheims also bought that over too because they were planning to smelt copper in Alaska and then export the ingots from there, but that was frustrated by Teddy Roosevelt who wouldn’t allow them to use the coal areas. That was reserved for the future. That’s a whole another story.

Terence: Right, right.

George: It was a holdover from the days the syndicate ran Alaska.

Terence: Right. But it was clear that the taxes and stuff was out of synch –

George: Oh yes.

Terence: With the economy, right?

George: No. It had nothing to do with the economy at all and it was – there was so many things that we not taxed that should have been taxed.

Terence: And the average person’s tax was just a head – the school tax?

George: Just a school tax about the only tax I think we paid when we first came here.

Terence: Which I think was like $5.

George: Five dollars I think it was.

Terence: So let’s about talk about serving general – we’ve got this sort of issue of federal control. How did you sort of you look and as being a guy who worked for OPA and of course Gruening worked for the Secretary of Interior too?

George: Yes, right.

Terence: But how did I mean did you think that there was a federal you know it was sort of incompetence on some of the agencies or what was you know like your view or Gruening’s view on because so many Alaskans want to blame out the feds.

George: Yes, yeah.

Terence: Do you think any of that is fair I mean that idea about the.

George: Well, I think it – one of the things you can’t generalize on. My first book, what I was studying there was the operation, the rule a bureaucracy plays in economic change and development. And I took the southeast region because it was one of the most bureaucratic ridden. Practically all the mining resources were under the forest service. The fisheries were under the Fish & Wildlife Service and then the Bureau of Land Management picked up the rest of it. So then the people, the Indians were all under Bureau of Indian Affairs. In those days they were a minority, but they are a very large minority, as you know.

So that representing – by studying those bureaucracies each one was totally different. Totally different in the way they were structured, in what their ideology was. The forest service wore Smoky the Bear uniforms you know. On the other hand they were the most decentralized. The regional forest was the one where the buck stopped. The Fish and Wildlife service they had agents in the field but everything was done in Washington, DC. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was organized on the basis of well most of their employees were former schoolteachers and their whole objective was to keep the Natives on the other side of the counter. I remember the first Indian employees were brought in they were struck up in the (inaudible) of store front office so they would be out of sight.

So you had these different type bureaucracies all working at counter to each other. And so I couldn’t generalize on that. Actually I questioned it. I think the Forest Service were the best organized because they were organized on military grounds. Also Gilford Pinchot was a saint. He knew what he was doing. He organized the whole resource thing with the working circle concept which was you look at the resource that this – at the hub there would be a community and this would be harvested so that by the time you finished the circle the new growth had come in so there would be a perpetual source of support for that hub. That’s the ideal and you did – had to do primary processing within the region. You couldn’t export logs. Exceptions were made later and – but it had an objective. You looked at the forest resource, it’s an old growth forest, which means that it is a mix of stands and so in order to really get at the good timber you couldn’t harvest it, you had to have a pulp mill which would use anything. That cleared it up and then you could harvest – you could afford to harvest the timber. At least that was the theory.

Terence: Yeah, well you know if – what was the role of Heintzleman, I mean did you run into – you must have run into Frank Heintzleman in the early years too?

George: Oh, yes, yes.

Terence: So was he the regional Forest Service?

George: He was the regional Forest Service long before we came he was there. I am sure he was appointed by the governor of Alaska by the other Republicans. Well Frank was a career man. He was highly ethical in everything he did. I have nothing but greatest respect for him, but he did everything by the book, which drove me crazy sometimes when I had worked for him. But he was a very principled man and he was dedicated to the beliefs of Gilford Pinchot and brought the tablets down from heaven. But yes I had nothing but respect for Frank.

Terence: George, how would you – is it fair and I was going to ask Bob D’Armand this too – is it fair to say that he was you know opposed to statehood given on the idea that the proponents of statehood of course wanted it right away and that he was one of the guys I think you said not now kind of thing, which is what a lot of the opponents said, but –

George: Yes.

Terence: But was he – so how did he really you know is it fair for the people to say to say he is anti-statehood or?

George: In a way he was – I worked for him briefly for about two or three years. That’s another story, but he said that he was afraid that we couldn’t afford to support statehood. I said I agree with you, but that we are not going to be able to afford statehood until we get it because we don’t have control over our own destiny. So the legislature absolutely everything they did had to be approved by the congress. We couldn’t incur any indebtedness. There were lots of things we couldn’t do and you were in a straight jacket. You had to get rid of that. We had no lands that we could draw upon to get revenues from. So statehood would bring those things in. So I tried to argue with him that statehood would make it possible to afford statehood. He didn’t quite buy that.

For a while there was a commonwealth idea that was circulated. And Puerto Rico was a commonwealth and he said George research this for me. I have some friends who think we should become a commonwealth. So I did. I went to the (inaudible) and they said well what they do Frank is that you have charge – the local people have charge of everything. Defense is provided by the federal government. Everything else and he said well does that mean that the Forest Service would become a local? I said yes. That changed his mind immediately.

Terence: He wasn’t going to trust these guys.

George: No. But of course he was Republican and the Republicans as a whole were anti-statehood. Although during the Constitutional Convention they – very concerned Republicans worked very well on that. That was one of those miraculous pulling together of Alaskans of all opinions and breeds working together and they worked together through this. I was so happy to be part of that process too. It was a wonderful thing.

Terence: George, why would you say – how did that come about – why did it work so well? What were the ingredients?

George: Or the ingredient, first of all, the statehood proponents were looking at the history of how other states came in. Tennessee, what they did – they didn’t wait for congress to act. They wrote a constitution. They elected their delegation to congress, sent the delegation to Washington, DC and demanded that they be seated. And then while congress recovered from this blow, they lobbied individual members of congress and it worked. They got it. So we decided that we would try that and it did work.

We had Ernest Gruening, Ralph Rivers, and Bob Bartlett. And they were all very good. Bob Bartlett was particularly good at politics you know. He was a master politician. Ernest Gruening was a showboated quite a bit and offended some people but nonetheless he was brilliant and when he spoke people listened. He was worth listening to. Ralph Rivers went along with the other two and he was okay. He was a common man out there. He could relate to a lot of people. We had a good delegation, a good mix of types.

Terence: How – what about the convention itself a little bit – why do you think that though worked so well? What role did Egan have to do with that say did he – was that because Borden had him as president?

George: Yeah, he was president and Egan was again he was an unusual politician. He had this phenomenal memory. He would meet you in a crowd and come back 10 years later and say he remembered oh you had kids and how is so and so doing. He could remember these details. He didn’t have somebody prompting him. He was just incredible. When he was governor he would dress up like Santa Claus and go down to the supermarket and greet everybody. Things like this. He was the common man. He had a lot of good common sense and on the whole he was very trustworthy. He was just right for the job. He had his shortcomings too. We all do, but they weren’t – he was not corrupt in any way, just a – that to me is the bottom line with this guy. Real, this guy is honest, and he is ethical and he met all those things.

Terence: And certainly has a well governor later but as head of the convention at first –

George: Yes.

Terence: People thought he was an honest or that he was working – I mean did his role you know was that kind of an important ingredient?

George: Yes, it was.

Terence: Cause if Gruening was running it, say that would have probably would have been such a great idea.

George: No, that would not have worked at all because he would be telling them what they should. When I was working for – with him on that income tax, he would – before I came he would give this speech about the income tax. He would say why we need it. He would say that what – when we had this little meeting when I drafted this thing I said governor just let somebody else introduce it and he did. He picked up two freshmen, legislators, to introduce this thing. Everybody knew he had – it was his bill but he didn’t come up and say – he did recommend that they consider an income tax. He didn’t make a big speech, but he would have been – he would not be suited, he would not be happy in that role.

But Bill was able to let everybody speak their piece and he also knew when bring the – his gavel down and say you’ve had your talk now. Let’s move on to somebody else. He ran a very good show.

Terence: What was your official position with the convention – what did you actually do then, what kind of stuff did you do?

George: I was working for Frank Heintzleman. He just turned me over to them and said do whatever they want. And I did a lot of work on the natural resources provision on the apportionment (inaudible) because I was also – well I didn’t take any formal courses in geography, but I did a lot of reading on that. So I had this little handbook, regional handbook, which I designed, had reproduced for the legislators so they could – most people who were Alaskans only thought of the area in which they lived. Then they went outside. There was no sense of how we fit into this – the rest of Alaska. And bringing these people together because on the basis for the election to the legislature the distance for the judicial district – the Fourth Judicial District, which meant that the dominant city or town in each of the divisions voted everybody in, except for Bill Egan. He was voted from Valdez instead of Anchorage. There were exceptions, but for the most part it was like Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Nome. So this was the first time that the rural population was represented in any body like this. The people from Dillingham. You had a mix of people from the Eskimo community and Frank Baronvich was the vice president and the Tlingits are great orators. They know how to speak formally and he was – he added dignity to the whole proceeding.

So that was bringing together Alaskans that had never had a voice before. That’s what made it so remarkable.

Terence: And too, like you say, those judicial divisions are completely artificial.

George: Oh, they were.

Terence: And had no bearing really on the real geography of Alaska did they?

George: No. They were laid out that the federal judge could make the whole circuit within the season. And it was based upon what sort of transportation he could – dog teams, rivers, and that sort of thing. So it had no relation to what they were embraced in there. During the convention when I worked on the apportionment, we broke it down. We used census divisions as our building blocks because they were defined in terms of interaction and put them together as geographic boundaries are very clear. The mountain ranges and so on and so we worked out different districts of the judicial divisions. I think we had some sense of the judicial division still being there that people wouldn’t object to wiping them out entirely. But you didn’t all come – you came from your own local district.

Terence: Which is so – I mean similar to the people worrying about this divide today between the urban areas and the rural areas.

George: Oh, yes.

Terence: But that’s the way it was too before I mean in territorial days the way the legislature was set off like you say, dominated by people from – I mean half the votes came from Fairbanks and Nome so you know so.

George: Exactly.

George: We purify our water with a lot of chorine in it or something.

Terence: I have arsenic in my well.

George: Oh, well you’re tough, you can.

Terence: No, no.

Terence: Taxes I mean.

George: Yeah.

Terence: And then all of a sudden the war comes and mining is over and so in the long range that’s the main reason why I think that the gold mining didn’t, I mean that’s why I guess the accident of the timing that it didn’t pay very much and that fishing continued on for at least a little bit longer, but you know not during the war and stuff too. But so I guess these reports you would have looked at these.

George: Yes, yes, I did. And then I put them aside and said this is not very helpful. This shows what a mess we have and took a clean slate. Of course the gold mining was shut down during the war and when they went and reopened the price of gold was pegged and the cost of mining was up. And mining requires a slave labor workforce and we had attacked before the war – I mean they had a good source. They went from the what used to be Yugoslavia and Serbia and some of the Balkan States and brought them – I think straight from the old country. They were indentured servants. They had to work a certain number of years to pay back their attachment. Then we had the Dukovich, all the rest of the names here that – particularly in Fairbanks, ended up there. They more or less disappeared now. When we were here there was quite a lot of ex-miners or descendants of miners who were in politics and active in the business community.

Terence: That’s right, yeah, I think you’re right. I think the miners had preponderance –

George: Yes.

Terence: In the legislature, of course that goes back to the thing we’re talking about the divisions too, doesn’t it? I mean –

George: Yes, it does, yes

Terence: I mean the overrepresentation of Fairbanks and Nome in the – you know one thing you said in the book in the southeast Alaska region in transition about the fish trap. We should talk a little bit about why a fish trap as a symbol.

George: Oh, yes, yeah, that’s right. I used that in the first book didn’t I? That’s right. And the reason was that it pulls – this was a very efficient way of harvesting the fish. In fact, in my view it was the only way that salmon should have been harvested because the fish worked out to the runs. You could manage. You knew what was coming and going. You could control the escapement of the fish. You could then control the harvest. You didn’t have to chase mobile gear all over the place. And it was just perfect, but the trouble with the fish trap was that it was owned by the processors, the canners, and they were all outside interests. And they were putting resident fisherman out of work.

It is interesting that when they repealed the – when they outlawed the fish trap, they let the Indians retain their traps. Traditionally Indians used the equivalent of a trap. They built a dam across the river that salmon would school up and when they had what they wanted, they then let the salmon out. Of course the Indians gave this a mythical sort of thing. These were the salmon people. If we didn’t allow some of them to go up, they wouldn’t come back again. So they went up to some never-never land where they became human, took human form. And so they had a sense of this and the fish trap that would be operated the same way. It would corral the fish into the stream. They would all sort out. You knew where they were going. It was ideal for management, but it was the ownership of the traps that made them mad.

The other thing I was interested in that was why this was the management was by the federal government. There was no input from Alaskans in the fish management program in those days. So that gave me sort of a symbol of what Alaska was like under territorial operation.

Terence: Is it fair to say that in the 1950’s people blamed the decline of the salmon runs on the federal mismanagement I mean?

George: Yes, that’s true. There was a good basis for that too. The field people for the most part that I knew managed the rules and a few other people like that were very sincere in trying to manage the fisheries. But when their recommendations were sent to back to Washington, DC representatives of the processors went back there and between them and the bureaucrats back there they determined what the management plan would be, regardless of what the biological research said about the resources. So they over fished and it was because of the federal mismanagement and I say I exempt the people that were working at the field level because they were totally frustrated by this being overridden by somebody who was making a profit from over fishing.

Terence: Okay, so maybe like from there.

George: The fish trap therefore is looked upon by most Alaskans as the dipper with which the large absentee owner appeared to skim with relative ease the cream of one of the regions most valuable natural resources and then carried away to the outside the fullest part of the wealth so guarded. That’s pretty poetic.

The theme of absentee ownership on the means of production and control over natural resources and the intended resident, nonresident conflict and resentment is a classic one inevitable in any area with natural resources to be developed and without local capital adequate to the job. This frequently as rational as it is inevitable for without the outside capital and the intended control of influence with local affairs there would be no development. And it is unlikely that even the alleged half loaf would be available to the residents. But it is nonetheless a real force in regional affairs in southeast Alaska this broad and almost abstract conflict has been given a sharp focus by the existence of a tangible object – the fish trap, which has come to represent the very quintessence of absenteeism.

Terence: Okay, good. And then if we go to this thing. I’m glad you went on there longer. I was enthralled.

George: Until you say stop I –

Terence: No, I was thinking I was glad you did. But now what is (inaudible) anyway?

George: Well that’s a black –

Terence: Black sheep or black –

George: Black –

Terence: Raven a little bit.

Jean: No, that’s a terrible – that’s a beast – black beast.

Terence: Cause George says it is the Betenwah of Alaska.

George: I was showing off that I understand French.

Terence: Now read this part with a French accent.

George: Okay. Fish vah. I had the funniest experience when I was up when in Fairbanks and they had a French TV crew coming in to – we had the Natives sitting around there and talking about the Natives and so on and I got quite animated. So I started talking with my hands and all the French crew all started smiling. They didn’t know what I was saying but they knew what I was – okay.

Okay. The traps had long been the principal Betenwah of Alaskan political demonology. The anti trap case has been emotionally elaborated and distorted to the point where even Alaskans who had never seen one really would readily brand them as fish killers. And at times would seem to look upon them as a very embodiment of the evil in this world. The story of the repeated efforts of Alaskans through their territorial legislature and territorial delegate to congress to have fish traps abolished as illegal gear or to equalize the alleged private and social costs through a differential taxation may not be decided here. The measurement of the popular sentiment regarding this controversial gear was taken by a referendum at the 1948 general election, which resulted in a territorial wide vote of 19,712 to 2,624 for trap abolition. The ratio of almost eight to one.

Terence: That’s good, yeah.

George: Betenwah.

Terence: Yeah, we got the Betenwah. That’s good, yeah. Because yeah I wanted you to show off your French, George.

George: Well thank you.

George: French. I couldn’t get a Parisian to understand what I said so that is why Jean along and she would tell the cab driver what I was trying to say.

Terence: Well I think you make a great case in there about and also in the future of Alaska economic consequences of statehood on the resident, nonresident –

George: Yes.

Terence: Battle and so the fish traps had really been the symbol of the nonresident –

George: It was yes. Their – if they weren’t there my father could be fishing and that money would come to us not somebody back there. The trap was impersonal. It caught the fish and they referred as fish killers, well the fishermen were too, but it was a little bit rubbed off on them and they got a little bit of money from us, but the trap was too automatic.

Terence: And it’s the efficiency I know that’s the issue at least that some people sort of have, but like you said the ownership is the key thing, right?

George: That’s right. That’s it.

Terence: I mean if the ownership – if the means of ownership had been changed –

George: Uh-huh.

Terence: It would have been different now. Is there is a chance that – why don’t we treat fish the way we treat oil? Have you ever thought about that and why?

George: Fish is a renewable resource. It can at least in theory be completely reproduced itself. Oil cannot. Oil goes out, it is gone. And you’re left with a hole in the ground and a bunch of diluted soil. But there is quite a bit of difference between the two. You can’t treat them both.

Terence: Well I mean in the sense that the Alaska’s share –

Terence: So George, so when did you first run into Ted Stevens, do you remember?

George: I don’t remember the first time. I remember when he was working with the federal government. I remember when he came to the first Science Conference that Vic Fisher set up for nonbiological sciences and he gave a rousing speech, which really raled me up, but he said we don’t need you outsiders to tell us how to run Alaska. So I got up and apologized for that – our Senator’s outburst. But he was – I got a lot of respect for him. He is one of Alaska’s natural resources. He gets things done for us. And he brings a lot into the state. And he – as I say, but he is a feisty little guy.

Terence: Yeah, that’s right. The – oh when he gave the speech he was already senator then at that time, right?

George: Yeah.

Terence: But you didn’t really run him back when he was with Interior or do you remember?

George: I remember him. I didn’t meet him but I remember seeing him then and he was very, very studious and very quiet.

Terence: And determined?

George: Determined, yes.

Terence: Did you, so and the Secretaries of Interior that you dealt with mostly were well I guess who was Secretary of Interior in ’45? I guess, I mean in your early days it would have been Crew.

George: Crew, yeah I think. Yeah, right after Icchy. Icchy was still Secretary I think when we first came up and then Crew came a little bit later. And he was a sort of a bolt out of the blue because he was reorganizing things. And as I say he set up the idea of the field committee breaking down of the United States into natural regions, river basins actually they were, that he used as his things. And I thought it was a very intelligent approach to this.

Terence: Did that ever work though in Alaska? I mean did that actually –

George: Oh, yeah.

Terence: Come to bear with the interior appropriations for the –

George: Yes, yes. And I say what we did that was the first cut on the appropriation, then they went back to Washington, DC and the various regional units with Bureau of Reclamation – were put together as per the bill. The Bureau of Reclamation was the only one that objected to this and they were the least cooperative when I was field committee chairman. The other one was the general manager of the Alaska Railroad. He had reason to be because he had to leave in the dark of the night. He went down to South America.

Terence: Which one was that?

George: Oh, that was Colonel Johnson. Colonel Olson was –

Terence: Yeah Johnson followed Olson.

George: Yeah, right.

Terence: Well why did he, I didn’t know that story?

George: Well, Felnowsky could fill you in on that cause he kept finding things about he would use railroad property, like barges and things and let his friends use this and then he had the friends pay his sister. You know those sort of things, which you don’t do. But he had done – he had worked on the railroad that went through Persia to Russia into the Gulf. And he got used to dealing with this sort of morality and when I went to see him in his office he had all the trophies that he had collected in Persia. Beautiful rugs and vases and things. Here comes Tom again.

Terence: Okay. So George this is a hypothetical question that I have come up with. What about Alaska if it hadn’t become a state and what about Gruening? You were going to say something about.

George: Oh, about Gruening. Which one do you want first, Gruening?

Terence: Yeah.

George: Well when I went to work for Gruening it was with the understanding I would work for just three years to get the revenue program underway. I did other jobs too, odd jobs you know. Like the Mafia hires a hit man that’s the sort of thing I did. No, I didn’t, but basically he said to me George what are you going to do after this? I said I’m going back to Berkeley to get my doctorate. He said don’t do that. I’ll give you a recommendation to Harvard. They have a program of the Littower Foundation has a program that you could use. So I said okay. I’ll switch. I can go – where do you go from Berkeley, you go to Harvard. That’s pretty good. Then I went from Harvard to Cambridge, England and the Sorbohn too. That’s another story.

But the thing is that he did, but he didn’t want me go when the time came. And he was very reluctant to let me go. He said there is a lot of work here. I said well I’ll come back. I won’t be very long. And Norway (inaudible) is a five-year stint. But I keep saying I had the thesis written. I had done all the research for the thesis and had it organized so that I knew what I was going to do. It is part of the application. You have to write down why are you doing this? Why do you want to come here? So I wrote a nice essay about what I was trying to work out and they obviously liked it, in addition to the recommendation from the governor and I got one year. And then I figured then I’d have to dig for money, but without my realizing it they renewed my fellowship and increased the stipend. So they said we want you to finish your – get your dissertation done and written. We are interested to see that. So I lucked out on that one too.

Terence: So you did your whole Ph.D. in two years?

George: Yes, yes. Again I used things that I had done in the meantime. I never throw anything away in my career. I just pick up and find a use for it and that is what I did. And it was mostly a matter of writing. I had to take a certain amount of resident courses and I took political science at the graduate level rather than undergraduate and I’m glad I did that because that was interesting. I got what they call a joint degree and it was called Doctor of Political Economy. And in Cambridge, England they don’t have economics they have political economy because they look upon economics not as a stand-alone science but as a means of managing things which makes a lot more sense.

Terence: But was that – so were you at Cambridge after Harvard?

George: Yes, I was invited back. After I wrote these two books as a matter of fact. These books – the only fan mail I got was from Australia, from Canada, and from Cambridge.

Jean: Michigan.

George: Michigan too, yes. I forgot about Michigan. So that it was something that appealed – this country we are very ignorant about geography. There are schools that teach geography. They didn’t have a geography course at Berkeley when I went there. They did have one up at Fairbanks though. My oldest daughter took geography at one of the – took a double major at Fairbanks geography and accounting. She wanted to go into planning. That’s another story too.

But the – so I did get very good response from overseas. From the UK, from I say Australia, Canada, and other places. I didn’t – I don’t – so Michigan is the only place that picked up on my books.

Terence: What – you mean somebody wrote in –

George: Wrote in, yes, that sort of thing. And thanked me for this. Also my books also were the first ones that resources – fish got any revenue back on the fact. They went into second printing books and they paid back all the money they paid me on the fellowship that they had given me, so made out on that one too.

Terence: Oh, yeah. Well what about this idea that if we hadn’t become a state, what would – how would events progressed differently – I mean what would be Alaska today be like, I mean, I guess the question maybe would you have been here if that statehood hadn’t come in – could you have been back here or something – what –

George: I don’t know how that would have happened because statehood – we still had less population than we have right now for example. And there was not much growth. Alaska would have been exploited. The oil industry would have taken what they wanted without paying for it or very low fee. Greg Erickson, who called me a little while ago was a young economist and at one of our science conferences wrote a paper which said that Alaska almost gave away the Prudhoe Bay thing. And he pointed out that the Department of Natural Resources in Alaska didn’t know how to compute – how to calculate future income from a resource that hadn’t been developed yet, which is true. They said we can recoup that by taxation. But I forgot where I was going with this little digression, but it was –

Terence: If Alaska hadn’t become a state –

George: If Alaska hadn’t become a state, the oil industry would have just come in and negotiated with the federal government with their buddies and they would have got a much better deal than they had here. They wouldn’t have to worry about taxation. They wouldn’t have an income tax on their earnings. They would have cut a better deal on the royalties and their leases. I doubt whether the Natives would have gotten anything out of this. Statehood did provide because they were citizens. They got a better status that many indigenous peoples under a territory. So I think it was beneficial. It created – well my dissertation at Harvard was the creating of an American polity. My faculty advisor suggested that title politic brings in the Aristotle and all the rest of it. But the idea that we created a government up here, a community up here, rather than just leaving it just a place you came up like a warehouse and took things out as you needed them, which is what we would have been.

Terence: It would still have been a warehouse basically?

George: Yes. It would have been a warehouse just drew things from. And there would have been some management in the interest of keeping the goods on the shelves, but it wouldn’t have been a political entity.

Terence: Well I think I wonder if because I – I mean this is just a theory and I – when I started thinking about this I thought well if we hadn’t got statehood in 1959 and it had been delayed even to 1969. Let’s say until after the oil discovery.

George: Yes.

Terence: I think it is extraordinarily unlikely (a) there would have ever been a state.

George: That’s (inaudible).

Terence: And it probably wouldn’t have been certainly the unrecognizable to what we know now because I don’t know if you agree with this, but it seems to me that the state is an artifact of the 1950’s. I mean it is a development machine.

George: Machine, that’s right. And as I say, said earlier, Phil Holtz and I were working at the Constitution Convention and he says, George, it is a good thing we’re doing – we’re writing this article now when the oil industry comes on the scene, they’d we writing the article. I think that would have been true.

Terence: Because at the time – that’s one good thing about the beauty because the convention came before the oil industry, really, I mean, before even the Swanson River.

George: That’s right.

Terence: It’s a year before, so.

George: When I was working for Standard Oil Company in the 1930’s the oil companies knew about the oil at Prudhoe Bay and I spoke to my boss about this. Why aren’t we developing that? He says George that is like having – saying that there is oil on the moon. We don’t know how to get it out of there. The seas would be frozen. The sea is too shallow for a tanker to come in to shore, which we discovered. I don’t know why they didn’t know that in the first place before they had that tanker come around and anchored miles offshore. They said it is there. We know it’s there and then we know that it is very rich. The Navy withdrew, but they always do when there is some new discovery, withdrew their reserves, but again that was just to be in case of an emergency. We’ll figure out how to get it out later.

What they were looking at that time when I was working for them was down at Cold Bay on the peninsula. But then they decided to go to Barrain Island in the gulf. The oil industry goes wherever they can figure out which is the best deal. So they abandoned Alaska and I might have come to Alaska earlier if it hadn’t been for the opportunity to get in with the Venetian Texas interests in the Barrain Island. In fact they said if you’re interested in going there George this would be a wonderful opportunity. I had done some reading before on that. I didn’t want to go. It was a tribal society, which would have been the worse tribal society to step into, as we’re discovering now. They have all these sheiks running around with their own little bodyguards and people shooting people.

Terence: Yeah, that’s certainly one I mean talk about the – I guess that is one thing still Alaska offers to the oil companies that they don’t have the stability.

George: That’s right.

Terence: I mean, but I think that if that idea about the convention that’s an important one isn’t it?

George: Yes.

Terence: I mean the timing was fortuitous.

George: It was.

Terence: On the various timing is before there is lots of money on the table isn’t it?

George: Yes.

Terence: I mean the oil, even in the Swanson River strike has not yet occurred, so after that occurred it could get very messy?

George: Well it could have been. The other interesting thing about, not everybody at the convention was in favor of Alaska becoming a state but they went along with this idea because it was an opportunity to examine what was possible here and I got some very interesting feedback from some very conservative people on that. That was what that whole experience was just marvelous.

Terence: Were you in Fairbanks for most of the –

George: Yes, I was here for the whole time, yes.

Terence: So did you get sort of an office there in the (inaudible) building or where did you –

George: Well actually the first month Tom Stewart had what they thought was a heart attack and Egan and Brovonovich appointed me to take over as acting secretary while he was gone. So it turned out it was just overworked himself to the point of collapse and then he was in good shape to finish up with his term but so I had part of the organization of it, the household things. The liaison with the military about providing color guard to come and open the sessions and things. I knew just exactly who to appoint to do that for me. I didn’t do it. Kept them out of my hair, but you pick out the ones that are going to be a nuisance and give them jobs to do and they are just delighted. When Tom came over it was all the nitty gritty stuff was put together, then the thing really went it and the second month is when things got done.

So I had that part but then I was also working – I had a little office and a bigger office when I was acting secretary. Little office with desk and a calculator.

Terence: Right in the building there?

George: Yeah, right there.

Terence: What was Tom’s role sort in that? How important was he?

George: He was very important in the first place in getting the whole thing going cause fair amount Tom Stewart. He had originally he was having been in the war he was looking for a way to eternal peace and he thought – he took up Russian studies. And then he abandoned them when he realized that he was dealing with more than he could handle taking on the Soviet Union. And he came back and he decided to push for statehood and other stuff too.

Terence: And (inaudible) you know. So there was such a and I never thought about this until a couple of months ago.

George: Something about that (inaudible) but you’re right. The environmental group and that’s like they have in Canada, that’s right.

Terence: You want soverignment, do you want government control?

George: Government control.

Terence: You were telling me about more indebtedness, they owed more money than there has ever been money you know.

Terence: Well George we were talking about Tom Stewart I think and the convention. I think that is where we.

George: Yeah. Tom is the one who sort of went into local and territorial politics in order to promote statehood and he did it very systematically and very thorough and he worked very hard on this. He worked up the idea of the convention. He also worked up the idea on staffing it and bringing in a consulting firm that was top flight to tell us. He was determined to have what he considered to be a model constitution. We could learn from what mistakes had been made in the past. So he had devoted a lot of his time to that. When he was in the legislature he worked very hard to get the legislation for the convention, the appropriations, all those sort of things. And it was almost a single-handed job. He did it.

And I say this is what I think the fact that he was overworked. And then when he came to the convention and he was expected to be appointed to the secretary there were a couple of people stepped forward and set themselves up as candidates for this and for a while he thought he might lose out at the last moment, but that didn’t happen. He had that anxiety too.

But he did a terrific job on putting the convention together and this sort of thing was just overexertion. The doctor said to him he said you don’t have a heart attack. He described like there were iron bands across my chest. I couldn’t breathe. And he said what you should do is marry Jane. Jane Stewart he was sort of courting her and so he proposed to marry her and he came back and was a whole man.

Terence: Well that’s great.

George: That is. Then he was able to roll up his sleeves and really do – he didn’t have these anxieties any longer. He had recuperated from the stress of putting the thing together.

Terence: Would you – is it fair to say that he sort of – I don’t know, was the convention his idea in a way?

George: Yes, it was. He came in with this idea. It was tied in again as I say with the Tennessee Plan and I wasn’t in on the genesis of that, but Tom was there and it was one that Ernest Gruening may have even suggested. Bob Atwood in those days was in line with Ernest Gruening on this idea of statement. Atwood and Gruening were at that point relatively good friends. They then split a little bit later on party lines. But that was developing in the last we came. There was no two party system. You were either pro or anti-Gruening and yet some of his more severe enemies were Democrats actually. And again it was because he had this Harvard accent approach to things.

Terence: Do you think – is it fair to say how many people were anti-Gruening and pro-statehood? I mean were there people in that case or personally didn’t like him or you know.

George: Well, it’s very hard to say because you can’t get a real statistical measure on that. But there was – it was quite confusing wasn’t it Jean?

Jean: Oh, yes.

George: And if you opened your mouth you weren’t sure who you were talking to, unless you knew who you were talking to, you didn’t bring the subject up. It was –

Terence: People always assume that you were Gruening’s protégé?

George: Oh yes, yes. That’s right. I was one of his fair hand boys, but it was a very interesting relationship, but it gave me a wonderful opportunity to be in on the grounding of these things and then as Klosnowsky said, you should write about cause you were there like on the Tour (inaudible), thing like that. I worked on the formulation of the optimum yield rather than sustain, biological yield. A lot of ideas that – some of them didn’t fly of course, attempts to break through on management.

Terence: Right. George, how about is the Permanent Fund, maybe you can say a word too about that from your experience with it and this sort of issue? Would there be a Permanent Fund if there wasn’t a state, I mean?

George: Well there would be no need for it because it was primary thing of revenue for the state. The state needed the natural resources economics, as well as special corner of the economic studies and there you look at a resource, renewable resources is one that you grow it back again – fisheries, forest, and so on and that sort of thing.

And minerals, petroleum, that sort of thing is a wasting resource. When you dig it out, you get rid of it, it is gone. It doesn’t reproduce itself. But if you look upon it when you sell the resource, not as income but rather a changing of the resource, a crude oil in the ground or metal to a resource cash that you invest and then the income from the investment becomes your income. And of course that is the basic underlying theory of a Permanent Fund, although it got all screwed up with other things like rainy day fund and a lot of other things, but as a economist I looked upon it as that it gave petroleum a life after death. And in theory at least if you knew how to manage your money it could go on in a permanent way. It became a permanent asset rather than a wasting asset. That’s the basic difference between a renewable and a wasting asset.

Terence: But without statehood status of course there would have been no entity to –

George: That’s right and no reason because it would then be the federal government would be just disposing of part of the public domain. And I don’t see that there would be a reason for having a Permanent Fund.

Terence: Well now some people sort of allege or like to believe that Alaska is a colony today and could you – how would – how does it you know –

George: The term colony is a very tricky thing. You could say that the West today is a colony of the continent – of the rest of the United States and would be only partly true. A true colony is one in which the indigenous people had no say in what is being done to them and to their land.

In Alaska that’s not true. We have a lot to say, particularly with statehood. And I think that statehood sort of lifted us from the colonial status because we had rights, we had things that we could enforce, we could control our own destiny. A true colony was one which you simply go in and I use the idea of warehouse, pull it out, forget about the people who were there. They don’t count. They are just part of the wallpaper, but Alaska was never that sort of colony.

Under Russian rule, under the initial US rule, it was probably true because the indigenous peoples base of survival was wiped out or seriously damaged by the harvesting of salmon for example. It wasn’t until the White Act was passed – I think it was 1923 that the salmon resource was managed on the basis of its going to its source and coming back again, otherwise it was simply treated like a wasting resource, which it was. It was mined in other words, not harvested.

Terence: Right. And that is a crucial difference isn’t it?

George: Yes, it is.

Terence: If you – well if there is a case, maybe we could talk about the in your book in the Future of Alaska the economic consequences of statehood, the economic consequences – what – could you summarize those? What were they?

George: Well partner was the fact of transporting some of this Alaska became a sovereign state delegating its sovereignty to the US congress in the federal government just any other state. So that changed that whole status so we had an entity which was more powerful and more – we were in control of our destiny or could be.

The other thing is that we also got our land grant and other things that we didn’t have as a territory. So we owned a natural resources state also that became part of our becoming. The economic consequences were control of our own destiny and then also having resources that we could manage and produce a means of supporting our whole institution, political institutions, social institutions.

So it was – that’s what the basic economic consequences. Without it what we were talking if Alaska were not a state would be an empty place. We would have lost the opportunity of creating which was part of the theory of the western progression, rebuilding – I mean building political as I said polities my thesis in this virgin territory, which were –

Terence: Developed. Well one thing that it is clear that Prudhoe Bay is one of the economic consequences of statehood?

George: Oh, yes, yes, particularly say with Phillips Holstress insisting that we select those lands. If he hadn’t selected them they would have been just like any other federal lands in any other state. You’d get a share of the royalties, but you wouldn’t get the whole thing.

Terence: You would get a share of the federal take eventually.

George: That’s exactly that.

Terence: Which is what we would get on federal lands.

George: Yes.

Terence: You know with the but not the you know –

George: That is what Alaskans don’t see that. Yes, we have more fields, maybe not any more Prudhoe Bay’s, but we have some very substantial fields that have possible but they are on federal lands. We don’t own them. We owned Prudhoe Bay.

Terence: Yeah. And I think that the idea, well you had spelled it out in there pretty clearly that this – that some people questioned why there had been such a rush to have a state, given the fact that the economic picture was pretty dyer in some ways. I mean you know it was anticipatory wasn’t it? I mean I guess statehood was based on the assumption that things were going to grow.

George: Uh-huh.

Terence: And it did but I guess not quite in the way that anybody predicted. I mean nobody could have ever predicted something as rich as Prudhoe Bay, I don’t think really.

George: No. The – what happened there of course was that times have changed. I brought up the 1937 National Resources Committee report and then the successor to that committee’s report, I think it was during the tail end of the war, in which they said Alaska had to be developed and settled in the interest of national defense, which was kind of a strange way of saying okay we’ll put people out there and then we will have to save those people. It has probably been used in a big society when they sent out a village, created a new polity and (inaudible).

But so it was that the change in the rules. Right after World War II we were set to strip Japan of any major industry. And then so much put their bulwark against the spread of communism. So then we turned handsprings and invited them to come in and develop our timber, gave them subsidiaries, and all sorts of things. You ended up by having a colony of Japan and Sitka, where you had technicians and managers living in this little enclave up by a beautiful lake, Japanese lake, provided a beautiful place for their people to live.

And so you had that sort of thing happening. It is a flip-flop and it was a local political considerations that created the change in our view of what Alaska should be. It no longer, I said that earlier, a warehouse, but a place where people – Americans could come to develop and create a community.

Terence: Right. I mean that’s interesting isn’t it about the federal investment was always big, but it became so huge during the war and then sort of a – develop Alaska as a national security issue, right?

George: Yes.

Terence: Yeah. Well I just have one or two more things and I don’t run you into the ground here, but we are also going to talk to George Sonborg. I don’t know in a couple of weeks I guess.

George: Uh-huh.

Terence: So you ran into George I guess.

George: Oh, yes, yes.

Terence: On the development board I guess, right?

George: Yeah.

Terence: So was he there at the same time, that was about –

George: We overlapped. He actually was actually Gruening’s fair head boy and I won’t go any further than saying that, but I always thought he was second string, but that’s okay. But George was – he was picked up by Ernest early on because Ernest Gruening loved journalism and George was a journalist. And he wrote some books. One was singing the praise of Alaska – Coming to Alaska, yes. I was horrified by that book because it didn’t point out that people who read that as a bible really got burned because he didn’t stress the hardships. He didn’t stress the insecurities. After the war a group of veterans went to Port Chilkott, Fort Seward and set up this utopian society and they told me the one said they used George Sonborg’s book was their bible. Well the thing fell apart as all utopian societies do because there are all chiefs and no Indians. And it ended by the few survivors dividing up the property and then going their separate ways. But that was a very interesting experience to follow that history.

But Ernest Gruening had me talk to the – just before I went back to Harvard to representatives. They were people like architects and things like that. They were people who used their hands to build architecture, these architects. They were all designers. But it was sad though because they had this beautiful view of creating like Tom Stewart studying Russian so he could deal with the Russians and realizing that that’s more complicated than I thought it was. As until another Russia was rediscovered (inaudible) the Soviet Union.

Terence: Well you know I think in you know George Sonborg’s book that’s like Gruening’s view though too wasn’t it?

George: Yeah.

Terence: Propagandist. I don’t know what the right word is, but this sort of rosy you know hue of how you know if only.

George: Yeah.

Terence: If only this happens, things would be great you know, having.

George: Ernest Gruening’s book The State of Alaska was a great book, but it is mostly propaganda, but it had a lot of scholarship in it. You probably thought the same thing. Instead of looking at the –

George: But there was a reason for the (inaudible). It was pretty much a peripheral place. It didn’t deserve any more attention than it got probably.

Terence: Well you know George it is interesting you mention the thing about the moon the Standard Oil People.

George: Oh, yeah.

Terence: Because I wrote this thing once I said there was lunatics school of Alaska in our own history.

George: Oh, yeah.

Terence: A lunatics school is you know is like the moon. It’s cold. It’s far away. It’s expensive to get there and there are other places that are not quite so cold, ar away, or expensive to get there, so. But did Gruening – did you ever get any comments from him on this book?

George: No, no. (Inaudible) hadn’t been written. He wasn’t against it. He just didn’t enthused about it the way he did over George Sonborg’s books, but that’s okay. I got a lot of good response from this.

Terence: Well I’m not at all surprised about that George because that is the kind of thing that he would think was just a bucket of cold water.

George: Yeah.

Terence: And that because as you say in there a lot of people questioning what are we going to do now? Now we got this land and stuff and what are we going to do? You know what are we going to do? So I think you raised some very valid questions in your book. The idea of the fiscal gap that Scott Poulsman talks about you know. It is present there too. It’s there, so. But I think if – let’s see I guess you know Tim’s dad, we’re actually going to talk to BG Olson about the press and stuff.

George: Yeah.

Terence: It’s sort of in statehood. Did you run into him at all or I don’t know if you want to make any comment on that or the newspapers? I guess he was running a paper here in Juneau at the time, BG Olson.

George: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Terence: I forget which one now, but did you know Independent, is that right?

George: I didn’t know Independent and George Sonluck was involved in that at one point too. It was one of those trying to be a conqueror offset to the Juneau Empire, but it never got enough financial support and it was – the people who were doing it frequently were not up to doing it as real work was involved in making the point of concern. You had to be really dedicated to do that sort of thing. You just don’t start doing it.

Terence: Especially when you’re going against the established paper. I mean it is –

George: Right. Uh-huh.

Terence: Is there any more difficult thing than doing that you know.

George: Yeah.

Terence: And (inaudible) in each other. What about when at the University George let’s just say a little – you work at the University right or with or how did that work with the institute and stuff?

George: Okay. Hans Jansen was one of the – he was the economics department at the time of the Danish young man, a very good friend of ours, but one – my first book came out he read this and he convinced the University that they should have me come up as a visiting Carnegie Fellow and Carnegie thing. The Carnegies wanted to do something for the University and I suggested that they do them a grant so that the professors the fact that they can go outside and get renewed some place, but they said oh, no, we’ll invite top-flight scholars and so they come up here. Well they couldn’t get anybody to come except me.

When I was up there it was right after statehood and the legislature directed me and the University to set up an institute of both business and economic research. So they turned to me and said would you do that? I said sure. So I designed this thing and for a while I ran it by myself. And I transferred the grant that I had from Resources for the Future with their approval to the University. And so we set up a pattern that I would bring in research money for my own research, they would take their overhead which was like 40 percent of what I brought in and I would be a faculty member.

And – but the institute had to be expanded so they gave me permission to recruit so I recruited Arnold Tussick. You may remember Arnold. Well when I met him down at the Seattle Airport right away I said Arnold you and I could be partners in this. We’ll divide the work between us. You know I’ve had background with oil but I’m interested in renewable resources. I’ll give you the nonrenewable resources, I’ll take the renewable ones. You did some wonderful work in Japan. I read his (inaudible) dissertation which was – he had – he read that and it was interesting. He had taken the major restoration came in. They transformed Japan overnight to a western. Well they just took off their kimonos and put on pinstriped suits and put their Samari swords aside and carried briefcases. That sort of transformation. They were still on their knees, medieval types, but they made a detailed census of everybody in Japan, broken down into all categories. They – Arnold said they had a category for prostitutes, male and female even and things like that.

And so he took a province and took that census and then later on I think about 50 years later they took another census. So he compared the two census reports and showed the transition that took place. He said it was astounding to see how things were classified differently. He wrote his dissertation on this. I was surprised it was never published, but Arnold was given to losing interest in something that he has finally done. He said that’s it.

And, but he spent – he was very fluent in Japanese, which is a difficult language to learn. He spent part of his time in joining a monastery in Japan and spent a year in the monastery. Just an incredible guy, but he was a very strange guy. You knew him. And but he and I did go on to get a partnership. We each respected the other, what they could do. And when Arnold used any of my ideas the footnote gave me credit for the idea. He didn’t, but then when Vic came in with this Ford Foundation Grant, then it blew it all out of proportion. It became a monster thing.

Terence: It did, yeah. So what was his deal. Vic’s thing was the board was that through Wood got that or – Wood was –

George: Oh, no Vic got it himself.

Terence: Oh, he did, okay.

George: He knew. I’m trying to think of the guy’s name, one of the Ford Foundation people. Vic was the Federal Housing Administration in Washington, DC. He wanted to get back to Alaska. And so he came back with a Ford Foundation Grant resources for the future grant. No, no, his was a Ford Foundation. Mine was Resources for the Future which was once removed from the Ford Foundation. For setting up for expanding the institute and that was Vic’s ticket back and mine was having a grant, which I then turned over and then set up this arrangement.

Terence: Did you leave after Vic came back or –

George: No, no. I continued. As a matter of fact the Ford Foundation people came down and asked me if I would be the director. I said, no, this is Vic’s show. Besides I don’t want to be a director. I’m the research person. I want to continue research. So they said okay. And so Vic, his job was to get money. My job was on the small scale to get money (inaudible) research. But most part of the research is done with grants from the Forest Service, from the Fisheries people and that was my career.

Terence: So you did Fish and Forest more didn’t you?

George: Yes.

Terence: And then Arnold –

George: Arnold was –

Terence: Oil and stuff.

George: Oil and stuff, yeah.

Terence: But anyhow, I think that so when, what actual years did you retire from the University, cause you actually were on the University – essentially.

George: Right, I was. Yes I retired at full retirement. I became an adjunct officio which was I would be paid when I worked on a piece basis, but that was in 1983. I just looked it up.

Terence: So you stayed on til then, I mean, or as adjunct?

George: Yeah, I went on for a few and then I sort of petered out. They gave me an emeritus status, which was an honorary status as you know.

Terence: You know another person we’re going to talk to eventually I don’t know if you have any comments on him is Keith Miller, his tenure as governor. I don’t know if –

George: That was kind of a vacant spot in my memory. Keith was governor and he didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t do anything spectacular. It was a fairly brief tenure and –

Terence: I think it was two years.

George: Two years, yes. It was not a full term. As I say he didn’t do anything wrong or anything outrageous. He didn’t rock the boat.

Terence: Right. Well let’s see one – actually we’re going to try to also talk to Jim Walsh. He’s one of the sons of Mike Walsh.

George: Oh, yes, Mike Walsh.

Terence: So do you remember Mike?

George: Oh, very much so.

Terence: What was he like?

George: Well he was a diamond in the rough type. He was a wonderful guy. And I really enjoyed association with him. He was – but as I say a diamond in the rough. He was able to discuss things on a fairly philosophical level even though he wasn’t necessarily – I don’t know whether he had a college degree or not. I don’t think he did. He was just straight common guy, but had a lot of intelligence, a lot of good common sense and I considered him a very moral person too.

Terence: Yeah, I think everybody liked him.

George: Yes.

Terence: He was on the regents and then he also was a delegate and stuff, so. Any of those other delegates stand out to you that you felt were sharper? I guess there was one – who was the guy who voted – who didn’t vote for the –

George: Robertson.

Terence: Yeah, right. Arrie Roberts, right.

George: But he did then later on came back in. He was a very conservative Republican. He did a lot of good work at the convention but then at the final day there were certain things in which he just couldn’t quite accept. He did accept them later on though, after things got going. But that was kind of – I was quite surprised at that because he – while I was there he was contributing to the process, but he was as I say he was a conservative first and then again one of those people that worked with us, us liberals.

Terence: Well did you think, George, talk for a second just a natural resources article.

George: Yeah.

Terence: What’s unique about that?

George: There is nothing really unique about it, except that there was no special privilege built into it, which most natural resources articles have some special interest (inaudible) into and as far as I know there is nothing built into that. And I credit Phil Holsworth with that cause he knew who he was dealing with. He was in mining professionally, but he was looking at something beyond that. He was not a petroleum man but he also knew and of course I knew from my experience with five and a half years with petroleum industry how they operated and he was always for the general good but of course it benefited us too. I think so.

Terence: Sure. Okay. I think –

Terence: So it was that moral the idealistic part of it.
Terence: So let’s just say that again George and look over towards me and then you won’t be on the camera, but that’s okay. So you’d say how did it change with the – for the first five years?
George: I said roughly. The big change came when we got the big money from the oil – Prudhoe Bay and it just all of a sudden things started changing. We lost our idealism. We lost the idea that we were working together, conservatists, liberals, everybody, creating a beautiful state and it became money grubbing on the natural element. You had the greed taking over in the 1990’s. You saw what happened to accounting. That sacred thing that I started with is no longer sacred. They know how to cook the books and that sort of thing was coming in. There were things like that that came in.
Terence: Now it’s called triple entry bookkeeping.
George: Yes. That’s the sort of thing that really was life of paradise was lost sort of feeling I have
Terence: Because it was a very idealistic –
George: It was a very idealistic thing, it was. I state in the convention that spirit of convention carried over for the first roughly five years in the legislative action.
Terence: Did you think it was important that the convention was held in Fairbanks versus Juneau, did that –
George: Yes, yes because I felt we referred to Fairbanks as the heart remember, the heart of Alaska and that was sort of a symbolic thing was in the center of the land mass. And I think Juneau is ideal for the capitol because the capitol should be a place like in Australia they put it in Cambera in sheep country and in Brazil they put it in the middle of the jungles some place to get it away from the big centers so they could look at the whole thing. But this was just a capitol move.
Terence: But that’s a good reason for the point George because in a way doesn’t the achievement of statehood definitely can see how the oil money soured some people – I mean changed the dynamic, but didn’t the capitol move also do that. The constant proposals to move –
George: Yes. This was one – I credit Bob Atwood for this because he said what do we do now to get – right after the convention; the statement there was sort of a slump. The military was withdrawing. The cold war hadn’t started yet. When the cold war started, everything started churning again. And there was like we are losing and Atwood let’s get the state off dead center. Let’s move the capitol into the Anchorage area where we can really work. And that started but that introduced sectionalism which was a very – that was a very negative thing. And fortunately there were enough people in Anchorage who voted against the move that – we couldn’t have done it by ourselves. We didn’t have friends in Anchorage an area there. But it was constantly being brought up and you had this constant thing are we going to last another few years. And Jean and I just said we’re just going to ride it out. We don’t think this is going to happen. It may happen. It’s being done on a piecemeal basis now of course, but it is a little bit different.

Terence: It doesn’t have quite the tenor of Bob Atwood’s taking the largest newspaper does it?
George: No, it doesn’t.
Terence: And hammering it day after day. But anyway that encouraged me that that’s one issue that was so – that the sectionalism which had always been there was somewhat subdued for the convention.
George: Yes, it was.
Terence: Partly by what you said I think about the apportionment, wasn’t it, that that was so important. So did you work on the apportionment that’s the apportionment article for the elections, is that – did you help?
George: I did work on that too, yes. Then I’ve been on two when they – I was court appointed – what do they call those – trustee to when they – to re-examine the portion that came up politically biased portions. One was Democrat and one was Republican. So I was impartial.
Terence: Did you have you know sort of that, the idea of having it in Fairbanks and on the University campus. Did that sort of help with the tone?
George: Yes it did too because the University was just beginning to feel its growth going there. When I first saw the University it looked like a Siberian penal institution. We had these wooden structures with a water tower which had a (inaudible) was tape playing up on top there and just reminded me of pictures I’ve seen in Siberian of these buildings. And this was this territorial days so they couldn’t go into debt.
The main administration building was a concrete garage – basement with a wooden building on top, which then when they got some money they moved it over to the side and put the superstructure on, just like Alaska building their own home. You couldn’t go into debt. So it was a – and that was such an interesting thing to see that suddenly we can get some money after statehood. I also worked for Alaska Public Works as their financial advisor. That was one that gave all these things – that had a sunset provision then – the Feds poured money into the infrastructure and construction. The University got a big chunk of that and the campus suddenly became a campus, overnight almost. It was an interesting thing to see.
The idea of a University in Alaska was one that appealed to me. Sure you could as one of the (inaudible) you could afford to give an area kid scholarship to any University of his choice and it wouldn’t cost as much as having a University and somehow we needed the University. I still believe that.
Terence: Car – what I was going to say you know President Bunnell always said he didn’t paint the buildings because he wanted the legislature to know that he wasn’t wasting their money, but I mean did you see the University – you must have seen it before Bunnell was still there I guess.
George: ’45 I came up there – came into the main building and I was looking around for – and there was an old man with a push broom pushing and he had overalls on and I said I’m trying to find Dr. Bunnell and he said well he said you go down to the end of the hall there and turn left and that’s his office. So I went down the hall and turned left and here was this janitor sitting behind the desk. I was flabbergasted he said, well he said I’m trying to save money by doing the janitor work you know. But it was that sort of operation.
Terence: It was him with the push broom?
George: Yes, yes, he was doing this but it was incredible. He was a wonderful character and he was no fool either, but he played up that role of being the guy who was not beneath him to take a broom and looks like hell out there. Somebody should clean it up I’ll do that.
Terence: Perfect way of shaming the people who worked for him?
George: It sure is, yeah.
Terence: Because I think that I was did you run into Terrace Moore at all.
George: Oh yes, yes. He was quite different. He was very flamboyant. And he was the one he flew an airplane and he liked to play that up. He was just – his picture on the things looking like (inaudible) bird his head up like this looking to the skies and Bunnell was dressed up with furs looking well a coy. Looking like a banker.
Terence: Who was the banker?

George: Wood.

Terence: Oh Wood, right. Well did you – you didn’t ever live in Fairbanks though did you?
George: Yeah.

Terence: When you were running the institute?

George: Yeah, I was up there. We were there for a year.

Terence: Okay.

George: We came up and we had two – three kids then, four kids.

Terence: Well you’re not far off George only by a factor of what four.

George: That was an interesting experience too, but it was the University in transition. We just got Wickersham Hall that was built for the girls and then we had Chena Ridge was where the students would go and dig a hole in the hill and put a sod roof on it and they’d come in and use the gymnasium to take their showers and do their laundry and it was – but there was a sense of people trying to get an education there in that sort of rough situation, which I liked very much.

Terence: Did you have any contact with Patty, you know?

George: Oh yes, yes.

Terence: During the convention and stuff?

George: Yeah, he was – he was a nice guy. He was – he had a very simple operation. He had the chancellor and he had two deans, Dean of Men and Dean of Women. He said we don’t need any other deans. When Wood came in, he had a half a dozen deans. Everybody in effect had – figured they had a chance to become a dean. So it sort of just completely disorganized the whole faculties.

Terence: George, how come you never became a dean?

George: I wasn’t interested.

Terence: You had more sense.

George: Yes, that’s right, but I wanted to do is pursue doing this research, trying to figure out what was going on and I did work for the Forest Service but in the process I really realized that the Forest Service is not going to survive without a subsidiary. Originally the industry theory of subsidiary this had to be replenished and the Feds weren’t willing to go along with (inaudible), so that’s the end of it. It had nothing to do with conservationists or anybody else. It was viable without a great heavy subsidiary, which they did get.

Terence: You mean now the Ketchikan and Pulp?

George: Yes.

Terence: The operatives?

George: The two operatives, yes.

Terence: Because it is something in 1960, it really wasn’t oil that on the horizon. I mean pulp seemed to be the main thing.

George: Yeah, it was.

Terence: That one could envision, right, is that fair enough?

George: That’s right, yeah. And I always in making my projections the future always had to level off, most other into line continue to go up. I said no, it’s going to stop right there. And it’s not because of concern about preserving the pristine wilderness because it is not viable without a continuing subsidiary and the Feds aren’t going to go on subsidizing this forever. The reason the Sitka mill came in is because we also decided to help Japan re-establish their basic industries too in exchange for being a bulwark against communism. Those sort of tradeoffs. The global politics took over on that too.

Terence: You know one aspect I like always in the future of Alaska you said maybe you might want to say this that the concept of resources is not ecstatic one and a resource actually expands or do you remember?

George: Yeah.

Terence: How you articulated that, I forget it?

George: Well I think as a resource it doesn’t have a value until there is demand for it. So it’s a function of demand. It’s like when I was trying to put together the Mental Health Trust. I said we had to get a value for sand and gravel. So the Department of Natural Resources had people going through the (inaudible). No that’s not the way you approach that. We have sand and gravel any place, what you look for is what the demand for it is going to be. This is what – I couldn’t get that through their thick skulls that you don’t spend staff time trying to evaluate the – cause I said it’s there. It’s everywhere. If you’re going to build a highway in Alaska, you just find a place you can start digging your gravel. You don’t have to go searching for it, but if you’d not building a highway it doesn’t have any value. And I could never get that across.

Terence: Right, right. Okay. Let’s see. Anything else we should cover here for?

Terence: I did. I can’t think of anything else on this that you work on with the field committee.

George: Well the field committee was the Interior Department is sort of a big gigantic miscellaneous file. You put everything in there. You put Indians in there. You put power in there. You put natural resources – recreational resources, the whole mess. And (inaudible) idea was that it didn’t make much sense. And I think I was talking to you about this, he felt he was like a feudal king with all these powerful lords around him. The only way he could figure out of breaking this down was to reorganize the Interior Department on the bases (telephone ringing).

Terence: So George, we were talking about the Federal Field Committee and –

George: Oh, yes.

Terence: And Pat Krug –

George: Well, the Federal Field Committee was an attempt on his part and the successors to have some control. It was secretary – it was have some control. The idea was to break the continental United States and Alaska and Hawaii into regional units, which were defined as combinations of river basins cause he thought in those terms. And then have each of these have a field committee made up of the various divisions of the Interior Department that operated in that region and then the chairman of that committee would be his representative in that region. So I was a direct representative of – in Alaska from that point.

And we would do the day-to-day managing of things. In other words working out conflicts between the Bureau of Mines and the Geological Survey, competing on many things and on road building and things of that sort there. Try to resolve those conflicts at the regional level. Also the first cut of the budget was to be done on that basis. So you could work out again being aware of what everybody else was doing. New York particular especially fitted into the whole. It was a very, very rational and very, very I thought brilliant idea. Naturally I went because I was the chairman.

Terence: Now did that – was this after you got your Ph.D. or what was the time?

George: This was after the (inaudible).

Terence: So it was the early – it’s the last couple of years of Gruening’s tenure?

George: Actually it had nothing to do with Gruening. In fact, Gruening went ahead and had George Sunbrook (?) (inaudible).

Terence: But it was before Eisenhower?

George: Yeah, just before Eisenhower. I was the chairman about two years when Eisenhower was elected and of course because I was before I was protected by Civil Service but in this position I wasn’t. I figured I was ready to receive my Riff notice and I was called back to Washington, but I told you this story earlier.

Frank Hinzleman, is already there being debriefed and when he heard about this he said I want to transfer George Rogers from that position to my staff and they did it. He said when I came back they haven’t set up their political (inaudible) yet and I wanted to act because we need people like you in Alaska, that was his – naturally I loved the man.

Terence: Well I mean it’s a huge compliment.

George: Yeah.

Terence: I mean cause the deal because Gruening obviously was a propagandist and that’s what we really wanted you know.

George: Gruening looked upon the field committee not as a device for rationalizing the operation of the Interior Department, but the means of promoting Alaska. That’s why he wanted George Sumbrook (?) to be the chairman. Ken Kanoo was the chairman before me but they had to get rid of him because what he was doing he thought – he used his position as access to privileged information to feed to developers.

Man: Yeah, you know.

George: Not character. However, he did give me a lot of support on the Mental Health Program.

Terence: Well isn’t that something that they really screwed up.

George: Oh, Jesus,

Terence: Here the Governor gives you a million acres of land and then you say oh it doesn’t mean anything.

George: Yeah.

Terence: You had it in trust. So again that’s more of my argument. Why would anyone want to trust these ding dongs in Alaska with their own state? It’s unbelievable you know.

Man: The reason these ding dongs came along a little later.

Terence: No, I know they did, but I mean if that’s the type of Alaskan mentality, oh let’s just dissolve this whole thing.

George: When I was looking at the (inaudible) correspondence there.

George: Well, lets not talk – I get pretty emotional about that because it just about killed me.

Terence: Yeah.

Terence: We were talking though George about the field committee and did you go back to DC for that too?

George: Yes, I went back and of course not this is terrible I can’t think of the Secretary’s name.

Terence: It’s not Oscar Chapman though you don’t think so?

George: No, no, it was –

Terence: Who did he follow?

George: I hate this.

Terence: There was Chapman.

George: I can’t even think where I can lay my hands on something that would bring this up.

Terence: Chapman. Of course it’s not Seeton. Is it the guy that followed Chapman?

George: It may have been, yes.

Man: I can almost think of it.

George: Well anyway.

Terence: Stop for a second here, look and see if I can.

Lady: (Inaudible) was based here.

Terence: Oh, I see. So you didn’t actually happen to live in Washington?

Lady: No, no.

Terence: Oh, good, okay.

George: Doesn’t give any names here.

Terence: That’s an opportunity. Let’s talk about this though George the – we’ll figure out who the Secretary of Interior was at the time. I don’t who followed Chapman.

George: Darn it.

Terence: Once you did this though your – so you stayed here (inaudible), I’m glad she explained it because I didn’t understand that and cause essentially the Secretary of Interior, you know, like they used to say was the Tzar of Alaska, you know.

George: Yeah.

Terence: Interior is really the biggest thing, so what kind of challenges did that pose I mean giving up the power I mean you know figuring out getting all these people together in the same room.

George: First of all you had to get the people together to agree to come together and like I said we had trouble. The general manager of the Alaska Railroad refused to come. He had good reason because he was not playing the game square, but they got rid of him. Ken Kano had been there before me. He was the first appointee. When I went back to Washington I said I cannot find any files he said. Pretend like the field committee didn’t exist before you came on, this is Chapman. It was Chapman. He said this – you are the first field committee chairman. Ken never acted on anything (inaudible committee chairman.

When I came back from Harvard, Ken – we were at a coffee (inaudible) backed me up. Ken was a great – he was big man. Backed me up against (inaudible) he says George I want you to be my assistant. He said I’m in charge of all the development in Alaska, that’s not the mission of the field committee. And he said I’m very good at (inaudible) up projects but I want somebody to be there to pick up the pieces after I go so I can go make more development and I want you to manage the development that are provided. I said well I got this job with Alaska Public Works. Forget about that. I said I have a commitment to them.

Well, I finally disentangled myself from me, but he was that way. He practically – he always spoke right in your face with a cigar in his hand and a cigar breath. And I just didn’t want to be associated with him. Well then when he disappeared, it was like the same time that Johnson disappeared. They had been working together on this cement plant, which was to be kept secret because the Interior Department was going to provide a cement plant. The limestone was up at the peak of the railroad where you could run supplies down hill both ways and gave the railroad a back haul and things like this. But somebody leaked out what the plans were so some developers from Anchorage came up and filed mining claims on these deposits, which killed the whole project.

But I think that was (inaudible), but anyway so I started from scratch again. There were no reports. There was supposed to be quarterly reports made and there was the annual report, which was – so I had to do the first thing and I knew what I was supposed to do. It was to be representing the Secretary. I was not to go around seeking out development. Of course Gruening also looked upon them as a developer or means of creating development. I said that’s something somebody else has to do. My job was to assist the Interior Department in managing. And so I concentrated on developing a friendship with all the members and we had a lot of fun too. They all got to be on very good friendly terms with each other and I really enjoyed that job.

So it was interesting when Chapman was back there. He says George you’re a young man. Just beware of Drake. He said when I go to one of these meetings or these things I always get a tumbler full of ginger ale and I nurse it along (inaudible) whiskey but it isn’t. He recommended and I followed his advice because it is true there is a lot of drinking going on in these meetings where it is kind of unnerving because you begin to lose your judgment.

It was so funny he just – he felt he was going to save me from this thing, which I accepted that as good advice. But the whole thing was done almost like a family. It was – they all told me that they looked forward to their meetings. When Kato was there he said a quality – he would tell them what was going to happen, then adjourn the meeting. There was never any discussion, but. So I was the first one that was operating as a real committee member. As Jean said we did quite a bit of entertainment. When they were in town Jean we had dinner parties and we had cocktail parties here too and discussed thing informally after the meetings.

That was very important to have these informal meetings off the record. And it was going along great and of course when Eisenhower came in the field committee was continued for a year or so after but it was crippled and abandoned because there were people with special interests who didn’t like the idea. They wanted to control it from Washington.

So it was a nice interlude. It was a think that I look back on with a lot of fondness because I felt like I was doing something really important. I guess I was, but it didn’t last.

Terence: Did the field committee, but from there you went to Governor Hinzelman’s.

George: Hinzelman saved me because I was being ripped and he just grabbed me and picked me up and put on and said – he got a lot of bad criticism for this because the fact that D’Armand was opposed to this, even though he was a friend, we shouldn’t have any Democrats in this critical position here. But Frank said he knew that I would do what I was supposed to do and I tried to, but it was – as soon as I got this opportunity then he was relieved but he was going to stand by me and he did and that wasn’t easy.

Terence: What was D’Armand’s role? Clase told me once that D’Armand, working for Hinzelman was kind of like the I don’t know Chief of Staff plus hatchet man, you member that. He was really the guy fighting off the Democrats.

George: Yeah, he was and that’s what made his job awkward, because here I was a very liberal Democrat sitting in this desk right next to the Governor. Only thing Hinzelman didn’t like about me is that my desk was always messy. That’s because I was doing work. His desk was always clean.

George: I guess a teenager I’ve always lived either in a barracks or in a hotel room. He didn’t know how it would be to live in that house. And so what he did he hired some of the staff from the Baranoff Hotel where he lived to be his houseboy, his cook, and so on. So he brought the hotel with him into the Governor’s Mansion.

Jean: That’s amazing.

Terence: Because he was a bachelor, right?

George: (Inaudible) a real confirmed bachelor.

Terence: Yeah and his – did he leave because was it ill health or what you know I don’t know if you stayed that long.

George: Yeah.

Terence: Cause Stepovich came after.

George: Stepovich came after him and I was trying to think of what was the transition there. I did some work with Stepovich but Stepovich was his own man. He didn’t pay any attention to the party lines at all. And they were an interesting family.

Terence: Really, Mike Stepovich?

George: Yes.

Terence: He was one of your Vitch’s of Fairbanks, yeah.

George: One of the Vitch’s yes.

Terence: Yeah.

George: His father –

Terence: And now there are sons of Vitchs, yeah.

George: Yeah they were good people. His wife was a wonderful person. How many kids did they have Jean?

Jean: Nine.

George: There are nine kids. They were good Catholics.

Terence: Did – what was the work that you did for him? Actually that was just consulting or you –

George: Yeah I did consulting work for him on we needed some demographic studies made. They were pretty much word involved politics but information that he needed for certain things that he was doing.

His wife said when he – he was one of these lawyers she said that he ruined his suits all the time because he would stand on the street and talk and he ripped all the pockets of his coats he was leaning on a parking meter and he walked away with the pocket draped over the meter and ripped – but he was a real interesting guy. And they were a very good-looking couple too. The kids are all good looking.

George: Guarantee you’d be on the varsity next year but I said – I was sitting in the Jacuzzi with a periodic table couldn’t memorize. I said I’ve got other agendas I have to tend to.

Terence: Yeah, no kidding

George: That’s not what I went to college for Jean.

Jean: He also took Art. George is an artist doing.

Man: Really George, is that right?

Terence: Painting or cartoons or what?

George: Mostly – well some of my sketchbooks would survived well George Sidney got them and had copies made. They were burned in smoke but I did a lot of sketching. Also because I wanted to be an architect. When we went to Europe I did drawings of –

Jean: (Inaudible) Alaska. Line drawing.

Terence: Wow.

Jean: He’s very good.

Terence: Because as a child you wanted to be an architect?

George: Yeah, right, yeah. And I did parts of the Grand Tour later in life when we went and other things.

Terence: See what you could have become?

George: Yeah.

Jean: He sings too.

George: Probably tearing these things up again.

Terence: Does it sound okay?
Terence: Oh, yes, just anything else about the D’Armand. I don’t know if you had much dealings with D’Armand then?

Jean: (Inaudible) couple of times and we didn’t do it.

George: Short-term memory.

Terence: Mine too. I have no idea.

George: Maybe we better let Jean talk.

Jean: Talking about the field committee.

Man: D’Armand.

Terence: Oh, D’Armand and Hinzelman’s. George, maybe you can give me some advice what should I ask Bob about, because I know they can go way back, right.

George: Yeah, they do, yes.

Terence: And I don’t know if Bob knew them from being in the fish business or what.

George: I don’t know. In fact I don’t know the ins and outs about why he selected Bob cause you see he was down the hall from me and we didn’t – but afterwards we were very good terms afterward. It was just an awkward thing to have me sitting there and I knew that so I got out as quickly as I could. Well it took a while, a couple of years.

Terence: Where did you go after that?

George: That’s when I got the Ford Foundation grant resources for the future. I keep saying Ford Foundation, it was just (inaudible). And that was to be like a three-year grant and I turned out two books. I didn’t get the third one done, but I did when I did that circumpolar north with two other – Terrance Armstrong and Graham Raleigh. That one was one that took the place of the third one where I put Alaska into a global context and looked at it. And so we did accomplish the three books with interruption.

Terence: Well that’s what I said, I think that (inaudible) of statehood that’s a book that everybody in Alaska should know. The difficulty is like I said it is so grounded in that time and some elements. I mean I don’t know I know some elements you may be able to expound on them use another way, but I just think that it is so interesting there about the questions about it. Because now because the state has been so eked financially successful in a way.

George: Yes.

Terence: We have these fiscal problems but we’re still so incredibly rich that people don’t understand that that’s you know. I don’t know I just think we have the victory disease you know, what they call World War II you know. I mean that’s what we have.

George: Yes, it is and it all started falling apart when we achieved this, like I say financial independence with the oil and then we didn’t know how to handle it, which was a tragedy.

Terence: And but it’s also I guess the opportunity isn’t it. I mean we have still opportunity where we can go I suppose. Let me just one last question. Okay. I know I said that before. How you know sort of looking back is there any sort of one time that the (inaudible) happier for you personally, professionally, as a family you know than any other times. Something that you really enjoyed that.

George: Well the first years were as a whole very happy because we were making progress. Things were changing. Field Committee was a high point. When I lost that I did get a grant so I could go on writing about it and then with statehood I said before there was this period in which the legislature, the political scene was not as ugly and vicious as it has become. And that was a downer. I don’t think we survived – I say the real downer to me was the (inaudible) of the Mental Health Trust lands and it was – I just felt I was betrayed. I was – a lot of things happened to me and I just was very unpleasant.

Terence: Well maybe you should say something about that just for the record, because this is for the future you know so speak up. Because basically there was a million acres and the state was supposed to hold it in trust – the territory right, because it was given to the territory first, right?

George: Yes it was and it was the hold point of it was to get the federal government out of the Mental Health business and up to that point what we did we simply warehoused people who were difficult and had problems. We didn’t differentiate between alcoholism and mental health. There was no concept of what really mental health really meant and we just sent them south to Morningside. There was a saying in the Alaska outside, inside, Morningside, this was the story of coming to Alaska. And it was treated really very crudely. And the idea of the Mental Health Trust lands was to build a resource base on which the money could be used. The flaw in the drafting of it was that it was set up and they make a very (inaudible) as a trust, then they said the resources can be sold. And this gave some of the Department of Natural Resources a peg to say it was not a true trust. But today I’ve told you this thing about what they really intended if you read the record of the drafting of this they were looking at this as a transfer of the raw materials to cash which was then invested. But that was one of the things that we had trouble with.

The other was the defeating that the Secretary of Natural Resources director and the Attorney General both exchange correspondence on which I saw and they said well that’s the Natural Resources people didn’t know how to manage the Trust. Well let’s just get rid of the Trust. The mentally ill don’t know who they are anyhow so we’ll take (inaudible) mental ill have families. And when they did this, then the families and friends of the mentally ill formed the Alaska – now I can’t even think of the name –

Jean: (Inaudible)

George: (Inaudible) this is Juneau lives, (inaudible) Alaska lives. They sprung up all over the state and then we – then as organizations filed suit against the Department – the State for breaking the Trust. And it went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ordered the Trust be established. And they set up and so I was the chairman of the committee that was supposed to do the re-establishment of it. Well I realized that more than 50 percent of the lands had been disposed of in various ways. It would be a lifetime of lawsuits, third parties, innocent third parties who had acquired land that had been sold.

So we came up with the idea of creating an alternative. And what we were going to do is set up the lands that had been selected by the State for parks and other things, whether they were Mental Health or not – Trust or not, until you got a million acres and say this is the new Trust. But then we would trace back the original land trust and see what its value was. This would be the basis for determining how much money that should be transferred from this.

And it was fine because – I thought it satisfied everybody. But then when it came to the point of putting a value on the lands, the Department of Natural Resources refused to use anything except comparable sales. So when you came to (inaudible) had selected mineral lands that were accessible around the highway net near already developed areas so that they could be developed easily. So they put zero value on those lands and I said why? Because we can’t find any comparable sale of mineral lands. I said of course not you don’t sell mineral lands you lease them. I said in other words you would say that Prudhoe Bay had a zero balance and they said yes. I said you must be insane. What you do you would capitalize – they didn’t know what I was saying the future earnings that you will get from the leasing of that land and that becomes the value of the land. I could never get it through their thick skulls.

What I did when I took over this job I realized I got all the textbooks that real estate agents study when they studying for their examinations and I read those books. I got a hold of the – if you had comparable sales you had the discounting from a present value to future earnings and a whole bunch of other things. So I had all this in hand and they refused to do anything but the comparable sales. And in the textbooks they said comparable sales should only be used where there is frequent turnover, like real estate in an urban area. Then you have these other alternative methods for things like mineral lands or lands where your resources are harvested.

Well the thing broke down on that. I couldn’t get anybody to even our lawyers didn’t understand what I was talking about. It was just a complete frustration. We did – then we had the other thing that they said we don’t have any more money, but what they decided to do was to hire a professor from New Mexico who had written a textbook which I had recommended to them on the evaluation of mineral lands, but they didn’t tell me they hired him. He called me up from Fairbanks and said I didn’t realize George that I was getting into the middle of a lawsuit. They didn’t tell me this. But I want to tell you that they wanted him to evaluate what we had done. We couldn’t use their methods so we hired a professor from the London School of Economics to come over and do this for us, you look at other lands like the Rocky Mountain States and get a comparable value. But it was impossible for us – he was appalled when he found out what he had stepped into. He said he was criticizing our work on the grounds that we hadn’t done the right approach. The reason we hadn’t done it is because they wouldn’t allow us to do the right approach.

But they then hired him to evaluate what had been done. And he said the information that the Department gave us was the wrong information. And that was – after I read that I said this is criminal. This is – by that time the legislature got tired of this. They went along with us up to the point where they set up the methodology, but when we tried to apply the methodology well we ended by this long – I finally resigned. Then this long negotiation and they came up with this board to manage these lands. The board members got salaries that are almost comparable to the head of the Department, but they don’t do anything. So any money they might get from those Mental Health lands goes into the running of the management, which means that – the only thing we gained from this was a heightened public awareness of what Mental Health was about. But we did get appropriations, which we didn’t get before. We did get some programs put in place, which we didn’t have before, so it wasn’t a total loss. But it was not what we expected. Not what the federal government expected us to do. Like I said I felt like I was really bushwhacked and a few others things. Lydia Selcreek (?) and I were – fought that battle almost a month.

Jean: And (inaudible).

George: Yeah, she was not on the – she was on something else.

Terence: And I think it is an example some day somebody will have to write about. It was the grossest example of a State mismanagement.

George: Yes.

Terence: Of this land and so that in itself going back on this presupposition without statehood.

George: Uh-huh.

Terence: They can’t just dissolve a million acres and it’s the least able members of society and do – say we don’t have to care of them cause the Feds care for them. The whole idea was to get it off the federal dole that was the whole idea.

George: And it made sense because then you bring it closer to home where you can really manage this sort of thing, but I try to block that out of my mind because I wake up at night thinking about that and get very angry. I did manage to extract from the record for example I found the thing where they were cooking the minutes. I didn’t bother with the minutes. So then I insisted –

But then I had to then – I put a box in the Eagan Library and they have turned that over the archives now. So I assume that is there, but they deliberating were trying to shred the record. So, but it was a long drawn out battle. It was a total losing battle.

Terence: Well I see it’s an embarrassment to the State. It is the biggest mistake because of the fact of what you said. So at least you did your best (inaudible). I mean what a scramble eggs they made of this. As soon as they abolished the thing it probably an impossible situation to really fix frankly looking at it you know.

George: And that’s the reason –

Terence: How do you go back and unscramble it?

George: The court order listed re (inaudible) the land trust. Well we couldn’t do that. Cause third parties were involved in this, but like I say the Mental Health Program has advanced since then because of all the publicity.

Terence: And better than territorial days I would say so.

George: Oh, my God yes.

Terence: Better than Morningside?

George: Well this is the point I mentioned Bill Redding was a great help with this when he realized he got up and said I’m not going to have the State spending money for having people lie on couches being psychoanalyzed. So and I went and said Bill I said you don’t understand mental illness. And one of our daughters went through and I described what we went through and he actually had tears in his eyes. He came to me and apologized and then he became a real champion of the programs. It was with his help and a few other people that we got not the mental health plans but mental health legislation through so I have to give Bill credit for that.

Terence: Well it’s better. I mean that you know and it is more enlightened about some things. It is just that when you mix these Alaskans up with lands and resources.

George: Yeah.

Terence: Since that’s the only capital we have look at the mess it made you know, so. Well, okay I don’t have any more questions for George honestly, but actually I want to thank you for consenting to this. And I know it’s a you know pretty grueling here so I really appreciate it.

George: It was good for me to review in my own mind what was going on here.

Terence: Well I want you to think about this cause I’ll be glad to help you if you want to do that book. I can come down and do that.

George: Well I intend to do this and it will be a – I don’t know where to start it. A few things like that but I want it to be line journeys through these things not just about me, but what happened around me and how things worked. And as (inaudible) said you don’t have to worry about footnotes George, you’re the primary source and anyone who would contradict you is probably dead now.

Terence: That’s exactly right. Okay, thanks George.

George: Okay.

Terence: Okay, today is still September 22, 2003 and we are at Jean and George’s house in beautiful sunny Juneau. So Jean tell us about George’s secret life? You’ve heard all about it, the truth is what we want to know.

Jean: You know he and I – I have done of course we built our first house ourselves and we came back to Alaska with a book that George had that said How to Build Your Own Home for $3,000. And he can do anything he can read about, except plumbing. He said he wasn’t going to do the plumbing. So we managed to pay for the plumber to come, but he did all the wiring and he did it right. And I was only allowed to hammer things where it didn’t show because I was not very good with a hammer. Second under coatings but never anything on the surface that was going to show.

Terence: Did it work out to less than 3,000?

Jean: Well you might – in the end I suppose we had thousands of dollars in it but for long time we put all our fortune in it, as George made it.

Terence: Well tell me a little bit about when you and he met. Where were you from – born? You were born in Idaho, right?

Jean: Yes.

Terence: What part of Idaho?

Jean: Well down in the southern part, the Snake River plain side. I did my high school years in Twin Falls. Then I went to a teacher training college up in Mt. Harrison when Idaho was first a state and you know they had to give so much land to education. They built a teacher training college there thinking that Idaho would be a dry farming state, but that’s too dry. So when irrigation came along everything went the other direction down by Twin Falls and in through there. So Albion was just left up there high and dry, this little school for teacher training. And I had my first two years there. And then I went to the largest university in the world after teaching two years and making a little money.

Terence: So at Berkeley, right?

Jean: And that’s where I met George.

Terence: So what year did you go down to Berkeley, what year was that?

Jean: I guess I came in 1940, 41.

Terence: Was that your ten dollars – your ten-dollar deposit?

Jean: I sent my ten dollar application in and the first thing they had a get together you know the way they do to introduce everybody around and there were a lot of junior transfers to Berkeley. They encouraged that and when I met George I said isn’t it fun for you to put the faces to those ten dollars you got? And he said yes.

George: I managed to say yes.

Terence: You did, yeah.

Jean: And of course the way he tells it he made up his mind to marry me early on but my – the girls at the girls house think I just chased him right down into a corner. You see he was a mutual thing, been kind of a mutual thing ever since.

Terence: And so your – what were you studying at Berkeley? What was your –

Jean: I was an English Major.

Terence: And so what year did you graduate – did you graduate down there?

Jean: Oh, yeah. Uh-huh.

Terence: What year was that?

Jean: 1943-½ I guess it was. I had to take an extra semester. I really should have gone ahead two years but in Berkeley they didn’t let you take technical courses like teacher training until you were at least junior and of course I had all these thousands of education credits so I lost of them so I had to make it up. And I was already married to George by then and we were supporting each other. At one point I made more money than he did.

Terence: An English Major out-earning an economist, now that’s a story. When you came – what was it like, the trip up to Alaska, first trip in 1945?

Jean: Well it was a wonderful adventure and we thought we were doing we were doing our war duty and actually got here and there was all sorts of things that we hadn’t seen in Berkeley for a long time. Like steaks and eggs and whipped cream and even if it was Abescet.

Terence: Now why was that because the rationing wasn’t here or what was?

Jean: Yes, they didn’t – the rationing – they didn’t do any rationing here.

Terence: And so what did you expect to stay for a little bit or?

Jean: Well we had signed on for two years, like all government employees do you know. And we found out that not only was it a (inaudible) town, although it was only about 6,000 people you know, but it had a flavor to it and besides as you know George found this to be an ideal spot to do this research was wanting to do. So it was just a terrific happenstance. We thought we were just really fortunate. And Mildred Herman took right a hold of me and said now just because you’re going to be housewife and a mother doesn’t mean that you can’t do public duties and volunteer your time and so on and so I’ve been doing that ever since.

Terence: Did she kind of show you around and stuff because she was the one that George was working too right, yeah?

Jean: Yes. Uh-huh. And well I guess we stayed with her, didn’t we George?

George: Yes, at the beginning.

Jean: For the first three or four days while we were looking for a house you know. Until very recently housing was always scarce in Juneau. I can remember quite well a few years ago when I saw the first sign that I have ever seen in Juneau, Apartment for Rent.

Terence: Man, that’s something, that’s awful.

Jean: And we – it was all because of this thing of not getting any money you know to rent out the place.

Terence: Sure and it being so constricted.

Jean: Well it isn’t actually constricted. People have that people about it and some people don’t like it because the mountains are so close and they feel constricted, but it’s really we’ve got endless space to build and do things. Good Lord they’re even talking about making a golf course and some extension you know. Fancy that?

Terence: No, I can’t. So the – what kind of things were you involved in Jean. What kind of things?

Jean: Oh the library grabbed me right off to do storytelling and I’ve been volunteering in libraries ever since.

Terence: Was that Gail, was she librarian then?

Jean: Oh gosh no, it was wonderful old lady named Nan Coleman. Gail came along a lot later. The next one was Edna Lohman and that was strictly a political appointment and she didn’t know anything about libraries. In fact I didn’t find out until quite some time later and I helped her a lot. I didn’t have any children then.

I went to the legislature all the time too because it was interesting. It is not interesting any more. But you know everything used to happen on the floor. We were there the famous time that Elizabeth Brodavich made her speech because she actually happened to be a friend of ours too. We took care of their kids once while she and her husband went on a trip.

Terence: Was that – why don’t you describe the speech? Did you know she was going to give it that day? That was about the Civil Rights Bill in 1945.

Jean: Well we knew she was going to make a plea.

Terence: And so you were in the audience that day?

Jean: Yes.

Terence: Oh wow. Yeah. What were some of the most of the most interesting legislators then or was there anybody who comes to mind. I don’t know if there is anybody.

Jean: Oh there were lots of them. They were all kind of – was it Jones from Nome.

Terence: Charlie Jones.

George: Charlie Jones.

Terence: Yeah.

Jean: Then there was that one from Ketchikan.

George: Dr. Walker.

Jean: Yeah.

Terence: Walker, yeah.

Jean: And you know they were good – great talkers and it all happened on the floor like Judge Arnold sitting there on the floor you know doing his bit. You could see it all. So it really was interesting. And I was young and free and you know I could go and watch and I did. I enjoyed it a lot.

Terence: Can we stop for a second?

Man: Yeah I’m hearing something – I think it’s an airplane.

Jean: He was four and they stayed with us for four or five days I think. And we had found a house just down the block from here, a little miner’s cabin and fixed it up and lived in it. And I had a little nursery schooler after a while for the American Women’s Voluntary Services. Then it moved to the top floor of the Governor’s Mansion. That was another volunteer thing I did, but Dorothy Gruening let us have the third floor for a cooperative nursery.

Terence: For all the little kids of –

Jean: By that time I had two – the first two children which we adopted in Boston.

Terence: Tell me what were the names of the kids, what were –

Jean: Well we were fortunate to get girl boy, girl boy and girl boy. And we got two in the 40’s and – in the late 40’s, and two in the mid 50’s and two in the early 60’s and they go Shelly and Jeffrey were the first day. Then it was Sidney and Gavin, and then it was Sabrena and Garth. All very literary names.

Terence: So that’s a broader range of age – 10 years ago maybe or 12 years.

Jean: The oldest – our oldest daughter was 17 when we got Garth at three months. He was three months old. So there is quite a gap. We were at parenting for a long, long time. So I was a volunteer at the school for a very long time. I’m the – I tell them I’m the oldest living volunteer at Harborview School.

Man: I’m hearing another airplane coming into range here.

Terence: Aaron, you rolling?

Aaron: Rolling.

Terence: What kind of stuff did you do at the library, what kind of things, just like reading and storytelling?

Jean: I had you mean at the school library?

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

Jean: The tasks that you know people think librarians don’t have anything to do but reading, but there are a big lot of tasks that go into and one of the things I was quite good at was finding misfiled cards. Of course we don’t have – you don’t do that sort of thing today but and we – I did a lot of reading to the kids. In fact they all – these kids that I call my Harborview kids think I was one of the librarians. So I’m a librarian by acclamation. And I belong to the Library Association and support everything about a library.

Terence: Yeah, it’s like the great American institution isn’t it? I think the Public Library –

Jean: Oh, it isn’t.

Terence: Yeah, yeah.

Jean: And when one of our local borough assemblymen decided that we should charge a dollar every time you took out a book. I tell you my hackles went right up. We gave him to understand that America was built on the free library system.

Terence: That’s great. How did – but talk about the kids were quite verbal cause you and George talk a lot?

George: Oh, yeah.

Jean: Oh, yeah. Uh-huh.

George: We use big words.

Jean: Yes, I think one of the things we were able to give to them was good verbal ability, good number of words they know. They may have failed in other aspects but they all knew words. We read a lot to them. Every evening we read to the children around the table while George and I had our cup of coffee. And we went through volumes. I was still reading when the youngest finally left home and then there wasn’t anybody but George to read to and we found we could read faster to ourselves so that’s when I gave that up.

Terence: Well what was it like sort of in family things Jean like you were saying that you guys often shared a lot of the duties and stuff?

Jean: Oh terrific yes. We would never have managed six children had not we both pitched in on all fronts. And he did his – when we were building the house he used to come home, get into his carpenter’s overalls and –

George: I did it after dinner.

Jean: And worked until dinner and then after dinner he read to the kids while I bathed a certain section of them. They had already – we hadn’t started reading to them at the dinner table when they were really small but we certainly did before the smallest was any more than crawling around on the floor.

Terence: So when you’re at the dinner table you just read books as you were sitting around eating sort of?

Jean: No, no, we ate first.

Terence: Afterwards, okay.

Jean: You can’t eat and read a book at the same time.

Terence: Okay, right.

Jean: But I can drink coffee and read a book at the same time and I did. And then I got interested in various other things. When I was first here I volunteered some for the Health Department. And I remember reading TB tests because TB was such a – and another thing I did for the Health Department was you know in the decade of the 50’s – 50 to 60, the Health Department here almost erased TB. And I did – they did a study about this and in all the villages and gosh there are a lot of villages and what influenced the villages the most. And of course it turned out to be the religious leader and the teacher and if they were big enough a nurse and the impact that it had on them. And I collated that with a little intelligent help from George for the White House Conference. There was a White House Conference on this nationwide. And Egan was Governor and I was supposed to get to go with two people from the Health Department, but at the last minute he said only one person could go from the Health Department so the other person and I never got to go, but it was really interesting.

Terence: TB was the scourge of Alaska wasn’t it?

Jean: Oh, yeah.

Terence: Rural Alaska, yeah.

Jean: But what I found out in going from room to room and testing these TB things was that you could the minute you stepped into the room what kind of a teacher there was there. Having been a teacher of course – I would have probably gone on teaching school here but the superintendent of schools at the time was prejudice against any woman whose husband worked for the government. That was kind of a hangover from the depression I think.

Terence: So if you had a woman who had a government job they just wouldn’t hire them is that right?

Jean: Well yeah, they wouldn’t hire his wife, but so I had to go out and adopt all these kids.

Terence: But and so but reading the TB test was just around here. Did you go to village for that?

Jean: Oh, no, no. There wasn’t the money to do that.

Terence: I see. I see.

Jean: There was some you know the –

Terence: Local people did that?

Jean: Yeah.

Terence: Yeah, yeah, I see, okay. Well tell us about the writing and stuff. How did you – what was your first project?

Jean: Well I always intended to be a writer. I wrote a grubby little book when I was 10 years old in a notebook that I kept in my overalls pocket because I liked to wear overalls. And I remember the looks of it, but I don’t remember anything about what was in it. A lot of misspelling I expect.

Terence: Remember what the title was?

Jean: Oh, no, heaven’s no. I haven’t the faintest memory of what I wrote, but I did know that I – as soon as I found out that writers were humans, just real people, I – that was for me cause I really loved books. And but I really didn’t have – I really didn’t have creative energy left until my last two kids were in high school. And then I started seriously doing it. It took me five years to get a book published and the first one that was published was Good-bye My Island. Although (inaudible) and I had put together A King Island Christmas and sent it off first to the same company that did publish – Green (inaudible). They thought that it was kind of esoteric and maybe would not – there would not be general interest, but they liked Good-by My Island and after that was published it got very good reviews all over and sold well. I never made it out of the mid list of authors however. And so then they took King Island Christmas.

Terence: Tell us about working with Ree Menuse (?) because you’ve known her for a long time, right, when did you first?

Jean: Well I met her when she first came to town in the 50’s and liked her and we’ve been friends ever since. But she had done a year of teaching school with her then husband Juan Menuse. And she had really liked it and she had done a lot of sketches about it and his story about Father Karel coming was a true story and she thought it would make a good picture book and she knew I was sending off stories and she asked if I would do the story. And as far as working with her she did her thing and I did my thing. I did have her read everything I wrote about King Island because it based loosely on her – she’s the Maria in the book, loosely based you know to make sure that I didn’t do what people do so often when they write their first book about Alaska they fill it full of incongruities of one kind or another. So I was very careful not to and I did consider seriously that it was somebody else’s culture. But they weren’t writing the story and I just thought it was a story that should be told.

Terence: And how did you do – did you sort of interview her I mean did she have a tough to read about it? How did you –

Jean: No, if I had been a Catholic girl I would have found a lot more about it than I did, but I didn’t know that the succeeding fathers who had been there had done a lot of writing about it, so I didn’t have that material, but I did look through the newspapers and got as much material as I could. And she had lots and lots and lots of pictures. And I didn’t interview her in any way, shape, or form. I just -it just – I was so interested in what she had to say about it over the years that I had known her you know that it was just all there.

Terence: What about King Island Christmas? You actually said that one came first? You actually did that one first?

Jean: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Terence: So how did that –

Jean: That’s what got me so interested in telling this other story.

Terence: And it’s basically from hearing it – her talk about it in a way right?

Jean: Yes.

Terence: That’s really the inspiration.

Jean: Well the King Island Christmas was because she asked me if I would write the story because I agreed that it was an interesting story. And it would make a good picture book and she had already done some pictures, some pictures of the North Star and the rough seas and so it was just a pure pleasure. My – working with me was mostly to encourage her and tell her that this is a wonderful picture and she is just doing wonderful things and – because she found out that she does not like to do picture books. You know you have to do 23 or 24 pictures all in the same color pad, all about the same people and she is greatly, greatly an artist who wants to look through her sketch book and see what appeals to her. If it doesn’t turn out she turns over the paper and tries it again. If that doesn’t turn out she picks another one, yeah. And that thing of having to do it. Now some artists like that. They like the parameter that is forcing them to do this, but she did black and white’s for the Good-bye Island, little black and white sketches. And then she did – and she had already done King Island Christmas and then she did one of my mittens and she said this is it.

Terence: Well let’s say you know if there is something that you kind of you know looking back what was the happiest time for you kind of being in you know – I asked George about this earlier, is there some kind of time or event or thing you were involved with or thing that was really the most fun?

Jean: Well of course it was really fun when we adopted our first little girl. It was really fun when we adopted our last little boy. I don’t know I think there’s a state of mind in which you decide to be happy with what you have and I was certainly of that state of mind. Besides he’s a great guy.

Terence: Is he a great guy?

Jean: Yeah, he’s a great guy.

Terence: Is he, yeah?

Jean: Yeah.

Terence: So why is he great guy?

Jean: Well he’s thoughtful. He’s courteous. He’s kind. He’s loving. He’s smart. He’s talented you know. He’s just a great guy. And he likes me. We still like each other.

Terence: Well that’s pretty nice. And you’ve been married now for?

Jean: Well it will be 61 years the 27th of this November.

Terence: That’s wonderful.

Jean: And we’re hoping to last a few years and enjoy this nice new house.

George: The house that’s definitely the goal.

Terence: Even more than a few, Jean.

Jean: That’s why you have to feed us.

Terence: That’s right, which is what we’re going to do. Can you think of anything else we should ask?

Robert: Well just one question based on what our premise is. You came up here before it was a state, would you share with Terrence here your impressions of what happened through the process of turning from territory to state?

Jean: You know it was –

Terence: Look towards me though Jean so we can –

Jean: Oh, it was a time of real thrill because we were building a state and it just inspired all kinds of people and all kinds of people came here. We met all sorts of interesting people here and I must have invited a lot of them to dinner. It was just a great and glorious time. I think the only – the most difficult time of our lives was when the kids were teenagers and the difference between teenagers when Shelly and Jeffrey were teenagers and the teenagers when Sydney and Gavin were teenagers was just terrific. Society just fell apart on you. Society used to help support you as a parent. That’s not true, but that wasn’t true any more and that was hard. But we had each other and the kids are loving thoughtful children today. Are grownups and it’s the nicest thing about having kids is that when they grow up you can be friends with them.

Terence: Yeah that’s wonderful. That’s the greatest accomplishment, isn’t it, so?

Jean: It is. Besides I liked my mother-in-law.

Terence: Oh your mother-in-law was?

Jean: George’s mother.

Terence: Okay. So is she still alive now?

Jean: No, when she was widowed she came to spend time with us and then we got to really know her and she was really a great lady. I loved her a lot. My mother had been dead for some years.

Terence: Oh, that’s nice, that’s wonderful.

Jean: My dad used to come and visit us and he was fun too.

Terence: And from Idaho, was he from?

Jean: Uh-huh. They put me in school in Albion you know up in this wild place up in the mountains where there wasn’t any transportation to Albion Teachers College.

George: You put your kids in school and they couldn’t get out.

Jean: So your folks brought you or somebody brought you that had a car and deposited you and there was no way to get out until somebody came and got you. It was really cut off. It was a funny – it was a wonderful little campus, quite pretty. Desired after a New England school all in a quadrangle with red brick buildings around you know. It was really a very pretty place.

Terence: Gosh I wonder if it’s exists or –

Jean: Well it exists but it is not a teacher training college and it hasn’t been for years and the buildings are getting derelict, although the little town tries – has tried to sell it as a – well for a while it was a religious school. And then for a while it was something else. And then they’ve been trying to – it’s good skiing there so they’ve been thinking of trying to make it a ski resort but nothing has actually come of it. I did take George back to it.

George: And that was very interesting.

Jean: Some of my Albion friends.

George: Beautiful, red brick.

Jean: One of the highlights four years ago was when there were eight of us who lived across the hall from each other, roommates you know, so it made eight of us. And we kept in touch and when they were all 80 they all came up to visit except one who was too ill to come. And it was what – Marshall Linn’s wife called Jean among the Q-tips. They were all white haired. But we had such a glorious reunion up here. It was just – it was really lovely to do.

Terence: How wonderful. So all seven of the eight came, isn’t that something? Gosh.

Jean: Seven of the eight of us were together.

Terence: Wow. That’s so interesting.

Jean: One of the things that amazed us all as all of us were dirt poor you know. You didn’t go to Albion if you weren’t dirt poor. And all had prospered and none of us can believe that we are as prosperous today from our really dirt poor beginnings. You know I couldn’t have gone to Berkeley if it cost today what – the kids could do it then you know. You could work your way through.

Terence: Yeah, that’s really remarkable – that is remarkable, I mean it just is and also.

Jean: I didn’t know that George was rich, you know, he had this ability to keep books and stuff so he had money in the bank.

George: That’s right.

Terence: Oh, that’s so interesting, but I like Jean among the Q-tips too. I got to tell Lois about – I got to ask her about that. I just actually was up there –

Jean: Our first date was a play

Terence: Oh, it was, oh.

Jean: It was a Shakespeare play. It was –

Terence: Which one?

George: The Tempest

Jean: The Tempest and we have been going to Shakespeare plays as often as we can since and sometimes George has been in quite a few of them and when we were in England we were considered the couple that went to the most Shakespeare plays that anybody they knew had been to. We really did have a good time there. And for me I went everywhere where Jane Austen had ever trod. How about that for a little girl from Idaho? In overalls and want to be a singing cowgirl.

Terence: Oh, you didn’t tell me about that part.

Terence: What about Jane Austen?

(Inaudible).

George: The German Requiem. That was a very interesting one to work on.

Jean: So we and we sung it in choirs, but that doesn’t do a solo performance. You got to have a chorus.

Terence: So tell us about Jane Austen, so you were as big of hers?

Jean: Yes, I’m a big fan of hers. I – when I had went to grade school in a little town next to Twin Falls called Buhl. And I moved after the eighth grade to Twin Falls and of course when you’re a school kid when you move into a neighborhood a school isn’t on there is not as much chance to get to know the other kids. So my sister and I gloried in the library there because we had just about run out of books in Buhl. And so we went to the library every day when it opened and got books and one day she said to me Jean, read this book you’ll like it. And it was Jane Austen’s Private Prejudice. And I was 13 and I just loved it and she loved it. So when we went and I have read all of her books several times and I’ve read a lot of stuff about her. So I’m something of an authority, more so than some of the people who write about her I think sometimes. But I did go – George and I went everywhere she went.

Terence: Is that right?

Jean: Uh-huh. Yeah.

Terence: To where?

Jean: To – help me out George.

George: You’re talking about Scotland?

Jean: Yeah. Uh-huh. When we were –

Terence: Walter Scott or –

Jean: Yeah.

Terence: Oh, okay, that Scott, okay. Uh-huh. Oh wow.

Jean: He had a very nice study. George was quite envious.

Terence: No, but I think that so in a way libraries have been one of your passions, right, Jean you would say?

Jean: Uh-huh.

Terence: And that has given you a chance to tour a lot around the state would you say?

Jean: Well my books have, not my library volunteering.

Terence: But speaking about them?

Jean: Yes. Uh-huh. Going to schools.

Terence: Yeah.

Jean: Talking about it, but that has been a wonderful opportunity. I’ve been all kinds of places. I used to have a map with the little – on my study door that had pinpoints wherever I had been.

Terence: Well tell us just a little bit in closing about the fire and stuff. I mean what did you guys were in –

George: Berkeley.

Terence: Oh, in Berkeley, okay. So what was the –

Jean: Well we were staying with this friend whose letters I was telling you about and she came in – the phone rang and she came into the room where we were sleeping and she said I don’t know how to tell you this. And George said well just say it. And she said your house – that was Sydney and your house burned to the ground last night. And so George just said to me well guess we’ll just start over. So we did. He started designing a house again. And we’ve been very, very kindly treated by everybody in Juneau I think.

George: Just wonderful.

Jean: We’ve had help in all directions. And we had a very nice contractor and we have a nice head carpenter who is still coming and doing things. As soon as we get the (inaudible) door on the closet and the plate rail up I’d say we’re substantially finished until the outside landscaping gets done.

Terence: What year – when did the house burn down – how many years ago was it now it was two?

Jean: Two.

Terence: Two years ago?

Jean: Uh-huh.

Terence: So and when did you start this house – actually break ground?

Jean: In July.

George: July last year.

Jean: Uh-huh and we moved in on Christmas Eve.

Terence: Oh, nice present.

Jean: Which it was terrible.

Terence: Was it bad?

George: It wasn’t finished. There were two carpenters still working, two plumbers working and one electrician.

Jean: And (inaudible) people all friends of George, young people came and moved us from the Linn’s apartment up here where Marshall and Lois lived and they’re old friends of ours too.

Man: I’m afraid this airplane is really getting loud.

Terence: So you were staying with Marshall and Lois’ house, their apartment?

Jean: Yeah. Uh-huh. And so there was a crew there putting stuff in boxes and a crew here presumably helping me put them away. And I had five – you know it was a small apartment and I had five drawers to keep everything that was meant for a kitchen and here I have 35. So it was – but for days were wondered around saying do you know where this is? Do you know where that is? And searching in boxes for things, but you know we finally got on top of it. But you know one of the worst things about having a fire is that you feel like a displayed person. It was a while before we felt at home here. Besides that everything is gone. We don’t have any fingernail clippers. You don’t have a needle and thread. You don’t have any old rags to wipe up messes with you know. It is just – every day you say well for a long time you say I’m going to get, well no I’m not going to get that. And it’s a big, big tiresome chore, but the results of course are worth it.

Terence: The house is so beautiful now. I guess is there anything part of it that’s kind of liberating and you know you don’t have to make decisions about what to throw out, do you?

Jean: You don’t even have to clean out the closets. I just had begun to do a lot of that.

Terence: I mean obviously awful too but I guess there’s that –

Jean: There are some things that you lose that you can’t replace.

Terence: Can’t replace.

Jean: There is no amount of insurance can replace that.

Terence: That’s right, yeah.

Jean: But I’m not a – one of my philosophies is not to fuss too much about things you can’t help.

George: My philosophy is to keep busy, keep busy and redesigning the house.

Jean: Yeah he had – George did enjoy that part.

Terence: Well you always wanted to be an architect, right?

George: That’s exactly right.

Jean: He designed our first house.

George: Activity and –

Terence: So what’s your review Jean on his architectural skills?

Jean: A1.

Terence: That’s pretty good.

Jean: A plus.

Terence: Seventh career for him.

Jean: Yeah, well, yeah, seven to ten.

Terence: Well I can’t think of anything else – Robert? But you know we’re going to talk to BG Olson tomorrow. So you worked with him on the –

Jean: Oh, yeah. Uh-huh.

Terence: On the public broad (inaudible).

Jean: Went to breakfast with him a lot. I always stayed with somebody when we went on trips to share the expenses. So Lena (inaudible) stayed with a lot and Sharon Gateman. Those were happy days you know. We had money. I didn’t know anything about the technicalities of all that talk you know about this high tech stuff but I was – Bitsey Brennerman and I were the only two people when that crook was hired here – that were against him. We had (inaudible) him out before the rest of them did. So I had some uses there.

And of course we used to go to the national conventions and that was always fun.

Terence: And just one thing about Lois and Marshall. He’s retiring.

Jean: Yes, I just had a note from Lois that they were going to do that.

Terence: Well she’s just delightful. Oh, he is too. I mean they’re both.

Jean: We used to go grocery shopping together when the grocery stores moved out the road you know it was a trip so she’d do the driving and the hauling, take me along. Those were good times. We used to walk with her too. She was one of our walking friends. We walked to Twin Lakes a lot with her.

Terence: And did – George I don’t know if you worked with Marshall?

George: Oh, yeah.

Jean: He was on the Advisory over there as long as the law allowed.

George: Yeah. Marshall said George I’ve hired you to say the things that I’m not allowed to say and the first Marshall cleaned up his mess. We had a guy that they hired as the chancellor whose record was completely false. He was (inaudible). I had nothing against him, but his name was Paradise. It was a strange name.

Terence: Oh, I remember this guy, yeah.

George: And he had –

Jean: Built up quite a name.

George: He had two vice chancellors. He had a basketball team.

Episode transcript

Maynard Londborg: Oh I learned a lot of things while I was up there and that is that you can debate. You can passionately debate but it doesn’t have to ruin a friendship and it is kind of interesting we started talking about missionary work and that but how many churches do not know how to do that. I mean they’ll end up in a bitter fight or something like that.

Opening Titles.

Narrator: Maynard Londborg was born in Lynch, Nebraska, in 1921, to Swedish homesteaders. He came of age during the Great Depression and found his way to Alaska through mission work with the Covenant Church, which was founded by Swedish immigrants. Through the church, he spent 20 years in Unalakleet running an orphanage, founding Covenant High School, and even introducing basketball to the area. In 1955, he was elected to represent the 2nd Judicial District at the Alaska Constitution Convention. The document he and the other delegates wrote helped pave the way for statehood.

Intertitle: Growing Up in the Great Depression

Maynard Londborg: It was kind of interesting because my father and his four brothers migrated from Sweden and they stuck together and they went up there and homesteaded and they had lived in the southern Nebraska for a few years and then they heard that this military reservation was going to open up for homesteading around Fort Randall.

And they threw their gear and everything into wagons and just had a wagon train on up and the town – the big town south of us, O’Neill, was the land office. And they stopped in there to look and see what land was available and then they said well I think we’ll go on up there. It is another 40 miles and look it over and we will be back in two or three days and file a claim on the land. And the agent said well if you do that, by the time you’re back somebody is going to already have claimed it. So we suggest you pick the land right now. So they picked the land without even looking at it. And the land the five brothers had land that was either adjacent or cornered together and the five particles of land my father picked the worse one and raised the biggest family. So he had to supplement the farm income with – he had a little blacksmith shop. He did a lot of carpenter work.

And I grew up and lived there on that farm during the dry years and dust bowls in the 1930’s – 20’s and 30’s. It was – looked back quite a terrible experience. The crops had come up and before you could get cattle out to eat, if there was any vegetation, these hoards of grasshoppers would come in and they would just mow everything down. So we had dry years, dust bowl, grasshoppers, and of course the depression.

The dust storm when the clouds came in the sun would be obscured. I had about two miles to walk to school. In the schoolroom when a dust storm would come in we would go down to the little pump, well, bring in some water and soak our handkerchiefs in that and we would put that around our nose. We’d sit there in the schoolroom and it was so dark the teacher lit a kerosene lamp and school was just over, virtually over. We just sat there and waited in the schoolhouse. And then were times when they would dismiss us and had about two miles to face the dust on the way home.

You’d hear the dust hitting the side of the building. The – any fence that was somewhat tightly woven like hog fence, acted like a snow fence and the dust would pile up.
And then the farmers, springtime, they say, well I wonder whose farm we’re farming this year. Top soil come from South Dakota all over you know.
It was terrible. And then, like on our buildings, the barn and the house too, it would just peel the paint off from the outside.
We couldn’t raise anything, crops, and the government had what they called idle acres. They paid farmers to let the land stay idle, thinking that would help it.

Then the grasshoppers, when they couldn’t find anything else to eat went to the telephone poles and they creosote on the bottom of the poles they liked that and they would eat through until the pole just was suspended by the telephone line. And so long stretches where all these telephone poles were hanging by the line just dangling and grasshoppers. Neighbor of mine that left a pitchfork and his leather gloves out in the field. When he came back to get them the next day the pitchfork handle was so pitted you couldn’t hardly use it and all that was left of the gloves were little metal grommets. They had eaten all the leather.

So it wasn’t a very promising place to stay. And when I graduated from high school I had a chance to go to college and that turned out to be a good move.

Intertitle: Becoming a Minister

Maynard Londborg: I had gone back to Nebraska. Had surgery that summer and then I was staying with my sister and brother-in-law in – out in Nebraska recuperating and that was in ’41 when they started the draft. That came before the war broke out and there were three of us that we asked to be on the draft board to sign up people. So we signed each other up and then everybody else all day long, just a parade and got everybody registered.

My brother-in-law was the lay leader for the local Methodist Church right near their farm in the town. And he just told me one day that he said well our pastor is going to be gone and he said you’re going to speak. And I said well I haven’t been to seminary or Bible school or anything and he said, yeah, but he said we’re all farmers we haven’t even been off the farm. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer so I said okay. And that’s how I got started you might say in the ministry.

And then about a week or two later a big black car drove into his yard and he called me over and introduced me to the district superintendent of the Methodist Church and he said I’ve got a church I want you to go out and see. And that was out at Royal, Nebraska. So I went out there and when – then he conferred with the people and he came back he said well I’m going to appoint you pastor out there. I think I was 20 years old and went out there and just one thing after another and unknown to me he had written to the draft board and he said now we’re losing ministers and he is covering a big area and so I got – when I got in the mail my classification was 4D and then of course I stayed in the ministry ever since that I was. I tried a couple times to join the service and both times just the last minute something came up and I didn’t.

I wanted to stay at that church through the next year. I mean I really enjoyed it then. A lot of young people and talk about horseback right. Every kid had a horse and that was our outings was to go out horseback riding in the evenings or daytime and I really wanted to stay on there. The district superintendent came and he said well I’m not going to let you stay here. There are too many nice girls. He said I know what happens. You end up and you get married, you don’t have your education complete and he said I’m stuck with a lot of ministers like that. So he said you pick your college and wherever you want to go and I’ll see that you have a church to serve while you’re in the college. And it ended up that I went to Nebraska Wesleyan in Lincoln and they assigned me to a church there in Lincoln. And after a year or two then I wanted to go on to the seminary and that is when I transferred back to North Park Seminary. So I had about a two-year outing then with the Methodist Church, otherwise back in the Covenant.

Intertitle: Mission Work in Alaska

Maynard Londborg: Well my wife Loraine was in nurses training and she graduated in ’44 and we got married in ’45.
She had one year when she attended day school in North Park College before she entered nurses training and I met her that year and it was kind of love at first sight as far as I was concerned, but she was determined to go to nurses training. In those days the nurses couldn’t get married, so that meant a three-year break where we couldn’t do much dating or anything.

And then when I finished seminary I thought I would stay home and go to some college and get my degree. And that summer in ’46 I got a call from the head of the mission department. When he talked to me he said would you go to Alaska for – he mentioned specifically to replace the missionary at Yakutat, who was going to take a furlough. He said it would be about a year to 18 months. I said sure..

Frontier and wide-open space – it just had an appeal, which it still does. I mean I don’t know why I’m in Colorado now when you’d rather be back up there. Well, you know you’re up there.

I knew it was up north some place and so while I was in the seminary serving churches in Chicago area and this field director’s wife – he and his wife had been missionaries in Alaska and she spoke in a church I was serving and made a remark, I said, I think if I ever went to any place in the mission field, I’d like to go to Alaska over Africa or some place like that. And when they were apparently talking about getting somebody temporarily she mentioned that to her husband and somebody called me in. So before we knew it we were on the way into Yakutat.

When I was asked if I would go up there for, I said sure. And he said well you better talk to Loraine first. And I said well I know what she’ll say. And so I came home and I said well I know where we’re going now and she said where. And I said Alaska and she said great. She said, can I call and tell my folks? I said I think I better confirm it so that it isn’t just a rumor, but she was game right from the word go. And has followed or I don’t know if you could say followed but wherever we have been led in the work up in Alaska she is right there with it so.

Intertitle: Yakutat – 1946

Maynard Londborg: Well it was very fascinating, beautiful country, beautiful mountain ranges around there. The town had a military base located there because of the Japanese presence and so forth and that had a tremendous affect on the town. Apparently it was a somewhat quiet, peaceful town before that and the presence of thousands of military just changed the town completely. So it was in a way a very difficult place to do any work.

Then also in ’46 the fresh fish buyers came in. They hadn’t been able to before the war was over. And they stayed out about three and a half, four miles off the coast, which would be international waters and the people would bring their fish out and sell

These people would bring boatloads out there and they would pay them cash but always give them a little liquor besides. And they’d go back out there and buy more liquor. So many of the fishermen ended up in the fall with no money.

And otherwise Libby’s Cannery had gotten the fish over the years.

People could go there and get credit during the winter – Libby’s I think treated the people very good and then when they’d get the fish they’d clear up their debts and then have a little reserve left over and life when on. Until ’46 it just shattered that whole thing.

Liquor and I don’t think there was a young girl that could grow up there and was hardly safe in the area. And I think – I forget I looked at the statistics of the births over that period of time and it was kind of a sad story to read the parentage of the ones that were born.

We would have stayed longer but the church wanted us to move to Unalakleet to help start a children’s home because my wife was a nurse and there was a lot of maintenance and I had a lot of experience with machinery and things like that. So we went on up to Unalakleet then that next summer.

Intertitle: Unalakleet – 1947

Maynard Londborg: Well when we first got to Unalakleet, they did use a translator.
I had a translator who took a lot of time. I’d speak a little, maybe a sentence, and then I’d almost forget where I was at by the time he got done. Asked him what he was doing? He said well I’m giving it in all three dialects here at Unalakleet. And I didn’t know what to do and finally I gave him the whole long paragraph and he pulled on my coat and he said I can’t remember all that. I said well that’s fine, just tell them what you remember and we got along a lot better. He made it pretty short then. But Unalakleet really didn’t need an interpreter by the time I got there. I think he was one of the last ones, but down on the Yukon, Scanlon Bay, Hooper Bay, and Nunivak Island. They were still using interpreters when we’d come down there.

There as an old house that was built around the turn of the century and at the time it was pretty apparently a pretty nice house. It had two story with four kind of bedrooms on the second floor and during the Gold Rush days miners would come through and Unalakleet was the route if they came up from St. Michael or if they over from Kaltag, either way, and they would end up staying. Oh, the visitors list is really long in the old mission house and then they’d always say well if I strike it rich I’ll help you out. And some of them did. They came back and they had enough money and gave them so they – I think that’s how that house got built.

I think we ended up with about 30 and our missionary pilot was flying them in from all the villages.
We almost dreaded seeing the plane come because we knew it would be another kid he’d be bringing.

Oh, it was tuberculosis. There was hardly a family that wasn’t affected by it and many of the children were left with either one parent. If it was the father, he couldn’t take care of them. He had to hunt and trap so that was one of the big reasons the children’s home was started was to take care of these orphans and half-orphans and that was a big enough challenge.

Then of course the village they were supposed to have a government nurse there, but about half the time they didn’t. And then usually if they did have one there then she traveled to other villages. And my wife would end up doing the nursing in the village.
All of her nursing was just gratis.

Well that house got fixed up so many times that it was cold, poor insulation. We’d spill some water on the floor and ice right away. My wife had little mukluks and wool socks made for the kids and they wore them during the daytime in the house, otherwise their feet would be cold. So when they were ready to go out and play why they’d just slip a parka on and take off.

You never knew in the morning what you were going to be doing. And we had a – well and the house was old. We burned wood and then they burned wood in the church. And the people would go out and gather some and we had a hold of a D4 cat that was a Army veteran in itself that had been out on the Aleutians and had a couple of bullet holes through the thick plate behind and we – long story, but got that from Nome…

And I had to learn to drive that thing and maintain it and so I – there was an awful lot of time spent in just staying alive. Hauling wood, hauling water and all of these different things.

We had a little light plant in the basement of that building, a little Onan and it was used during the construction of the building cause it had automatic start soon as you turn a power saw on the light plant would kick in. And it was in the corner of the building, the basement, with the exhaust pipe running out into a big barrel and then there was this exhaust from there about 10 feet up in the air and that was instead of a muffler I mean it was used that way.

And we had a terrible snowstorm one Christmas and the light plant gave out and a friend of mine, one of the Laplanders that was living there he came over and helped me and we overhauled it in the dark with little kerosene lantern and took it all apart and cleaned it out. We got it running and we shut it off and then the next day morning was Christmas day. I think it was Christmas or Thanksgiving, one or the other and we started it up in the morning and one of the girls that was missionary helping and she went with me over to the church and she got called back because the other one got sick and then the kids were sick. We thought it was the flu and went out in the village and everybody said oh they must have the flu in there. They were throwing up and it was just terrible. And we had shut the light plant off then during the daytime and in the afternoon we started it again and everybody got nauseated again. And had a pretty good idea what it was. And I went out and the snowstorm had plastered that side of the building and it literally covered the end of that spout there 10 feet up in the air. And I got a long stick and I poked a hole in the and got the exhaust going out again. But we thought about that and I got it written up in my book here, the guardian angel or something because I could just see headquarters, the newspapers, 18 children orphanage in Unalakleet all suffocate from carbon monoxide poisoning. You look back and it is scary.

Not a lot of time for what you thought you were supposed to be doing you know the mission work – church work and that and but we survived that.

Intertitle: Founding Convenant High School

Maynard Londborg: We had been living down in Marshall on the Yukon and they asked us to go up – back to Unalakleet and the mission station. We got back up there in ’54.

And some of the parents approached us and said that the early missionaries had started a grade school and that is why the old people can read and write so well and then the government took over grade schools and the BIA came in. And they said would you consider starting a high school? And they said we don’t want to send our kids way down to Edgecumbe to 1300, 1400 miles down there and never see them for maybe two or three years.

And thought about it a little while and at that time the territory had a plan where anybody in the village where there was no school could ask the territory to pay for a correspondence courses, high school through the University of Nebraska and the grade school was that was another one, I don’t know, it’s Calvert System or something. But the only thing I could think of was to sign these kids up, have the parents put in applications for correspondence courses and then I would just hold regular classes for them. And I proposed that then to the lady who was head of the educational department in Juneau and territory and she fired a word right back, well if you’re going to do that why don’t you order textbooks from our adopted textbook list and just start a high school and we’ll put you on the approved list. And we couldn’t be accredited then or anything as yet. So I sent word back I said we don’t have any certified teachers and I said I’m not certified to teach. She said well we’ll take care of that. We’ll send you a teacher’s certificate. And so that came in the mail and good for one year and we got our school started.
When we first started they were I guess practically all Unalakleet kids, except one girl who had come from the children’s home through the eighth grade and so she just stayed there and took her high school
Taught all of the sciences, general science, physics, and chemistry, biology. And then almost any math class.

And then the year was over I said now we still don’t have teachers, certified teachers. We have a couple coming next year but that doesn’t take care of the immediate year up ahead. And they said don’t worry about that, we’ll send you a principal certificate that gives you teaching privileges and that’s good for two years.

We had seven students the first year and the first graduating class was nine. That was a pretty good dropout record. And then the second year I think we had 13 and it went up to 17 and then the fourth year when they had the full we were up around 30 so.
They – I don’t know how many of the villages you know represented any given school year, but it was a lot of them from – when you figure that they probably peaked at about 130 students and half of them dorm kids. A lot of them were from the other villages.

Intertitle: Basketball!

Maynard Londborg: Then we introduced basketball at Unalakleet as our builder was in Nome and he sent word down – he said there is some Cullen huts up here we can get and they are 36 feet wide, so bigger than a Quonset and he said how many feet long do you need? And he torn this down. We got it shipped down to Unalakleet. Then we poured cement five foot walls of cement and mounted this on top so that we actually had clearance for basketball in there. But it was only 36 feet wide. So the out of bounds line, which should be four feet, was only two and a half and the town people started coming. They thought it was the greatest thing to see their kids play basketball. And they’d line up on the walls and the kid would take a ball out of bounds he’d just back into the crowd and fire it off.
Yeah, we were the first one out, aside from Nome, and then they started picking it up pretty fast.
And the team, we really developed a good team because the kids started playing in the grade school when they were still in grade school and we had Saturday gym for them. By the time they got high school they were already good players and in 1965 we won the Western Alaska Division of Class C schools and Valdez won the Eastern Division. …

So we invited them up to Unalakleet. We had a three game tournament Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. And we won the first game and they won the second one and we won the third one. So ended up with being the Class C champs of Alaska.

And the next year it was in Valdez, so we went down there and the same thing happened. They won the first. We won the second, and they won the third. So, but the people of the village just came out en mass and the radio station in Nome that we had, KICY, they sent their announcer down. We were able to run a line through the FAA some way. We made connections anyway and the game was broadcast. And I’ll never forget when the announcer was telling about the gym being packed, he said and he said I want to tell you folks there is standing room only here. Well there wasn’t a chair or bench in the room. They won – they built a high bench you had to climb up with practically a ladder where the scorer and timers sitting up there with – it was just standing room only.

Intertitle: Getting into the Statehood Movement

Maynard Londborg: Well I want to drop back a little bit to –

Our days at Marshall, Alaska.
Which is also Fortuna Ledge. There was a Marshall some place else in Alaska. They couldn’t have two Marshalls in the post office. So the postmaster named it after his daughter Fortuna and that’s how Fortuna Ledge got into it. And that was the post office and it was also the kind of government seat for that whole Wade Hampton Precinct and they had the deputy marshal that lived there, a fellow by the name of Al Balls, who grew up in Unalakleet. He was one of the Laplander family and they were going to close the Marshal’s office there and which they did, but the US Commissioner office was still maintained there. And there was a lady who was appointed US Commissioner and she had it for a little while, then she and her husband moved away.

And I was sitting down in the trading post one evening and the Deputy Marshal flew in to pick up somebody. He was going on the next day down the coast and he said we’ve got to get a commissioner here. He said this is ridiculous he said. I get a notice and I fly clear down to Hooper Bay or Scanlon Bay and I have to bring them clear back to Nome for a trial. And if they’re released right away then they have to get their transportation back and he said we just got to get a United States Commissioner again here. And he was typing on a typewriter in the trading post and finally he said here sign this and I looked at it. And it was a letter to the judge in Nome offering my services as a commissioner if he would consider appointing me.

I don’t know what I was thinking but he gave me the pen and I figured well enough nothing would come of that. And it wasn’t very long until I got the appointment as US Commissioner, Justice of the Peace, Probate Judge, and the whole works. And I told the judge when I had a chance to go to Nome to visit with him I said there is one thing that is not very good. I said somebody out in a village commits what the town may think is a crime and they put in a complaint and the marshal goes down and picks him up and he is a hero coming out of his town. And you know get up before the commissioner I said is there any possibility that we can have a moving court so in other words if there is somebody down the line I can go with the marshal and try the person right there. And he said well I have a fund he said let’s use. So you go with the marshal and try it out.

And that had the best affect on the whole community. We’d go down to a place and this fellow was tried right in front of his own people and what a difference it made. It was probably one of the first moving courts in Alaska. I think Jay Rabinowitz followed it up out of Fairbanks afterwards, he was telling me about it. …
Well I felt that unless we got a constitution and became a state we would always be under the federal government, everything. I mean they appointed the marshals, the commissioners, everything was run by the federal government. And the only way you could get local government get any kind of local voice would be to go the statehood route. So I was pretty sold on the idea of it.

So when they came out with invitation to file for a delegate seat, there were basically two things. One was interest in local government and the law enforcement, like even at Unalakleet. And then the second thing was education so that we got a fair shake out of that. And with that in mind, why, I submitted my petition and I got elected and went to the Constitutional Convention.

I had a good friend that was a pilot that flew. He was the one that got all the signatures for me and pretty much did the campaign for me. I didn’t have time for that.

Intertitle: The Alaska Constitutional Convention

Maynard Londborg: I went there and had some good advice from a fellow that was running the trading post. He said well, be sure you pick up a good copy of Roberts Rules of Order. And he said another thing I think you will find most of the work done in the committee, in the various committees. So it’s real important that you get on the right one and that is where the work is done. Otherwise it is brought into the session as a whole and first reading, second reading and final reading.

Well I suppose I would classify myself as a Republican, but of course at the convention that wasn’t brought out. You didn’t run on party at all. In fact, I didn’t know what party most of them belonged to. They – I think all that were running for president of the convention were from the Democratic Party.

And the way it worked out we – I was with a group that helped get Bill Egan in as the president of the convention.

There was just something about him when I first met him. And those that knew him affirmed that, that he was just very fair type of person and really not a politician.

You hear from ex-delegates now they’ll all – that’s about the first thing they mention is how fair Egan was as a chairman, president of the – there was a lot of us that didn’t know the fancy Roberts Rules backwards and forwards and he could cut us off and just you are out of order you know and you’d stand there bewildered. But he would just like a good schoolteacher he would just draw it out.
So after he was elected then he had to appoint a committee of committees to see that people got on the committee they wanted to get on and he put me on that. …

Everybody put down their first, second, third choice and we tried to accommodate and of course I saw to it that I got on the two committees that I wanted to get on – local government and executive committees.

Intertitle: Executive Committee

Maynard Londborg: Vic Rivers I guess it was the chairman of that committee and he worked for a very, very strong executive, appointed powers and even they didn’t want a lieutenant governor at the time and secretary of state did it, well that was one of the first amendments. They changed that right away.

Right, it was to make the governor stronger. There was no lieutenant governor there. He was it and sensing this coming on in the writing on the Executive Branch the strong governor I held out and got support from enough others to limit the governor to two terms consecutively.
Well I felt very strong, but otherwise you get – if you didn’t have that in there you could get a governor in for 20, 30 years if he wanted to keep running.

Because in the territorial days they had an appointed governor by the United States and then you had your territorial legislature and in a sense the governor was pretty weak and they felt it was kind of a swing from that build up a strong one. Although I think that three branches of the government right now in Alaska from what I can follow do pretty good check and balance.

Intertitle: Local Government Committee

Maynard Londborg: And that was a very interesting committee to be on. Had a good group in there that worked together to come up with the idea of local government and one of the things that we tried to steer away from was where – although that came into the legislative as well, but where you’d have overlapping tax districts. And you could be taxed as this side and that side and the other side and whether this has been the best or not I don’t know but they presented it to the people in one tax package. It was sort of the town Parrish idea of local government.

Oh, that was weird. I mean nobody wanted to call it county and I don’t know that – how many votes were taken and reconsidered and all that but they did not want it to be a county, absolutely they were just memories from other states I guess or something. And then of course what are you going to call it. They ended up with a borough.

We must have covered at least 10 or 20 other names that would come up and they would vote them down and vote them down. And finally ended up the borough.
I think that there’s uh, a lot of the problems that we faced at Unalakleet are handled through the local government organization there. They are a – I was going to say incorporated village and have a lot of clout as local government.

Intertitle: Convention Lessons

Maynard Londborg: Oh I learned a lot of things while I was up there and that is that you can debate. You can passionately debate but it doesn’t have to ruin a friendship and it is kind of interesting we started talking about missionary work and that but how many churches do not know how to do that. I mean they’ll end up in a bitter fight or something like that, but I learned a lesson there. There were two delegates who were just passionately debating on each side of an issue. And this went on for a long time, long speeches and they were debating back and forth and I had something that I wanted to inject and I thought well if I can go to this one fellow and get on his side then you know he might be on my side because he is against that other fellow. And we had a little recess and I went out in the coffee shop and here the two guys were talking about their next hunting trip they were going to take together. And I thought boy oh, you don’t take anything for granted on the way they debated you know.

As a whole they were determined to write a constitution and not bring parties up to the extent that you would get deadlocked on issues that way. And which I believe they were very successful from that standpoint.

But we were not without our humor there. They – one of our delegates sat way in the back and she was always complaining that she couldn’t hear you know the speaker. And so they finally gave her a sign to hold up that said “louder” and she could hold that up and the speaker would amplify his voice. And a fellow got up to speak and he kept dropping his voice and dropping his voice and she grabbed for her piece of paper to hold up and somebody had slipped another one there that said lousy and she held that up you know and then this fellow stopped. You know I have to be insulted like that in this convention or something. It was really pulled that off really slick.

The Dr. Langston in Nome told Loraine you’re going to go to Fairbanks for the signing and he made arrangements for her transportation. So she got to come up there and be there when we went up there and signed the constitution. But that was quite an emotional time and I knew that nobody seemed to want to leave after it was all you know the final gavel went down they just – there had been built up such a close friendship among the delegates.

At that time the territory was very strong Democrat, which was kind of interesting because that was one of the blocks that we thought we’d have a hurdle with the United States Senate was the Republicans didn’t want Alaska in because that would give another solid Democratic candidates that would be in there and senators and representative and it would just add that many more. But it was rather interesting almost after it became a state it swung the other way and in a few years then we had Stevens, Young, and Murkowski just solid Republican representations. Alaska politics is very fascinating from that standpoint.

Credits:
Recorded March 31, 2004, at Maynard Londborg’s home in Denver, Colorado.
Died September 5, 2004.
Conducted by Dr. Terrence Cole, UAF Office of Public History

 

Full interview transcript

Maynard Londborg
Interviewed by Dr. Terrence Cole

Terence: And today is the day before April Fool’s Day, right. We don’t get this wrong, but it is March 31, 2004 and we’re here in Denver, Colorado at the home of Maynard Londborg. And Maynard, I want you to say your name cause I don’t – how do you spell it and say it just for the camera so we’ll have that.

Londborg: You mean the last name?

Terence: Well both your names?

Londborg: Maynard – M-A-Y-N-A-R-D and Londborg – L-O-N-D-B-O-R-G and there are two O’s in it.

Terence: Now there is a couple of Borg’s as far as I can tell at the Constitutional Convention, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: How many Borg’s were there?

Londborg: Well there was Sunborg, probably two or three.

Terence: There are a couple other I think, but I know is you and – but you’re Lon how do you say – is it Long, no I have trouble with my – like L-O-N-

Londborg: D.

Terence: So it’s Lond –

Londborg: Londborg.

Terence: Londborg, yeah.

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: I keep wanting to put a G in there not the D. But anyway why don’t you tell us a little bit about where you were born and are we all right with the dog you guys?

Londborg: I was –

Terence: Yeah.

Londborg: A little farm country home out in Nebraska and right – oh, we had about four or five little towns around us. Gross is the closest one about two miles away. And Bristow is where we did most of our shopping. It was south of us. Lynch southeast was our postal center and then once in a while we would go to a little farther west up to Spencer. So we were kind of in the middle of a few towns there. And I grew up and lived there on that farm during the dry years and dust bowls in the 1930’s – 20’s and 30’s. It was – looked back quite a terrible experience. The crops had come up and before you could cattle out to eat if there was any vegetation these hoards of grasshoppers would come in and they would just mow everything down. So we had dry years, dust bowl, grasshoppers, and of course the depression.

So it wasn’t a very promising place to stay. And when I graduated from high school I had a chance to go to college and that turned out to be a good move, just one thing led after another. Not everybody could get away from the farms and just a lot – and then the young people were all going into the – especially the women, into Omaha to work as housemaids and different jobs. And it actually left just the community of old bachelors up there. And of course they pretty well died off so. But that’s the you know as far as the early days.

Terence: Tell us a little bit do you remember what was a dust storm like? What was that?

Londborg: The dust storm when the clouds came in the sun would be obscured. I had about two miles to walk to school. In the schoolroom when a dust storm would come in we would go down to the little pump, well, bring in some water and soak our handkerchiefs in that and we would put that around our nose. We’d sit there in the schoolroom and it was so dark the teacher lit a kerosene lamp and school was just over, virtually over. We just sat there and waited in the schoolhouse. And then were times when they would dismiss us and had about two miles to face the dust on the way home.

Terence: Was there electricity in the schoolroom? Did it have electricity or?

Londborg: Electricity had not come to that part of the country yet.

Terence: So how about your in your – the farm and stuff, there was no electricity?

Londborg: No. We had just – I grew up studying by kerosene lamp, reading by kerosene lamp. We had oh, some gas lanterns or lights that we could use once in a while, but most of the time it was just little yellow kerosene flame burning.

Terence: When the dust storm though hit the school, what did it sound like? I mean was the wind howling and did the dust come –

Londborg: Oh, the wind just – and you’d hear the dust hitting the side of the building. The – any fence that was somewhat tightly woven like hog fence, acted like a snow fence and the dust would pile up. I know that our church cemetery was out in the country and the dust piled up and the cattle out in the field would like walk right over into the – we had about one day I think there were 18 of us gathered there with horses, wagon, fresnos and plows and moved a lot of the dirt back. It was – it was just unbelievable.

Terence: What was this like on your father? Because it was your father’s farm or you guys did you actually own the land or what was the?

Londborg: Yeah, he did up to that point, but he finally just turned it over to the loan company, about all we could do. And my sisters particularly that had gone into Omaha to work sent money home to keep the payments on the loan and my dad wanted to – didn’t want to owe them anything so he went to the bank and I think he borrowed $2,000 and paid them back and we lost our farm for $2,000. He said I might as well have borrowed 6,000. And that is what the neighbor did right next to ours. He borrowed 6,000 and he lost. What the banks didn’t want – the loan companies didn’t want the land either. So they would turn around and sell it back to re-contract for just practically nothing you know to get it off their hands.

Terence: What did your family do after they lost the farm? Where did they – did he move into Omaha or did they –

Londborg: No that was in 1938 when we moved, the folks moved into town, just the neighboring town and the year then I left for school. My older brothers and sisters were all out on there own so dad said well you’re the only one left what do you want to do? I said well I sure don’t see any future here so I pulled out.

Terence: Did, Maynard, what day were you born on? I didn’t get that exactly and where did you fit in with all your brothers and sisters? What day were you –

Londborg: I was born on May 11, 1921, the youngest of 10.

Terence: And did all the kids live until adulthood or did they all –

Londborg: Yeah. There is – it was kind of interesting because my father and his four brothers migrated from Sweden and they stuck together and they went up there and homesteaded and they had lived in the southern Nebraska for a few years and then they heard that this military reservation was going to open up for homesteading around Fort Randall.

And they threw their gear and everything into wagons and just had a wagon train on up and the town – the big town of us O’Neill was the land office. And they stopped in there to look and see what land was available and then they said well I think we’ll go on up there. It is another 40 miles and look it over and we will be back in two or three days and file a claim on the land. And the agent said well if you do that, by the time you’re back somebody is going to already have claimed it. So we suggest you pick the land right now. So they picked the land without even looking at it. And the land the five brothers had land that was either adjacent or cornered together and the five particles of land my father picked the worse one and raised the biggest family. So he had to supplement the farm income with – he had a little blacksmith shop. He did a lot of carpenter work.

Terence: Did all of his –

– Break –

Londborg: All the brothers –

Terence: Maynard, one thing about your dad and his brothers, he had four brothers, right?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Now did they all lose their farms too or what happened? Did any of them stay on?

Londborg: They stayed on and pretty much went the same way with them as far as the farms. Most of the farmers up there in that area lost their farms or they refinanced with the loan company or whatever you had to do so.

Terence: Now what’s your of your nine brothers and sisters I guess, what were –

Londborg: Well I say I had five sisters. They each had five brothers so.

Terence: Now wait say that again.

Londborg: Anyway there was 10 of us, a family of five girls and five boys so.

Terence: What were their names?

Londborg: My oldest sister was named Venbla – V-E-N-B-L-A and his married an Arthur Johnson. And then my brother Elmer was next and he had three sons that are still living out in Oregon and his wife’s name was came from Hinderborman family. And then let’s see there was after Elmer then there was Nellie, married a John Holmberg. And Amy married a Elmore Arnold. And Tillie married a Bill Bonderson. And Hilder married an Ivar Larson. And then I had a brother Walter, just about six years older than me. And he married out in California, but they never had any children. So the only children – my oldest brother had three boys and then my sister Tillie Bonderson had three girls. So let’s see there weren’t that many cousins in our family.

Terence: Now are any of the – your brothers and sisters still alive?

Londborg: None of them now.

Terence: None of them now.

Londborg: No.

Terence: Now, okay I was going to guess you – okay, you went off to college. Where did you go to college? Oh, wait before we did that. I want to ask one more question about the dust storm. Did the dust ever come through the cracks in the building?

Londborg: It was terrible. And then like on our buildings, the barn and the house too, it would just peel the paint off from the outside. And I know our barn had cracks between the boards because of the dust just took all the pain off. And the dust would get into all of the feed. Cattle would have to chew on half dust and half hay, whatever.

Terence: I didn’t – I never thought about that. That would be awful. I mean they go after the feed with regular gusto or how?

Londborg: Oh, it was awful. And then we didn’t – couldn’t raise anything, crops, and the government had what they called idle acres. They paid farmers to let the land stay idle, thinking that would help it. On that the thistles grew up, these Russian thistles. And I know one year we – I brought one of my brothers and went over and mowed down a whole field of thistles from another farm or another place. We hauled that home and stacked it and sprinkled a little salt in there and the cattle ate it.

Terence: No kidding. They ate the thistles, wow.

Londborg: Well they were young and tender yet.

Terence: So it wasn’t going to rip them up inside? Did – so what were your chores around the farm? What kind of stuff did you have to do? As the youngest one did you get out of all the work?

Londborg: No, I had my share of it, milking cows and feeding the pigs and with the chickens and all of that, all of the stuff on a farm.

Terence: Did you have sheep? Did you have what kind of –

Londborg: We didn’t have sheep on our farm.

Terence: How many cattle did you have to have?

Londborg: Oh, I think the peak as I recall maybe 25 cattle and some were feeder cattle for selling and some were milk cows.

Terence: And did you learn how to ride a horse?

Londborg: I had a good horse to ride, very good one and –

Terence: What was his name?

Londborg: Peanuts. My –

Terence: What was good about him?

Londborg: Excellent. A horse well trained as a riding horse. Peanuts’ mother was one of the best cattle horses in the country and her name was Spider because of her long legs. And she belonged to one of my older brothers and when she had Peanuts this older brother told my brother Walter, who was immediately older than me, and I that we could have him if we –

Terence: Say that again, that’s okay.

Londborg: He said that you can have him if you take good care of him. So we went out – I don’t know why we named him Peanuts but it is probably the first thing we could find to feed him or something. But he grew up with a lot of the characteristics of his mother Spider as far as being a good cattle horse and very fast.

Man: We are going to turn that refrigerator we need to turn that to off.

Man: Okay, we’re rolling.

Terence: So what – why was Peanuts a good cattle horse? What does that mean?

Londborg: He could practically sit in the saddle and they just know what to do to cut cattle. They – and his mother Spider when people would travel down to another pasture maybe four or five miles away why they’d usually come and get Spider and she could – all you had to do was just be sure you sat in the saddle and stayed in there. Never had to give any directions. That’s really fun to watch a good cattle horse. They know what to do.

Terence: Did you really like enjoy riding and all that kind – or that was every kid had on the farm had to do or –

Londborg: Oh, I enjoyed it a lot and still enjoy it and horses up until just recently as far as going out trail riding around here in Colorado and that. Our banker in town in Bristow, Nebraska was down in the town south about 35 miles at O’Neill when a dust storm came up and he was concerned about his family and everything else. And of course he drove fairly fast, but then with the wind and the dust coming right at him it made it even faster as far as the dust hitting the car. When he got home there wasn’t a speck of pain on the front of his car. There wasn’t any paint left on the license plate. The windshield and the headlights were all pitted. That was – and then the –

Terence: That must have been scary, I mean being in them must have been scary, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: First time. Do you remember the first one or do you –

Londborg: Oh, not necessarily. Then the –

Terence: What was the sound like? What did it sound like? The sound of the sand, the dust hitting the edge of the barn or at school.

Londborg: A lot like when you get sleet out here you know just sharp sound hitting. Then the grasshoppers, when they couldn’t find anything else to eat went to the telephone poles and they creosote on the bottom of the poles they liked that and they would eat through until the pole just was suspended by the telephone wire. And so long stretches where all these telephone poles were hanging by the line just dangling and grasshoppers. Neighbor of mine that left a pitchfork and his leather gloves out in the field. When he came back to get them the next day the pitchfork handle was so pitted you couldn’t hardly use it and all that was left of the gloves were little metal grommets. They had eaten all the leather.

Terence: So was there something else you were going to say that before I went back and asked you again about the dust storm or?

Londborg: Oh, I think that pretty well covers it.

Terence: Okay.

Londborg: Dust storm, grasshoppers, and –

Terence: No locusts?

Londborg: All those good things.

Terence: Okay. So well when you when you went to college, where was the college at and where you’d – 1938 right?

Londborg: That was at that time it was North Park College. Now it is life a lot of others North Park University. And rather small church school and that’s – but I had in mind that I wanted to pursue some scientific field like either chemical engineering or electrical engineering. So I took practically all the – my courses in math and science, which turned out to be real help in later when we started a school because I had a good background in math and science.

Terence: When you ran the Covenant, let’s just skip ahead just briefly to that? Did you teach all the – there’s a picture of you teaching physics, right?

Londborg: Yeah. Taught all of the sciences, general science, physics, and chemistry, biology. And then almost any math class and the same way later when I was at the teacher or school in Minneapolis. I taught mostly science math classes there.

Terence: Was it sometimes hard to get science teachers than other fields? Was that more difficult sometimes?

Londborg: Probably. And that’s why I was fortunate because, especially when I was at Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis. They would have their registration day and they’d get all the classes set and there was always a class that was left – they never expected the enrollment. Maybe geology, it might be algebra, it might be physics and then they’d give that to me so. There were times when I didn’t know what I was going to teach until the day before. That didn’t matter.

Terence: Did you – so when you went to college, once again the name of the college you went to?

Londborg: North Park.

Terence: North Park. No, no, but the college you went to as a student originally in 1938?

Londborg: North Park College.

Terence: Oh, it was North Park then, oh, in Chicago. So was the –

Londborg: Chicago.

Terence: Okay. So and so was your family in the Covenant Church back in Nebraska?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Were they all members I – so you were raised in the Covenant Church?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Anything that distinguished the Covenant Church from the other Swedish main line because the Covenant was a break off, right, in the – wasn’t that kind of how it started?

Londborg: Well it really had its start in Sweden sort of the pietistic movement over in Sweden and I don’t think they intended to start a separate denomination but it almost came by default because they – when they got over to America they wanted to be separate from the state church of Sweden. It was just they had been with that for time they grew up and so when they came over they wanted to be separate. But it was interesting that the early name of the church was the Swedish Mission or Swedish Evangelical Lutheran. They had tried out different names and then finally I think it was around 1930 they said well let’s pick our own name and they picked it, the Covenant Church then.

Terence: But you grew up in the church and your dad he was a member of – I mean –

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: How many people were in that church back in Nebraska? What was it – was it a small –

Londborg: Small, probably 50, 60 members at a peak, something like that.

Terence: And did that include all his brothers, their families, were they all in the same?

Londborg: Not all of them. Some of them went to the Lutheran Church in town of his brothers and that. So they weren’t all there, but it is interesting though that these five brothers stuck together and they are all buried in the same cemetery just in one row, which I think is unusual. I don’t think many families had migrated that far and stuck together.

Terence: That’s interesting and do you remember the names of his brothers? If you don’t, that’s okay, but I was just – do you remember their names?

Londborg: Oh, yeah. It was John was the oldest one and then Sam and then Andrew. My dad was Peter and then the youngest one was Charlie.

Terence: And they’re all buried together?

Londborg: Just –

– Break –

Terence: We’re rolling, okay. So the father’s name was – why don’t you just say their father’s name and you said it was Joe Johnson or no, what was it?

Londborg: Johan Swenson was his name and so his children then became whatever their given name and then would be Johnson.

Terence: A son of Johnson basically in other I mean son of John?

Londborg: Well that took on different spellings over the years too and –

Terence: Why don’t you just read the names of what would be the Swedish names of the brothers would have been? That’s kind of interesting, just the five brothers?

Londborg: Swen Johan and Anders Gustaf, Solomon Edward, Peter Alfred, and Carlie August. That became John and Andrew and Sam and Peter, and Charlie. Then they had a little girl that died in infancy, a little sister.

Terence: Well that is remarkable that they stayed together. That much have showed that they you know they got along okay, more than okay. That they stuck it out. One thing – well we can look at that, let me put it down here.

Londborg: Want to hand me the other books.

Terence: Now is that a memoir that you have written there or?

Londborg: Yeah, that’s the story of my life through the college up in Alaska, Matanuska. This is my father’s when he got his citizenship.

Terence: I see. Well we can maybe take a look at that later and then it would be great if we could get a Xerox of that – copy of that too because. I love Hubbard floors but they just get so dusty, okay, that’s sort of – that is kind of like the dust storm, huh.

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Is that what reminded of you when you saw that cartoon?

Londborg: Oh, right away. That was the famous remarks of the women when company would come when they say well I just dusted before the dust storm.

Terence: Because it would be covered with dust, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Londborg: And then the farmer’s springtime they say well I wonder whose farm we’re farming this year. Top soil come from South Dakota all over you know.

Terence: You know just one more thing about the farm. Did – was your dad sort of did he feel – how did he feel after they lost the farm? Was that a big sort of sad thing in his life or was he resigned to it or what was the – his reaction?

Londborg: I think it was you know he was expecting it. He saw it around him. Others same thing happening and my brother that went to California started working for Douglas Aircraft Company and he could have you know taken it over easy enough. My dad asked him if he wanted too and buy it or take it and he said well I don’t want a dead horse on my hands so he just washed his hands of it. But then when the folks moved into town why he bought them a house so they could live in.

Terence: And they passed away there? Did they stay in that town or?

Londborg: Yeah. See they moved in in ’38 and my mother and father passed away the same year in – well, it was the year we went to Alaska, so it would be ’46, something like that.

Terence: I see. Well you went to college you went out to 1938 is when you started in college, right, yourself and what year did you graduate then?

Londborg: Well it took me three years to get through the junior college. It was a junior college then because I had to get a job and work and so I took one year of college, summer school, and then the rest of it all through night classes. And I worked in a sewing machine factory.

Terence: In Chicago?

Londborg: In Chicago. And that proved pretty valuable because I learned a lot about machinery there. That big milling machine, drilling machines, and the like.

Terence: Was this a factory that made small sewing machines or was it – what was it?

Londborg: Industrial.

Terence: How big were they?

Londborg: Well I think the biggest one I saw must have had a head of about eight, nine feet. They could sew anything, big canvas and all kinds of things.

Terence: Okay. So what year was that then that you graduated? That was 1941?

Londborg: ’41.

Terence: Okay. So where were you when the war broke out or when the –

Londborg: I had gone back to Nebraska. Had surgery that summer and then I was staying with my sister and brother-in-law in – out in Nebraska recuperating and that was in ’41 when they started the draft. That came before the war broke out and there were three of us that we asked to be on the draft board to sign up people. So we signed each other up and then everybody else all day just a parade and got everybody registered.

Terence: Now so were you on the draft board?

Londborg: Not the draft board, just the actual signing people where they registered so I wasn’t on the draft board.

Terence: So and were you drafted then or did you have a deferment or what was the –

Londborg: Well that’s in the fall of ’41 I was mentioned I was staying with my sister and brother-in-law and they had a farm, oh, here, yeah that my –

– Break –

Terence: Maynard, speaking of that in a way how did you – was there any particular incident that made you hard of hearing or is that working in the factory or do you know? Cause I would say with Tom – Judge Stewart, he said it was pretty clear to him working in the mine and they didn’t have ear protection in those days.

Londborg: I’m not sure what affected my right ear, but that’s – I had the hearing loss there for a long time. I know one time a dentist up in Alaska and he was in there drilling for about two hours and terrible noise and I got out of there and had vertigo for about three weeks. Just you know lose your sense of balance.

Terence: Yeah, so that’s awful, oh man.

Londborg: My left ear is not too bad with a hearing aid I do pretty good with it so.

Terence: Oh, yeah you really do seem to pick up most everything so. But anyway so we were talking about the draft board and you were living on the farm in 1941 or helping out I guess with – not on the farm, but you’re helping with your brother is that right?

Londborg: Well I was staying with my sister and brother-in-law recuperating from surgery and during this time and then I’ll try to make this story short, but my brother-in-law was the lay leader for the local Methodist Church right near their farm in the town. And he just told me one day that he said well our pastor is going to be gone and he said you’re going to speak. And I said well I haven’t been to seminary or Bible school or anything and he said, yeah, but he said we’re all farmers we haven’t even been off the farm. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer so I said okay. And that’s how I got started you might say in the ministry.

And then about a week or two later a big black car drove into his yard and he called me over and introduced me to the district superintendent of the Methodist Church and he said I’ve got a church I want you to go out and see. And that was out at Royal, Nebraska. So I went out there and when – then he conferred with the people and he came back he said well I’m going to appoint you pastor out there. I think I was 20 years old and went out there and just one thing after another and unknown to me he had written to the draft board and he said now we’re losing ministers and he is covering a big area and so I got – when I got in the mail my classification as 4D and then of course I stayed in the ministry ever since that I was. I tried a couple times to join the service and both times just the last minute something came up and I didn’t.

Terence: So from the beginning you were – you basically got sort of drafted into the ministry?

Londborg: I suppose you could almost call it that. It was – and I look back. It’s – I – at the years the way they’ve turned out I probably was able to do through the ministry you know, although in a retirement home like this I imagine 90 percent at least are veterans or more. So not too many of us that things just worked out we didn’t get into the service.

Terence: Well so when you were then in the – you ended up being the pastor of this church, 20 years old. What happened then? Because you obviously didn’t stay a Methodist so you went into the Covenant some how but did you go back to school or what about that?

Londborg: Yeah, see then I wanted to stay at that church through the next year. I mean I really enjoyed it then. A lot of young people and talk about horseback right. Every kid had a horse and that was our outings was to go out horseback riding in the evenings or daytime and I really wanted to stay on there. The district superintendent came and he said well I’m not going to let you stay here. There are too many nice girls. He said I know what happens. You end up and you get married, you don’t have your education complete and he said I’m stuck with a lot of ministers like that. So he said you pick your college and wherever you want to go and I’ll see that you have a church to serve while you’re in the college. And it ended up that I went to Nebraska Wesleyan in Lincoln and they assigned me to a church there in Lincoln. And after a year or two then I wanted to go on to the seminary and that is when I transferred back to North Park Seminary. So I had about a two-year outing then with the Methodist Church, otherwise back in the Covenant.

Terence: You went back on the straight and narrow.

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Returned from your wild youthful fling with Methodists.

Londborg: From the string, yeah.

Terence: Yeah, that’s right, yeah. Well what was the – so what year did you graduate from North Park, what year was that?

Londborg: You mean the seminary?

Terence: The seminary I mean.

Londborg: ’46.

Terence: ’46. And so how did you get to Alaska because that was – how did that work out and when did you first hear about the –

Londborg: Well my wife Lorraine was in nurses training and she graduated in ’44 and we got married in ’45. And then when I finished seminary I thought I would stay home and go to some college and get my degree. And that summer in ’46 I got a call from the head of the mission department. When he talked to me he said would you go to Alaska for – he mentioned specifically to replace the missionary at Yakutat, who was going to take a furlough. He said it would be about a year to 18 months. I said sure. And –

Terence: Had you ever heard of I mean have you ever thought about being in Alaska before that?

Londborg: No, not particularly.

Terence: Did you know where Yakutat was?

Londborg: No. I knew it was up north some place and so while I was in the seminary serving churches in Chicago area and this field director’s wife – he and his wife had been missionaries in Alaska and she spoke in a church I was serving and made a remark I said I think if I ever went to any place –

Londborg: I’d like to go to Alaska over Africa or some place like that. And when they were apparently talking about getting somebody temporarily she mentioned that to her husband and that somebody had called in. So before we knew it we were on the way into Yakutat.

Terence: Now why did you say going to Alaska I mean was sort of sounded more interesting or what was the –

Londborg: I just frontier and wide-open space – it just had an appeal, which it still does. I mean I don’t know why I’m in Colorado now when you’d rather be back up there. Well, you know you’re up there.

Terence: That’s right. Well I can’t stand Alaska though. I’m just waiting to get out, sometimes. No I’m only kidding. But let’s back up one thing Maynard how did you meet your wife? You said she was in nurses training, but how did you first meet?

Londborg: She had one year when she attended based in North Park College before she entered nurses training and I met her that year and it was kind of love at first sight as far as I was concerned, but she was determined to go to nurses training. In those days the nurses couldn’t get married, so that meant a three-year break where we couldn’t do much dating or anything.

Terence: Because in those years if she was married she would have to drop out of the nurses training?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Is that right?

Londborg: Especially that school. There might have been some others, I’m not sure, but not (inaudible) Covenant in Chicago.

Terence: So did she complete her nurses training then?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: And then you were married the next year?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: It is too bad it didn’t work out, huh? How long have you been married now?

Londborg: Fifty-nine years.

Terence: Fifty-nine years. Yeah. Isn’t that amazing? That’s wonderful. Fifty-nine or is it or 60. Sixty years next year.

Londborg: Next year.

Terence: That’s right, yeah. So how did it and your wife’s is Lorraine?

Londborg: Lorraine.

Terence: What was her maiden name?

Londborg: Lundstedt – L-U-N-D-S-T-E-D-T was her maiden name.

Terence: That’s a good Irish name, huh?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: So she was Swedish too? Her family was Swedish as well?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Yeah. Did – so what did Lorraine think of going to Alaska when this happened? What –

Londborg: Well –

Terence: Because you were going to go as a team, right? I mean clearly –

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: And she was going to be the nurse?

Londborg: When I asked or when I was asked if I would go up there for I said sure and he said well you better talk to Lorraine first. And I said well I know what she’ll say. And so I came home and I said well I know where we’re going now and she said where. And I said Alaska and she said great. She said can I call and tell my folks. I said I think I better confirm it so that it isn’t just a rumor, but she was game right from the word go. And has followed or I don’t know if you could say followed but wherever we have been led in the work up in Alaska she is right there with it so.

Terence: Well that’s wonderful. Well tell me about how you’d get to Yakutat? What steamer did you take? What was – did you go to Seattle I guess? Did you take the train out to Seattle or did you fly or how did you –

Londborg: I drove a car for a company to San Francisco, a new car. Those days that cars were being shipped out West and then I think we took the train to Seattle. And then we were supposed to go by boat and we got into Seattle and Alaska Steamship Company was on strike. We stayed there for about a week and they decided that was going to a long strike so they said you better fly up there. So I went up on Pan Am I think it was to Juneau and then Yakutat.

Terence: Did – was that the first time you were ever on an airplane? Had you been on an airplane before?

Londborg: I think that was our first time.

Terence: And that was a big strike that year. I remember – I guess that was – I don’t remember but that was the post-war strike, right because it was ’46?

Londborg: ’46.

Terence: What day – when did you arrive in Yakutat? What time was that? What month of the year was that?

Londborg: Probably August or September something like that.

Terence: So you landed in Yakutat. What did you think when you got there? Did you think oh no?

Londborg: Well it was very fascinating, beautiful country, beautiful mountain ranges around there. The town had a military base located there because of the Japanese presence and so forth and that had a tremendous affect on the town. Apparently it was a somewhat quiet, peaceful town before that and the presence of thousands of military just changed the town completely. So it was in a way a very difficult place to do any work.

Terence: How did it change it, you mean there was a lot of liquor and stuff?

Londborg: Liquor and I don’t think there was a young girl that could grow up there and was hardly safe in the area. And I think – I forget I looked at the statistics of the births over that period of time and it was kind of a sad story to read the parentage of the ones that were born. They had a lot – and then the liquor.

Terence: And no father, basically no one being around, the fathers, yeah.

Londborg: Then also in ’46 the fresh fish buyers came in. They hadn’t been able to before the war was over. And they stayed out about three and a half, four miles off the coast, which would be international waters and the people would bring their fish out and sell and otherwise Libby’s Cannery had gotten the fish over the years. And they were getting I think a dollar twenty-five for sockeye salmon and these people would bring boatloads out there and they would pay them cash but always give them a little liquor besides. And they’d go back out there and buy more liquor. So many of the fishermen ended up in the fall with no money, just – and they had no way to get back into town because Libby’s wouldn’t transport them back on the railroad, Yakutat and Southern.

Terence: Because the railroad was that railroad running then when you got there?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Yakutat and Southern, where did it go from?

Londborg: From Yakutat out to the fishing area.

Terence: About how far was that, about how many –

Londborg: About 16 miles.

Terence: So what kind of railroad was that, that’s a little – was it a narrow gauge kind of?

Londborg: Probably.

Terence: Actually I didn’t remember that was running then.

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: And was there a cannery there? Did Libby’s have a cannery right there?

Londborg: In Yakutat?

Terence: Yeah.

Londborg: Yeah, Libby’s Cannery.

Terence: So what was that – was that really the main employment in the town?

Londborg: Right. And people could go there and get credit during the winter – Libby’s I think treated the people very good and then when they’d get the fish they’d clear up their debts and then have a little reserve left over and life when on. Until ’46 it just shattered that whole thing.

Terence: And then that was because of the liquor and –

Londborg: The fresh fish buyers. And the government tried to get them to stop it. See they were outside of the boundary – they were in international waters is where they did their business.

Terence: Well now is Yakutat supposed to be a dry village? Was it illegal to have the alcohol in there or was it you know –

Londborg: Oh, I wouldn’t say it was dry. It probably had been pretty dry, but after you know the military in there and this other, it was pretty (inaudible) stated that way.

Terence: Now how long did you stay at Yakutat? How long did that stay –

Londborg: One year.

Terence: One year.

Londborg: And we would have stayed longer but the church wanted us to move to Unalakleet to help start a children’s home because my wife was a nurse and there was a lot of maintenance and I had a lot of experience with machinery and things like that. So we went on up to Unalakleet then that next summer.

Terence: Now how did you get up there? How did you get there?

– Break –

Terence: I think I might have heard that they might have saved a locomotive or something of it, but basically it was a fish hauler. Is that what they used to haul the fish in from the fish – where the ships would have docked?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Because why did they need it or why not bring it right to the cannery? Is it because there is no –

Londborg: Well it was pretty rough waters out around.

Terence: Oh, I see.

Londborg: That area so in other words the fishermen would have to take you know bring them in or out and this worked out a lot better.

Terence: And safer.

Londborg: The town of Yakutat had decided they would like to have some electricity and there was the – around the cannery was the new village and around the corner, way down the coast about a mile was the old village where a lot of the Natives still live down there. And our mission house or compound was right on the edge as you went into the old village. So I had about half mile or three-quarters walk into town to get our mail and stuff. Always had a rain jacket in my backpack because it just rain would come just instantly. And anyway they got a idea and I don’t know where they got this light plant, but it was the one cylinder. It stood vertical and then big flywheels and it had the generator that operated off of a belt and then they had a line that ran down through the new village and anybody wanting electricity could tap onto that. I don’t know how much they had to pay.

One night, I don’t know what exactly what happened. But the belt broke and it whipped around and caught the line that went out and it pulled it into the flywheel. Literally the whole stretch of wire all through the new village was pulled in there and there was a great big ball of wire on that flywheel. There was the China man that had a restaurant, Lin Loe was his name and when the lights went out he had his flashlight right there and he went out and it just whipped it right out of his hand and that wire was going by. It could have taken his hand off, but made quite a story that the electricity went out and they rolled up the wire. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good camera, but I don’t know if anybody ever took a picture of that big ball of wire on that flywheel.

Terence: I’ve heard of rolling the sidewalks up.

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: But that’s something.

Londborg: That was something else.

Terence: So what happened? Did they ever get it back on line or what happened?

Londborg: Oh, yeah, eventually they got –

Terence: They’d string it back out?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Was this wire sitting on the ground or was it like on a pole?

Londborg: No, it was up on poles.

Terence: That’s really amazing. When you lived in Yakutat did you live in the house that in the old Swedish – the old teachers’ house or?

Londborg: Yeah. It was an old house, very old house and Yakutat I think they have about 130 inches of precipitation a year. Ketchikan has more, but 130 is plenty and when it would rain water would come under the front door and the back door at the same – I mean it downpour and water would get in both the front door and the back door.

Terence: And would meet in the middle?

Londborg: Yeah, in the middle of the house.

Terence: So what did you – cause you had never lived in such a rainy place before obviously. I mean did you have any idea what the weather was going to be like when you?

Londborg: No, no. Not the way (inaudible).

Terence: And so you always had your boots and your rain jacket with you?

Londborg: Always carried it and usually had boots on as footwear and then a little backpack for groceries and mail and I always had a little rain jacket in there.

Terence: And did you have electricity in the house? You must have I guess of the line.

Londborg: Oh we were out in the old village so we weren’t part of that.

Terence: So you didn’t have any electricity?

Londborg: No.

Terence: And what did you heat with? Did you guys have wood or –

Londborg: Oil. At that place we burned oil.

Terence: Now did – was there any boardwalks connecting the old village or was it just mud or what was the?

Londborg: There were some boardwalks around in placed. I think later when we moved up to lived in (inaudible), Alaska, there they had quite a boardwalk all over and of course Nome had pretty much boardwalks there.

Terence: Well, so when you’re leaving Yakutat and you are going to go out to Unalakleet, church has let you know.

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Did yo know where Unalakleet was?

Londborg: Oh, I found it on the map and –

Terence: Did you know how to spell Unalakleet?

Londborg: No. Not many people do. The – we went to Anchorage and then our missionary pilot met us there with a little Stinson and flew us out to Unalakleet.

Terence: Now that was in ’47, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: But now so was that your first trip out to Anchorage, because when you went to Yakutat you just stayed in Yakutat basically right?

Londborg: Yeah, pretty much so. I did have one trip up to Unalakleet for a conference. My wife didn’t go along with. I was up there and then she had a couple trips to Juneau to bring in sick children into Juneau and that was some scary flights that she was on. Rain and snow or sleet. I don’t know how those pilots did it around that country.

Terence: Where did they land at Yakutat? They did it on floats or was there a strip there?

Londborg: There was a landing field that part of the military installation. Otherwise a lot of float planes in the bay.

Terence: I guess that is where the planes still land is that military airstrip I think so. Well so you went over to Anchorage. What were your first impressions of Anchorage when you first saw it, that would have been 1947 I guess probably?

Londborg: Pretty small town at the time. I think Northern Lights Boulevard was the southern extremity but then Spenard Road went on angled out to the airport. Otherwise it was a really small town then yet.

Terence: Did you meet cause we talked the other day you met Jenny Rasmuson, but did you meet her that time or maybe that was later on, you know the missionary at Yakutat?

Londborg: I met her – I mentioned that I had gone to Unalakleet and I went through Anchorage and that was when I went in and visited her in the hotel that she was living in.

Terence: And Mr. Rasmuson, was he there I guess because this was ’47, so he was still alive, but I don’t know if he was in Anchorage so if you ever met him?

Londborg: Oh, her husband?

Terence: Yeah, E.A. I’m not sure.

Londborg: I don’t think. She was a widow I believe.

Terence: When you met her?

Londborg: Met her.

Terence: I see, okay. Well, so you went out to Unalakleet in what year that would have been forty –

Londborg: ’47.

Terence: ’47, so what was that like out there? Your wife was going to be the nurse.

Londborg: Right.

Terence: What are the challenges that she faces as a nurse? What was the major health problem?

Londborg: Oh, it was tuberculosis. There was hardly a family that wasn’t affected by it and many of the children were left with either one parent. If it was the father, he couldn’t take care of them. He had to hunt and trap so that was one of the big reasons the children’s home was started was to take care of these orphans and half-orphans and that was a big enough challenge. Then of course the village they were supposed to have a government nurse there, but about half the time they didn’t. And then usually if they did have one there then she traveled to other villages. And my wife would end up doing the nursing in the village.

Terence: Was she actually employed as a nurse too by the mission or who did it work? Were you working for the government?

Londborg: For the church. My wife was never employed by the government or any village. All of her nursing was just gratis.

Terence: So and so basically what income the two of you received was what you got from the church basically?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: So it was nothing from the government at all –

Londborg: No.

Terence: They didn’t ever help out?

Londborg: No.

Terence: Man that must not have been very much money. I mean how much you know.

Londborg: Didn’t need much money.

Terence: Well –

Londborg: Just go and get some fish and lot of subsistence that way.

Terence: How much did you get paid, do you remember what the –

Londborg: No, I don’t. I couldn’t figure it out as well – it wasn’t very much. Basically enough to order – we’d order bulk groceries from Seattle and if we would have had to go to the store and buy over-the-counter all our food it wouldn’t have been enough so we usually put in our order for and the ships came up there once or twice in the summer. So you put in your order for the whole year, flour and sugar and milk and whatever.

Terence: What volume, do you remember Maynard, about how much you’d buy for a year and how much you know flour. I mean would it be a whole pallet or how much would the size take when the groceries finally came you know, I guess it would be a lot of room it was a whole year’s worth of supplies?

Londborg: Yeah, it – as far as volume, probably five sacks of sugar, five sacks of flour and maybe 40 cases of milk and that would be the dry milk.

Terence: Not the condensed milk, I mean it was just powdered milk, right?

Londborg: Mostly powdered milk.

Terence: Did you ever get any fruit or stuff like that?

Londborg: Very, very little, except that’s why we grew so fond of the cranberries that we could buy. And we’d usually go out – they’d put in milk cartons, especially the town north of us Shageluk. We’d buy two or three of those and have cranberries all winter and blueberries. That was basically our fruit.

Terence: Did – so you’re in this situation where – but when you got to Unalakleet, did you have to build a house or was there –

Londborg: No, there as an old house that was built around the turn of the century and at the time it was pretty apparently a pretty nice house. It had two story with four kind of bedrooms on the second floor and during the Gold Rush days miners would come through and Unalakleet was the route if they came up from St. Michael or if they over from Kaltag, either way, and they would end up staying. Oh, the visitors list is really long in the old mission house and then they’d always say well if I strike it rich I’ll help you out. And some of them did. They came back and they had enough money and gave them so they – I think that’s how that house got built.

Terence: And that’s the house you moved into?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Right.

Londborg: But that was pretty old by that time.

Terence: So did you have to fix it up?

Londborg: Well that house got fixed up so many times that it was cold, poor insulation. We’d spill some water on the floor and ice right away. My wife had little mukluks and wool socks made for the kids and they them during the daytime in the house, otherwise their feet would be cold. So when they were ready to go out and play why they’d just slip a parka on and take off.

Terence: Cause they already had their boots on?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: So it wasn’t going to remove your boots when you come into the house?

Londborg: Not –

Terence: Put your boots on before you leave the house, yeah. The – so your job is building the home basically for the orphans, right?

Londborg: Well I helped on the construction. I did practically all the wiring in that building and then in 1954 I think it was they were able to get a lease on some government buildings in White Mountain and they moved the children’s home up there.

Terence: So but the children’s home was still run by the Covenant, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: So that was your primary responsibility was running that home, right? Was that your –

Londborg: Well I had the church to take care of.

Terence: Oh, and the church too, yeah. So you were the regular minister and pastor. Did you do the whole range of stuff that ministers do – funerals, weddings?

Londborg: Everything. You never knew in the morning what you were going to be doing. And we had a – well and the house was old. We burned wood and then they burned wood in the church. And the people would go out and gather some and we had a hold of a D4 cat that was a Army veteran in itself that had been out on the Aleutians and had a couple of bullet holes through the thick plate behind and we – long story, but got that from Nome through Nome and on down and –

Terence: Got it barged down there. Did you bring it down on the barge?

Londborg: Yeah. And I had to learn to drive that thing and maintain it and so I – there was an awful lot of time spent in just staying alive. Hauling wood, hauling water and all of these different things.

Terence: Didn’t offer a lot of time for reflection and you know –

Londborg: No, and not a lot of time for what you thought you were supposed to be doing you know the mission work – church work and that and but we survived that.

Terence: Now when you – when the home was built, how many kids did you say – how many kids did you have in the home?

Londborg: I think we ended up with about 30 and our missionary pilot was flying them in from all the villages.

Terence: Do you remember his name? Who the pilot?

Londborg: Roal Dominson.

Terence: Oh that’s Roal Dominson, okay.

Londborg: And a –

Terence: He was named after the explorer obviously, right?

Londborg: Something like that, yeah. But we almost treaded seeing the plane come because we knew it would be another kid he’d be bringing.

Terence: And probably always the room for one more kind of philosophy, right, I think what you operated on? So were there bunk beds or how was it – was it a big dormitory or what was the?

Londborg: Well in that building that was built for the children’s home we did – I don’t remember just how we got bunk beds in there but probably through Army surplus in Anchorage something like that.

Terence: And you and Lorraine were responsible 24 hours a day for all those kids, right?

Londborg: Just about.

Terence: So you had 30 kids. It was like having a family of 30 children, right?

Londborg: And two of them were youngest two were in diapers and she had to take care of. We had a little light plant in the basement of that building, a little Onan and it was used during the construction of the building cause it had automatic start soon as you turn a power saw on the light plant would kick in. And it was in the corner of the building, the basement, with the exhaust pipe running out into a big barrel and then there was this exhaust from there about 10 feet up in the air and that was instead of a muffler I mean it was used that way.

And we had a terrible snowstorm one Christmas and the light plant gave out and a friend of mine, one of the Laplanders that was living there he came over and helped me and we overhauled it in the dark with little kerosene lantern and took it all apart and cleaned it out. We got it running and we shut it off and then the next day morning was Christmas day. I think it was Christmas or Thanksgiving, one or the other and we started it up in the morning and one of the girls that was missionary helping and she went with me over to the church and she got called back because the other one got sick and then the kids were sick. We thought it was the flu and went out in the village and everybody said oh they must have the flu in there. They were throwing up and it was just terrible. And we had shut the light plant off then during the daytime and in the afternoon we started it again and everybody got nauseated again. And had a pretty good idea what it was. And I went out and the snowstorm had plastered that side of the building and it literally covered the end of that spout there 10 feet up in the air. And I got a long stick and I poked a hole in the and got the exhaust going out again. But we thought about that and I got it written up in my book here, the guardian angel or something because I could just see headquarters, the newspapers, 18 children orphanage in Unalakleet also suffocate from carbon monoxide poisoning. You look back and it is scary.

Terence: Yeah, how close that was, yeah, yeah. And that wouldn’t be a good recommendation for your last job.

Londborg: That would have been my last job too if I would have stayed in that building.

Terence: Yeah because everybody CO poisoning.

Londborg: See I was going out in the village around and talking to people so I missed a lot of it for myself.

Terence: Now when the electric plant was that – did that – so there were hours you didn’t want people to turn on lights and stuff or?

Londborg: Oh, yeah. We had to ration out and just certain hours and they’d do the laundry and ironing and things like that and then we shut it back off. Later when we had the building turned over to the high school I was able to get a diesel light plant and we found that was cheaper to run day and night.

Terence: Because the first one what was the fuel the first one?

Londborg: Gasoline

Terence: It was just a gasoline.

Londborg: Two cylinder.

Terence: It was like a lawn mower basically right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Boy that would have been noisier than all get out. I mean it must have been I mean.

Londborg: And the problem was that we couldn’t ship in good gasoline, well we could from Seattle, but there was the Army had a lot of gasoline up at a Army post north of us and high water had taken that and washed those barrels way out in the flats and people would go there and put a barrel of that gas on and bring it in and sell it. We bought some of that but that was a high octane for airplanes and they’d run in this little Onan for maybe a couple of months and then you had to stop and clean it all out again.

Terence: Well now during this time the Dew Line comes in, right, the Dew Line or was that already there when you got?

Londborg: No, that came in about the time we started the high school in 1954 and ’55 they built the road up and got the Dew Line in.

Terence: Well, let’s talk about the high school then first because you were telling me how you got your – how you got the school going. So let’s talk about that, what –

Londborg: Well, they had –

Terence: Well, I guess the orphanage moved first, was that right?

Londborg: Right, they moved up to White Mountain and actually had better facilities for a children’s home up there. Those old government buildings and then had been living down in Marshall on the Yukon and they asked us to go up – back to Unalakleet and the mission station. We got back up there in ’54.

Terence: So you went from Unalakleet down to Marshall?

Londborg: Right for about two years.

Terence: Oh, I see, okay and Marshall is on the Yukon River, right?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Okay.

Londborg: Very interesting village.

Terence: What were you doing down at Marshall? What was that – was the same –

Londborg: Had a mission church and that was had become an old mining town and a lot of old sourdoughs living there. I mean just characters. I’ve got stories about several of them written up. I mean they were just fascinating characters.

And anyway we got back up to Unalakleet and some of the parents approached us and said that the early missionaries had started a grade school and that is why the old people can read and write so well and then the government took over grade schools and the (inaudible) came in. And they said would you consider starting a high school? And they said we don’t want to send our kids way down to Edgecumbe to 1300, 1400 miles down there and never see them for maybe two or three years.

And thought about it a little while and at that time the territory had a plan where anybody in the village where there was no school could ask the territory to pay for a correspondence courses, high school through the University of Nebraska and the grade school was that was another one, I don’t know, it’s Calvert System or something. But the only thing I could think of was to sign these kids up, have the parents put in applications for correspondence courses and then I would just hold regular classes for them. And I proposed that then to the lady who was head of the educational department in Juneau and territory and she fired a word right back, well if you’re going to do that why don’t you order textbooks from our adopted textbook list and just start a high school and we’ll put you on the approved list. And we couldn’t be accredited then or anything as yet. So I sent word back I said we don’t have any certified teachers and I said I’m not certified to teach. She said well we’ll take care of that. We’ll send you a teacher’s certificate. And so that came in the mail and good for one year and we got our school started.

And then the year was over I said now we still don’t have teachers, certified teachers. We have a couple coming next year but that doesn’t take care of the immediate year up ahead. And they said don’t worry about that, we’ll send you a principal certificate that gives you teaching privileges sand that’s good for two years. So when they sent that and –

Terence: Then you were off to the races.

Londborg: Off to the races.

Man: Just a little break here just to –

Terence: Magazine in the back that – that’s amazing.

Londborg: Then in ’56 then we got Al and Gladys White up there.

Terence: Oh, these are the teachers yeah?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Well, that’s amazing. Well we’re about to talk about the convention here a little bit. You want to get up and take a rest or stretch your legs, okay.

Man: We can disconnect here.

Man: I can move this if you want to use the restroom.

Man: I can definitely feel that Terrence, that’s pretty good. Yeah, we’re rolling now.

Terence: It is a – you and Lorraine, is that you and Lorraine?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: And what’s that picture of you on the dog sled or what was the –

Londborg: Oh, that’s – that must be Linda down in the sled.

Terence: Linda is in the sled. Your daughter is in the sled, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Now is that at Unalakleet, is that –

Londborg: Yeah, that’s the old church there.

Terence: Did you ever do anything with dogs out at Unalakleet I mean I wondered if you ever did you know cause basically with the transportation around you didn’t really – no one really had dogs much back then, right, I mean in the villages, was there any?

Londborg: When we arrived everybody had a dog team. Now they don’t.

Man: Hold on a second.

Terence: So when you first got there did everybody have dogs is that in Unalakleet?

Londborg: Well there were dog teams – practically every family had a dog team and like at conference time where the church is you know and they’d come from far away up and down the coast. You’d have maybe 300 visiting people or a 100 visiting people but three to four hundred visiting dogs, put up a howl.

Terence: And did – had anybody had snowmachines at that time?

Londborg: They were just getting introduced, the snowmachine. Arctic Cat and Ski-Doo and some of those, but I don’t this is when – no they came in quite a bit later around the 50’s something like that.

Terence: But when you first got there the people were still using dogs to get around.

Londborg: To get around, haul their wood and ice and go out hunting and trapping.

Terence: Now did you ever keep a dog team or did you ever need for one?

Londborg: No, my neighbor who was the postmaster Frank Ryan had a beautiful dog team and three days a week he would (inaudible) or a fellow that would handle him would go out and meet the airplane and bring the mail in, passengers and that by dog team into town in the wintertime. And then on the other days the dogs would be idle and his daughter was going to exercise the dogs because they just aren’t getting exercise. And they would take off just like a bolt of lightening, go about two and half three miles up the river and then they’d stop and they’d swing around. And she wasn’t heavy enough on the brake to hold them and the dogs would come into town.

And Frank told me about this and he said that she is going to ruin those dogs. And at that time we were burning wood and I said if I can use the dogs and go out and cut wood, I’ll bring you wood and ice back in and made a deal with me. So there was a young Native boy that usually went with me and we’d hook up those dogs and the first time they went out they pulled the same thing on me, just whirled right around. And I was heavy enough so they couldn’t get started again and I was giving them the commands to turn and get back on the track and they looked at me and who are you? And then they stood there and I think it was 10, 15 minutes that we had a little mental deal going on. Finally kind of sheepishly they turned around and never had any problem after that. But if I had gotten off the sled and tried to run up you know and got the leader to turn around they would have been gone so.

Terence: Do you know why – why did they stop at two and a half miles – was there a certain point there that –

Londborg: They figured out that was a good turning point for them and it was just about the same place every time you know.

Terence: How much farther up the river did you have to go to get the wood? How far was your wood?

Londborg: I think all together we went seven, eight miles and then we’d cut wood and when we would get a sled load or two, then I’d go up with the D4 cat and pull it in.

Terence: Oh, I see so you just used the sled going up there and –

Londborg: And cutting –

Terence: Not for bringing it back basically?

Londborg: Just cutting it.

Terence: Is it a D4 is that what you said?

Londborg: D4.

Terence: Did you have a sled that you could build behind it?

Londborg: Big go devil what they call them and built behind there. Oh, we actually had two of them so I could up four and five cords of wood on each one and get that started down the river went along pretty good.

Terence: How did you handle your drinking water? You didn’t have a well there did you? What did you do with –

Londborg: We had a well under that building but it was brackish water. It was terrible. And so we would go up the river and haul water down in barrels in the summer time and in the winter we would haul ice in. We had an icehouse and then under the children’s home there was about a 5,000 gallon cistern tank it was there and we’d haul water down and fill that up about every couple weeks or so.

Terence: How did you haul water down, with the cat or –

Londborg: Yeah, with the D4 cat.

Terence: And was there a big like tank sitting on one of the sleds?

Londborg: We had gotten a hold of a couple tanks that were each about 500 gallons. We’d roll them up on the sled and we had a pump and we’d go up and chop a hole in the ice and fill them up. Take about four or five trips in a day to fill that cistern.

Terence: And how often would it run dry? Would it be –

Londborg: Sometimes too often. They liked the fresh water rather than the brackish water for everything, but we tried to limit it to you know cooking and maybe rinsing some clothes and things like that.

Terence: But did you have toilets at all in the home or was it just an outhouse or what was the – what did you –

Londborg: You are well acquainted with the term of honey buckets. That is what we started with and after well about the time we were ready to leave Unalakleet the government had put in a septic system through the town and then they had flush toilets and so forth.

Terence: That was in the 1960’s though, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: 1966 or so.

Londborg: Right about the time we left. Only problem I guess about the first winter the (inaudible) froze up and then they really were in a mess there at Unalakleet. So –

Terence: Did they have like at Nome where you – like a line where you were supposed to dump the garbage out on the ice, did anybody do that or?

Londborg: They did that at first and they had sort of an imaginary line that once you got started people would bring garbage and stuff way out there and dump it and hopefully in the spring why it would wash away. I remember when the health department came up and I was concerned about it. They said well once it gets turning around with the dissolution factor so great so you don’t have to worry about anything. Might be true.

Terence: That’s what the health department said?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: I don’t think they do that now. I wonder if DEC or the EPA has the same attitude nowadays anymore. Did – so but hauling that water, what an immense amount of work. What about the ice? Now was the ice kept underground or was it just a shed you stuck the ice in, what was that?

Londborg: It was half underground and built up over it.

Terence: And so that was the drinking water source for the wintertime?

Londborg: Wintertime.

Terence: How big were the chunks of ice that you brought in?

Londborg: The –

Terence: And how did you cut them, Maynard, how?

Londborg: They were probably 18” long and at least 12” wide and four or five deep. At first they were going up there and sawing so the ice would break off and then it would float and they’d pull it out and finally they found that it was better to let the ice get real thick and then we had an excellent co-worker that came up he could just do anything with metal work and he mounted a saw and pulled behind the cat and it would saw ice down to about five, six inches and then it was still solid under that and they’d go both ways and then you’d break up your first piece and after that why they just popped up with the ice pick.

Terence: And these how did you get them on the sled, so you say like –

Londborg: Oh, well that was with an ice tongs and it was manual work pretty much.

Terence: But you know I see what you mean you had to spend many hours a day living right?

Londborg: Living, right.

Terence: That is just what you just living. Must have been exhausting work though I mean.

Londborg: It was on that. I mean there was just no end to it. Ice and water and then fishing and different things like that.

Terence: What about with the fishing? Did you like enjoy that or did anybody have any wheels down there or I don’t know what did they do? What’s the –

Londborg: The people used basically gill nets to catch fish and or else a seine where a school of fish would come in and then you’d drop the seine around them and pull them on in. I got pretty handy at that.

Terence: Did you have a boat at all?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: What was the name of the boat?

Londborg: Well the one that I built I don’t think I gave it a name. It was kind of a first job, but it went pretty good in the water. That was –

Terence: But you built your own boat then too?

Londborg: I built one yeah.

Terence: Did you have a kicker with it or –

Londborg: Yeah. Little 10 horse Johnson I think it was.

Terence: So between that – what about hunting? Did any caribou ever down there or what’s the –

Londborg: The hunting was not very good around Unalakleet until there was a big fire in the Interior and moose and caribou started showing up. It drove them over and about the time we were ready to leave why it was pretty decent hunting there.

Terence: But from the 20 years there basically there wasn’t much, right? There wasn’t – did you ever get a moose down there at all or do you remember? Did you ever –

Londborg: Most of my hunting was hunting rather than getting one.

Terence: It was the hunting part?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: None of the bringing back home, yeah, well, that’s good, that’s like missionary work I guess in general or like you say.

Londborg: Everything.

Terence: Amount of labor. Now you had four children, three children, how many?

Londborg: Four.

Terence: And how many were born in Alaska? Who, what was the –

Londborg: Three were born in Nome, Alaska and then the second one was born in Iowa when we were out on leave for a few months. So he doesn’t claim Alaska from that standpoint.

Terence: Now so when Lorraine was pregnant then you brought her up when she was expecting up to the hospital in Nome, is that what you did?

Londborg: Then our missionary pilot usually would fly down and bring her into Nome and had a doctor up there that delivered the two youngest I guess – Dr. Langson and he was a good doctor. But we were living down in the Yukon when I guess both John and Beth were born and they had a flight there from Marshall on up to Nome. And I remember with Beth she gave us a false alarm about a month early and our neighbor got on the radio in the night. He just kept calling. He had Alaska Airline radio phone and finally somebody picked it up and they called and got in contact with Bethel and they sent a Beaver out to get Lorraine and landed in the middle of the night. I went with him to Bethel

Londborg: Strange thing happened but got in there and the labor pains stopped and she stayed down there about a week or so and then our pilot brought her up to Nome and so Beth was born in Nome too.

Terence: Did – what was it like having the kids in the school because well the elementary school was a BIA school, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: So for the young kids. Were there any other white kids in the school or were they the only ones or what was the –

Londborg: We had – well even when we had the high school we had a mix of quite a few Caucasian, FAA workers and others around the country would send their kids there so we had maybe 10 percent were Caucasian.

Terence: And as elementary school though was a BIA – it wasn’t a church school?

Londborg: No.

Terence: Elementary was the BIA, right?

Londborg: It was under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, yeah.

Terence: And so then let’s talk about founding the school, because that is 1954, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: And you’re coming back from Marshall and did you use the old orphanage, was that part of the building?

Londborg: Yeah, that was the building that we were able to use for high school.

Terence: And so as you said you didn’t have a certificate so they obliged and mailed you one.

Londborg: Right.

Terence: I should try that. I mean that’s a good idea you know, second career, just ask them. So what was it like what are the challenges of running that school cause you were the principal and the science teacher and what were the other teacher – did Lorraine teach at all or did –

Londborg: She taught a Bible class, but she also was the school nurse and then she taught piano. That was one little benefit the kids had coming there. Anybody that wanted to take piano could get piano lessons. So we had some real good pianists that came out of there and she was a good teacher.

Terence: Did you ever run into Simeon Oliver? Do you know Simeon that wrote that book Son of the Smoky Sea? He wasn’t up at Unalakleet, but you know, remember him? He was a piano player that –

Londborg: Yeah I’ve heard of him and I don’t know if I bumped him or not.

Terence: He wrote that music called the Aleutian Lullaby. I was just curious. So where did the piano come from? Did you have that shipped in or was that already there?

Londborg: There was an old piano that was kind of a relic that we used at first, tuned it up a little bit, but then when I was out to the Lower 48 one of the churches offered to buy a new one and so went into Seattle and made a good deal for a – I think it was a Hamilton studio model and we had that shipped up so we had a real good piano.

Terence: And Lorraine played the piano?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Did you sing or did she play the piano in church?

Londborg: No, I didn’t sing. I still don’t.

Terence: Well, okay, we’ll be the judge of this Maynard, why don’t you sing us a few bars of Amazing Grace here?

Londborg: That would be amazing all right. Yeah.

Terence: But did you ever, so in services – cause actually I don’t know among in the Covenant Church, do they actually sing in services like –

Londborg: Oh, yeah.

Terence: Okay.

Londborg: Singing is a big part of it.

Terence: Where did you get your idea – how did you handle it with you were telling us the other day – did you have a translator? How did that wrote when you had to give your sermons?

Londborg: Well when we first got to Unalakleet, they did use a translator.

Terence: They did or didn’t?

Londborg: They did.

Terence: They did.

Londborg: And I had a translator who took a lot of time. I’d speak a little, maybe a sentence, and then I’d almost forget where I was at by the time he got done. Asked him what he was doing? He said well I’m giving it in all three dialects here at Unalakleet. And I didn’t know what to do and finally I gave him the whole long paragraph and he pulled on my coat and he said I can’t remember all that. I said well that’s fine, just tell them what you remember and we got along a lot better. He made it pretty short then. But Unalakleet really didn’t need an interpreter by the time I got there. I think he was one of the last ones, but down on the Yukon, Scanlon Bay, Hooper Bay, and Nunivak Island. They were still using interpreters when we’d come down there. So I got pretty used to that.

Terence: Did you ever learn any of the Native words at all or I don’t know if that was something that you could ever manage?

Londborg: I learned quite a few words. One winter I went out or a Native pastor went with me when we had the children’s home, went out with the cat out in the woods and stayed out there for about two months cutting wood, try to get a supply ahead. And at night we’d sit there in the tent and he’d teach me words. So I learned quite a few, but I also learned that it was smart not to try to use them. Words sounded so similar that it almost got embarrassing to use them. But it came in handy because I could understand a little what people were talking about and they didn’t know I understood it.

I remember one time there was a bunch of ladies down by the post office and they – actually they were talking in English. When I approached they switched to Native and I listened to them quite a while and then I broke in on the conversation. And one woman said we didn’t know you understand Eskimo. And after that why they didn’t revert to the Eskimo when I came around them.

But our children learned a lot. They were out with the kids playing and they picked a lot of Native words.

Terence: Well now let’s so here it is 1954 or ’55. You just started this school, high school. How many students did you have at first? How many students –

Londborg: We had seven students the first year and the first graduating class was nine. That was a pretty good dropout record. And then the second year I think we had 13 and it went up to 17 and then the fourth year when they had the full we were up around 30 so.

Terence: Well okay you’re running the school, you’re the principal, and this stuff about statehood comes along. So how did you get involved in that and why did you end up, you know whose idea was it that you ran as a delegate to the constitution. What was the –

Londborg: Well I want to drop back a little bit to –

Terence: Sure.

Londborg: Our days at Marshall, Alaska.

Terence: Sure.

Londborg: Which is also Fortuna Ledge. There was a marshal some place else in Alaska. They couldn’t have two Marshalls in the post office. So the postmaster named it after his daughter Fortuna and that’s how Fortuna Ledge got into it. And that was the post office and it was also the kind of government seat for that whole Wade Hampton Precinct and they had the deputy marshal that lived there, a fellow by the name of Al Balls, who grew up in Unalakleet. He was one of the Laplander family and they were going to close the Marshal’s office there and which they did, but the US Commissioner office was still maintained there. And there was a lady who was appointed US Commissioner and she had it for a little while, then she and her husband moved away.

And I was sitting down in the trading post one evening and the Deputy Marshal flew in to pick up somebody. He was going on the next day down the coast and he said we’ve got to get a commissioner here. He said this is ridiculous he said. I get a notice and I fly clear down to Hooper Bay or Scanlon Bay and I have to bring them clear back to Nome for a trial. And if they’re released right away then they have to get their transportation back and he said we just got to get a United States Commissioner again here. And he was typing on a typewriter in the trading post and finally he said here sign this and I looked at it. And it was a letter to the judge in Nome offering my services as a commissioner if he would consider appointing me.

I don’t know what I was thinking but he gave me the pen and I figured well enough nothing would come of that. And it wasn’t very long until I got the appointment as US Commissioner, Justice of the Peace, Probate Judge, and the whole works. And I told the judge when I had a chance to go to Nome to visit with him I said there is one thing that is not very good. I said somebody out in a village commits what the town may think is a crime and they put in a complaint and the marshal goes down and picks him up and he is a hero coming out of his town. And you know get up before the commissioner I said is there any possibility that we can have a moving court so in other words if there is somebody down the line I can go with the marshal and try the person right there. And he said well I have a fund he said let’s use. So you go with the marshal and try it out.

And that had the best affect on the whole community. We’d go down to a place and this fellow was tried right in front of his own people and what a difference it made. It was probably one of the first moving courts in Alaska. I think Jay Rabinowitz followed it up out of Fairbanks afterwards. He was telling me about it, but the need for law and order was one thing.

And then the interest in education was another thing. So when they out with invitation to file for a delegate seat, there were basically two things. One was interest in local government and the law enforcement, like even at Unalakleet. And then the second thing was education so that we got a fair shake out of that. And with that in mind why I submitted my petition and I got elected and went to the Constitutional Convention.

– Break –

Londborg: Trying to thing of the names of some of them.

Terence: Yeah.

Londborg: I think one was Gallagher and there was a Mattson and Sadebanee for a while.

Terence: Oh, that’s okay. I got to ask you too Maynard about the (inaudible), the document in that picture you know remember the one that we saw. You thought that was Yakutat with the pig, remember the –

Londborg: About what?

Terence: About the pig.

Londborg: That’s a goat.

Terence: Oh, I thought it was a pig.

Everyone talking.

Terence: Oh, it is a goat. I thought it was one huge pig.

Terence: We had pigs yeah. Okay. I didn’t look at it very closely. The goat and is there a duck in that picture too or I forget?

Londborg: One of the pictures has a duck and a little dog and I think all four children were there and they each had something in their hands. One was holding a – that’s May of ’53.

Terence: I can’t see unless I take my glasses off you know very well. I’m not used to doing this.

Robert: But Maynard in the future it might make a better story if you did it was a pig you know.

Terence: Right, you ready. That is sort of like the kids playing around there. That’s you and Lorraine, is that Lorraine?

Londborg: I think our co-worker down there, Ellie Aust got a hold of this goat and the idea of having some milk. I don’t know if she ever did give milk or not.

Terence: Maybe that’s why it wasn’t – maybe it wasn’t – like you say maybe it is a pig, but anyway. Okay, so you ran. The announcement came cause you were concerned about education and law enforcement. Really your key issue – local government?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Okay. Did this stuff – talk about statehood did you know in a way you’re so far away from the urban areas I guess but you know had you thought that was a pretty good idea or what was your first feelings about that?

Londborg: Well I felt that unless we got a constitution and became a state we would always be under the federal government, everything. I mean they appointed the marshals, the commissioners, everything was run by the federal government. And the only way you could get local government get any kind of local voice would be to go the statehood route. So I was pretty sold on the idea of it.

Terence: Did you as being a you know mission employee, was it frustrating dealing with the federal authorities, I mean trying to get help for stuff that you needed you know? Was there ever – was that a difficult –

Londborg: You mean like what for instance?

Terence: Well I was just wondering if they ever helped out with the school or the home.

Londborg: Oh, there was like for instance Army surplus, which went through the government. We were in line to get help there. We go make our trips down to the – where they had the Army surplus and you could buy things about four cents on the dollar or something like that you know. We had a couple of big ambulances that we bought and didn’t have to pay much for them. Had them shipped up and used them for transportation. They were pretty good. And a lot of other things, old lumber and so on. We had our high school – Al White had a woodworking shop and went down and must have picked up about four dozen good baseball bats for practically nothing. But I mean we were eligible for getting things like that just like anybody else.

Terence: Did you, about the baseball bats, did you sort of set up a field where the kids could play or did you do anything with them?

Londborg: I used them – I don’t know what he would use them to make rungs for chairs and stuff and had his wood turning lathe. Later he got a metal lathe and really had fun I guess in his shop.

Terence: So the baseball bats weren’t for baseball though, they were for using for other stuff, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Oh, I see, yes, so it’s the wood basically.

Londborg: Well we did – we played a little baseball in the summer too so we didn’t let him have all the bats.

Terence: Did the kids at school since it was a boarding school –

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: You know so you had this additional responsibility constantly, you and Lorraine. Did – before you had the new teachers you didn’t have any help, right? I mean it was just you two basically.

Londborg: We had a fellow that was building the church and his son – he and his wife were living there and she taught English and one other class I believe. Then he taught in the springtime (inaudible) government class then for semester and then he took that time and taught shop to the kids.

Terence: And did the students – how many came from Unalakleet and how many were from outside of that first group of seven?

Londborg: Well when we first they were I guess practically all Unalakleet kids, except one girl who had come from the children’s home through the eighth grade and so she just stayed there and took her high school

Terence: But as time went on it was other – it was from surrounding villages and stuff the kids would come from I mean?

Londborg: Oh, yeah. They – I don’t know how many of the villages you know represented any given school year, but it was a lot of them from – when you figure that they probably peaked at about 130 students and half of them dorm kids. A lot of them were from the other villages.

Terence: From Nome as far north to say Bethel, between Nome and Bethel?

Londborg: Nome and out from Bethel out to the coast, Scammon Bay, Hooper Bay and Nunivak Island, north of Nome up to well I guess as far as maybe Teller and in that area. Then we introduced basketball at Unalakleet as our builder was in Nome and he sent word down – he said there is some Cullen huts up here we can get and they are 36 feet wide, so bigger than a Quonset and he said how many feet long do you need? And he torn this down. We got it shipped down to Unalakleet. Then we poured cement five foot walls of cement and mounted this on top so that we actually had clearance for basketball in there. But it was only 36 feet wide. So the out of bounds line, which should be four feet, was only two and a half and the town people started coming. They thought it was the greatest thing to see their kids play basketball. And they’d line up on the walls and the kid would take a ball out of bounds he’d just back into the crowd and fire it off. Sort of like the – what’s that new football game?

Terence: Oh, arena foot –

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Londborg: It was about like that.

Terence: So when the ball went out of bounds, people on the stands would just throw it back in play, is that right or?

Londborg: No, the player had to do it.

Terence: Oh.

Londborg: But he just backed into the crowd and throw it up. And the team, we really developed a good team because the kids started playing in the grade school when they were still in grade school and we had Saturday gym for them. By the time they got high school they were already good players and in 1965 we won the Western Alaska Division of Class C schools and Valdez won the Eastern Division. And I had a call from the principal and he said, it’s a shame he said your champions out there and we’re champions here. He said any chance to play he said we’ll meet, if you want to come down to Valdez we’ll give you some money or meet in Anchorage or. He called again, he said well I think it ought to be in one of our villages so that the people get a chance to see them. So we invited them up to Unalakleet. We had a three game tournament Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. And we won the first game and they won the second one and we won the third one. So ended up with being the Class C champs of Alaska.

And the next year it was in Valdez, so we went down there and the same thing happened. They won the first. We won the second, and they won the third. So, but the people of the village just came out en mass and the radio station in Nome that we had, KICY, they sent their announcer down. We were able to run a line through the FAA some way. We made connections anyway and the game was broadcast. And I’ll never forget when the announcer was telling about the gym being packed, he said and he said I want to tell you folks there is standing room only here. Well there wasn’t a chair or bench in the room. They won – they built a high bench you had to climb up with practically a ladder where the scorer and timers sitting up there with – it was just standing room only.

Terence: Yeah, there’s a good picture. We’ll shoot that of the guy doing the interview for KICY, right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Yeah. Because basketball became a big thing in the villages. I mean it is now, right? Did you introduce – were there any other villages have basketball before Unalakleet or what –

Londborg: Yeah, we were the first one out, aside from Nome, and then they started picking it up pretty fast. And the Athletic Department had quite a time to figure out how can we get every school a chance to win the state tournament. And they tried different methods. They had the Class D or what it was playoff and then the winner would go to the Class C tournament playoff and then the winner of that to B and A. And but that took a long time before it went through.

So they one year what they decided was that the A and B schools or A and AA whatever it was and then our branch where they had from the east and from the west four teams and we were of course in the Class C. And they went into Fairbanks for the tournament and one of the teams in Anchorage was rated number one. We were rated number eight and then the others in between had this playoff. And they couldn’t believe that we won the first game, won the second game, ended up that third game playing one of the big schools in Anchorage. And they beat us by I think one or two points was all. I remember –

Terence: What year was that, do you think, that was ’65, ’66?

Londborg: I wasn’t there at the time. I was – we had left the area so –

Terence: So it’s ’66, ’67, ’68?

Londborg: It might have been later than that when that particular tournament was excellent. The president of the University called me up and told me about the game. He says you can’t believe it. He said that at half-time all the spectators moved over behind the Covenant High bench. He said I moved over behind the Covenant High bench and he said just about pulled it off.

Terence: Well that’s amazing and also you had cheerleaders too. They had cheerleaders.

Londborg: Oh, we had great ones.

Terence: But when – was any villages – were you the first to have the cheerleaders in the village or?

Londborg: Probably.

Terence: And what was the name of the team? What was the –

Londborg: Our team Wolverines.

Terence: Who picked the name?

Londborg: Well I think the students wanted to name it after the most ferocious animal and that was the wolverine. Size wise they aren’t.

Terence: I remember this old trapper one time telling me the wolverine is a wolf bear. That was the Athabascan name for it was a bear the size of a wolf and you know some combination. Okay, well let’s get back to the convention. So you decided you were going to run.

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: And what was district? What was the district?

Londborg: My district was the Second Judicial Division so I was a delegate at large from that area. There was a local one from that area – see they had the –

Man: Stop for just a second

Terence: Maynard, just one more thing maybe about the Covenant special thing that we talked about. Tell the story a little bit about that truck and how that came to –

Londborg: That truck was first used in Nome by the road building commission and was a dump truck and dual wheels and double transmission and when they finished the road out of Nome towards Safety then I don’t know how far out it went but they finished that then they figured it was ready for the dump. So it ended up in the Nome dump and our missionary Paul Carlson went down there and he thought it was just too good to be in the dump so he brought it into Nome and did some repair work on it.

And then finally it got barged down to Moses Point and there it was used to bring in a lot of buildings, old Army buildings that were abandoned. And after it was used there for a while then we were able to get it barged down to Unalakleet and we had this truck down there and of course it needed a lot of repairs and Roal Almundson, who was a missionary pilot but he had his A&E license really worked the whole motor over again and honed out the cylinder walls, got an oversize pistons, and it would just – you could push it and start it that way if you wanted to. I mean it was just fired up right away. And then they had to do something about the cab it was pretty rickety. So they took it off, took the windshield off and they build a big seat about I don’t know a seven, eight feet long and 2 x 4 or 2 x 12 planking and that was a pretty sturdy seat there. And then they went out to the Army dump and he got bigger tires. And huge tires in the front and then even bigger ones in the back and it was sort of like a dune buggy and it go over the sand pretty good, but it had so much power that if you didn’t watch it why it would just twist off the axles and they had to replace them every now and then.

But it was a fantastic piece of machinery. And then one winter it was kind of under the snow drift waiting for spring to come and the Air Force came down to open up the road into town and they just plowed right through and they ran over the front end of it and just squashed it. And the radiator was just completely demolished and then it was Don Brockner, another pilot who had his A&E license. He jacked up the front end and welded everything together underneath. And then for a radiator he got a 25 drum and it would hold enough water so short trips in the summer it wouldn’t overheat. If you went very long why it would get boiling, but it then would start steaming out and looked like a Stanley Steamer, you know that steam coming out of that barrel. And it was still serviceable.

Finally, they got a new truck, two seated – or double cab and hauled that in and it was always getting stuck. Whereas the old special could go through almost anything, but they finally hauled the special to the dump again.

Terence: Waiting to be discovered by someone.

Londborg: By somebody else.

Terence: Yeah. Well okay, yeah cause that’s a great paint – line drawing you have there. One of your teachers did it, is that right?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Was it – is that who did – was he an artist?

Londborg: Well he was everything. I mean English teacher, shop teacher. He could letter things like when we give out diplomas he never needed to you know sketch it out first. He could just – excellent on artwork like that. But he started on that sketching type of art. Ever get a chance to go to his apartment at Mercer Island, Covenant Shores, he has got frames for his pictures that he has made that are just classic. Uses the back of a sled or something like that and he has his pictures in there. Sort of like the picture that we have here of the specialty, made it out an old iron frame there.

Terence: Did – and you used it for the high school – not hauling kids but hauling freight and –

Londborg: Hauling freight. Barge would come in. We used that special to meet that and bring the groceries up to the buildings and that was great –

Terence: Was that sort of the backbone of your transportation? Is that in a way is that?

Londborg: It was. Kind of got shared a little bit with the D4 cat but they made pretty good partners.

Terence: Okay, well now so back on that election. You were in the Second Judicial District, which includes Nome, northwestern Alaska sort of? How far south did that go?

Londborg: All of Wade Hampton where I lived before. That was one district by itself and then the way they arranged it in order to get rural representation they divided the whole state into small communities with certain number of people in there and they could have a delegate to the convention. And then the judicial district took in more at large and then let’s see there were four judicial districts. And then they had I think it was seven that were at large over the whole territory that were elected that had brought the total up to 55, which a magical number.

Terence: Why 55, what did they –

Londborg: Well I think that’s how many signed the federal constitution.

Terence: And did you campaign at all or what was the – what were you –

Londborg: Didn’t have much time for that. I had a good friend that was a pilot that flew. He was the one that got all the signatures for me and pretty much did the campaign for me. I didn’t have time for that.

Terence: Who was the pilot? Do you remember who that was?

Londborg: Art Johnson.

Terence: So he was your campaign manager and campaigner?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: And how many other people were running? Do you remember who?

Londborg: I don’t remember right offhand.

Terence: But you were an at-large guy from the Second District?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: Second Judicial District, okay. So were the rest of them from Nome or the at-large folks?

Londborg: Yes. McNeese was from Nome and –

Terence: Walsh I guess he –

Londborg: Walsh I think.

Terence: And somebody.

Londborg: Then there was one from – I guess the other ones were pretty much from right around Nome, close in there.

Terence: Well once you got elected, what did you think then? How are you going to do this?

Londborg: What did I get into to, but I went there and had some good advice from a fellow that was running the trading post. He said well, be sure you pick up a good copy of Roberts Rules of Order. And he said another thing I think you will find most of the work done in the committee, in the various committees. So it’s real important that you get on the right one and that is where the work is done. Otherwise it is brought into the session as a whole and first reading, second reading and final reading.

And the way it worked out we – I was with a group that helped get Bill Egan in as the president of the convention. And he knew that so after he was elected then he had to appoint a committee of committees to see that people got on the committee they wanted to get on and he put me on that. And I don’t know I’ve have to look in the book whether I chaired it or not, but it doesn’t matter. But anyway that way everybody put down their first, second, third choice and we tried to accommodate and of course I saw to it that I got on the two committees that I wanted to get on – local government and executive committees.

Terence: Let’s go back to Egan and say why did you support him? Why were you backing him?

Londborg: There was just something about him when I first met him. And those that knew him affirmed that, that he was just very fair type of person and really not a politician, wasn’t a lawyer, wasn’t – I think he was probably a bartender down in Valdez I’m not sure.

Terence: I guess they ran a grocery store.

Londborg: Ran a grocery store.

Terence: When did you first meet him? Did you first meet him when you got to Fairbanks?

Londborg: Yeah. Right.

Terence: So you never met him before?

Londborg: No.

Terence: Had you ever heard of him before?

Londborg: No.

Terence: And he seemed like a good guy to run the –

Londborg: Well the alternatives I didn’t feel I could support them.

Terence: Because it was like the Rivers? They were trying to get –

Londborg: Yeah. And I just thought of the group that were nominated he was – and I – you hear from ex-delegates now they’ll all – that’s about the first thing they mention is how fair Egan was as a chairman, president of the – there was a lot of us that didn’t know the fancy Roberts Rules backwards and forwards and he could cut us off and just you are out of order you know and you’d stand there bewildered. But he would just like a good schoolteacher he would just draw it out.

Terence: Now did you –

– Break –

Terence: The – do you think you were one of the – would you describe yourself as pretty apolitical I mean compared to many of the other delegates? Do you know what I mean? I mean in the sense that you weren’t really actively involved in politics I guess, right?

Londborg: No.

Terence: But were you registered in either of the parties or were you Independent or Republican or Democrat or how – you know?

Londborg: Well I suppose I would classify myself as a Republican, but of course at the convention that wasn’t brought out. You didn’t run on party at all. In fact, I didn’t know what party most of them belonged to. They – I think all that were running for president of the convention were from the Democratic Party.

At that time the territory was very strong Democrat, which was kind of interesting because that was one of the blocks that we thought we’d have a hurdle with the United States Senate was the Republicans didn’t want Alaska in because that would give another solid Democratic candidates that would be in there and senators and representative and it would just add that many more. But it was rather interesting almost after it became a state it swung the other way and in a few years then we had Stevens, Young, and Murkowski just solid Republican representations. Alaska politics is very fascinating from that standpoint.

Terence: Yeah, turned the opposite what they expected, that’s right, yeah. But at the convention you think it was sort of apolitical in the sense – I don’t know if that’s the right word or not, you know, political parties didn’t – the people in the know I suppose knew but you were more apolitical than because you really weren’t involved.

Londborg: What I think that as a whole they were determined to write a constitution and not bring parties up to the extent that you would get deadlocked on issues that way. And which I believe they were very successful from that standpoint.

Terence: Where did you live when you got to Fairbanks? I mean where did you stay? Did you stay with somebody or stay at the Nordale or –

Londborg: No I was in a hotel or motel for a couple of weeks and then I believe it was Warren Taylor who had an apartment and he said if you’d like to rent that he said I’ll rent that. So I moved over there then.

Terence: How did you get out to the convention every day? How did you – did you take the bus or –

Londborg: There was a bus that went every day. And we could ride the bus out and back or some of my friends had developed their – Les Nerland and Lawrence Johnson and a couple others that drove and they always would the night before so they said you want to ride with me in the morning. And I said sure, so I rode with them quite a bit of the time.

Terence: Was this your first trip ever to Fairbanks? Had you been to Fairbanks before?

Londborg: I had yes.

Terence: How about out to the University? Had you been out there before?

Londborg: Yeah, I got out there on my first trip there too.

Terence: So you kind of knew what it looked like and a little bit?

Londborg: Oh, yeah, a little feel for the area. Of course in the wintertime they had the ice bridge across the river freeze up and then you just drive across on the ice.

Terence: Until spring.

Londborg: Until spring.

Terence: So but the convention started and you among people that backed Egan, so were on those two committees, which were local government and education. Let’s talk about those a little bit, which you know what were the certain important like on the local government commission that was the one Dick Fisher was on that one, right?

Londborg: Right.

Terence: I guess he –

Londborg: And that was a very interesting committee to be on. Had a good group in there that worked together to come up with the idea of local government and one of the things that we tried to steer away from was where – although that came into the legislative as well, but where you’d have overlapping tax districts. And you could be taxed as this side and that side and the other side and whether this has been the best or not I don’t know but they presented it to the people in one tax package. It was sort of the town Parrish idea of local government.

Terence: What did you think of the animosity towards counties that came up?

Londborg: That was weird. I mean nobody wanted to call it county and I don’t know that – how many votes were taken and reconsidered and all that but they did not want it to be a county, absolutely they were just memories from other states I guess or something. And then of course what are you going to call it. They ended up with a borough.

Terence: I remember looking through the minutes. Yul Kilcher had proposed what was it now canton. No, I think he might have said cantons, I can’t remember, but there is a list in there of all the terms that they had proposed. Do you remember any of those?

Londborg: I don’t know if – I’d have to almost go back and look over that, but we must have covered at least 10 or 20 other names that would come up and they would vote them down and vote them down. And finally ended up the borough.

Terence: Do you remember what Frank Barr said about that? There’s a thing where he says he didn’t want to be somebody throwing a – that’s what is in the minutes anyway, going down the street and somebody going on because it was a borough, like B-O-R-O or I guess it was also debated how to say it too. Vorough or Borough, like V-U-R-R-O.

Londborg: Borough.

Terence: That’s okay. But so that was really the key thing that came out of the local government article, right, as a strong unified government, is that fair to say?

Londborg: It was sort of the idea and then in the of course you get organized with it then your law enforcement and so many things come under that.

Terence: Well did you ever envision though as being a delegate? Because Unalakleet would still be in what’s called the unorganized borough I guess. I don’t think they have a borough out there, do they, I don’t know? But you know I can’t remember because they have the state divided up into the organized boroughs and then everything else is so-called unorganized borough.

Londborg: Unorganized I think.

Terence: Which is funny way of thinking about it, but did you think that this would solve problems for a place like Unalakleet, I mean the rural areas, did you think it adequately met those needs?

Londborg: Well I think that there is a lot of the problems that we faced at Unalakleet are handled through the local government organization there. They are a – I was going to say incorporated village and have a lot of (inaudible) local government.

Terence: Okay, well about – what about the Education Committee, did that same to work well?

Londborg: Well that was part of the Executive Branch. I knew it was going to be so that is why I wanted to be on the Executive Committee and that was interesting too because they made Fairbanks kind of the state school or I don’t know what they called it but they looked very kind on the University through the little section in the education. But of course we got into the executive part, other than the education, but then where was it I guess it was the chairman of that committee and he worked for a very, very strong executive, appointed powers and even they didn’t want a lieutenant governor at the time and secretary of state did it, well that was one of the first amendments. They changed that right away. But –

Terence: Why did they go for secretary of state, what was the reason to make it a position a little weaker is that the idea?

Londborg: Right, it was to make the governor stronger. There was no lieutenant governor there. He was it and sensing this coming on in the writing on the Executive Branch the strong governor I held out and got support from enough others to limit the governor to two terms consecutively.

Terence: Was that your – some people felt strongly about that, about the two terms I mean?

Londborg: Well I felt very strong, but otherwise you get – if you didn’t have that in there you could get a governor in for 20, 30 years if he wanted to keep running.

Terence: Was this part in mind of the example of Roosevelt? I mean FDR because the –

Londborg: It came about that time, that’s when they – the United States decided two terms are enough. They put it in their constitution.

Terence: So in a way did that inspire you to –

Londborg: I think that had its affect on it because you saw the before the two terms for the president of the United States it just kept on until you died that’s what happened?

Terence: With Roosevelt, that’s right, yeah. So you know how did you think this idea – that’s one of the key things of the constitution isn’t it? A very strong governor, centralized authority in the governor’s office. Was that sort of a response to territorial days too I mean –

Londborg: I think so because in the territorial days they had an appointed governor by the United States and then you had your territorial legislature and in a sense the governor was pretty weak and they felt it was kind of a swing from that build up a strong one. Although I think that three branches of the government right now in Alaska from what I can follow do pretty good check and balance.

Terence: It certainly has not been I mean I think what Hammond said was he said you know he heard so much about how strong the governor was until he became governor and then he thought gee where did all those powers go. That was his take on it but you know cause you are always constrained by reality and stuff.

Londborg: Well they can come up with their cabinet and appointees but it still had to be the department heads approved by the legislature. And the court system is – well I think they’ve done a pretty good job you know through the Judicial Branch in Alaska.

Terence: Now there are just a couple more questions and then we are going to be done here. What about sort of reflections on Gruening? Had you met him before the convention, you must have seen when he spoke to the –

Londborg: I met Governor Gruening on an airplane between Juneau and Anchorage one time, sat and visited with him on the whole trip. He was a very – well he is an old newspaper man I think and there was a lot about Governor Gruening that I liked you know and he was interesting too you know. I think, well he wasn’t the last appointed governor. I think they had was it Stepovich for just a little bit.

Terence: Heintzleman and then Stepovich, that’s right, yeah.

Londborg: So.

Terence: But what was it –

Londborg: But Gruening had a lot of influence in the convention. He was – he gave quite a speech at the convention, but I think he was – had a pretty good understanding of what Alaska needed.

Terence: What were the things – what were the things – what were sort of his limitations though as a leader, cause he obviously polarized a lot of people?

Londborg: Well I hadn’t thought about that so much. He was the one that worked with Muktuk Marsten in developing the National Guard all over Alaska and Marsten went around to every village and everybody got a gun. I got a gun. I mean I happened to be there and here you need a gun. So I had got an old 30.06. And anyway doing that, going around he really solidified the villages, the Native people, in the party, in the Democratic Party. And I think it took quite a while even after statehood then for them to realize that you know we are not that all just a National Guard villager something else.

Terence: Were that there were two parties?

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: There was another party, yeah. So you had known Marsten – you had met him when you came to Unalakleet?

Londborg: Oh, yeah.

Terence: Had you met him on numerous occasions or what –

Londborg: Numerous occasions. He’d show up Unalakleet and somebody said one time they walked down to the bank and couldn’t figure out what that body was doing down there on the bank and he had gone down there and curled up and went to sleep, sleeping bag. He was something else. I – of the most colorful people I suppose at the convention would be Yul Kilcher and Muktuk Marsten I mean.

Terence: What was Kilcher like? What was he –

Londborg: Kilcher was a very interesting fellow – quite a musician and he’d entertain us there at recesses and stuff with his saw and different things and yeah, he had some ideas that he was pushing for there and pretty persuasive you know when he’d get up to speak.

Terence: He played the saw, did he?

Londborg: Oh yes. He could play anything. He could pick up a chair and make music out of it.

Terence: Now he didn’t sing did he, he was just –

Londborg: Oh, he yodeled and he sang.

Terence: Did he yodel in the convention – did he –

Londborg: Oh yeah. You know there would be little breaks that we’d have you know and he’d get going.

Terence: You know his granddaughter became a famous singer you know?

Londborg: Jewell?

Terence: Yeah, right, yeah.

Londborg: Quite a girl.

Terence: Yeah. And I guess he made some home movies. I don’t know if he did anything of the convention though, right, he didn’t –

Londborg: I don’t think so there. It was an interesting – you know we’d go around Homer and that area is Kilcher country.

Terence: Now, Maynard, what about Bob Bartlett? Had you run into him before – so you met Gruening on a plane sometime before the convention, right, I mean –

Londborg: Yeah.

Terence: Had you met Bartlett before? Did he ever campaign out in Unalakleet?

Londborg: See Bartlett was their delegate for a long time and we worked with Bartlett. This goes back to the education of Natives way back when the first commissioner of education Sheldon Jackson got reindeer and gave commission stations if you would run a school. And also land grants and down at Yakutat we were supposed to get some land there, but also at Unalakleet. The land that was originally intended for the mission encompassed the whole village on both sides of the river and then as people moved in – well they didn’t – the mission didn’t want to keep them out of that area. They invited them to come closer to build. So then when they were surveying the villages they came in and I think we had 11 corners on our little piece of property and we were supposed to get a patent on that. And that wasn’t very easy to get. Bob Bartlett helped us a lot on that. He was very good. So we worked through him. I’d go down to Anchorage to meet him or down to Juneau and visit with him. He was a good delegate there.

Terence: Did he ever come out to Unalakleet or did any of – I don’t know if they ever –

Londborg: As I recall I think he was out there, came out there.

Terence: I think – can you think of something else. Kind of getting late in the day here.

Man: Yeah, I can’t think of it.

Terence: Let me this one final thing. Maynard, after the convention was over –

Londborg: I was tired.

Terence: I bet. But I mean how do you look upon in your life as the convention as the you know – how important has that been in your life?

Londborg: Well it has had I think a lot of perks that has come through that, that we never expected of course and that wasn’t the reason we went there, but that’s all – like the 25th anniversary and there is so many different times when they invited all the delegates back and Katie Hurley was very good at getting transportation. I remember one time when they were going to have something going on in Juneau and she got Alaska Airlines to give the transportation but she also was given so many seats and she said you might as well bring your wives too you know. So Lorraine was able to go to a lot of these functions and when you look back on it, it – why you didn’t make anything as far as being a delegate but we certainly had a lot of perks out of it that have been very enjoyable you know trips like that. So it is good to still be a survivor.

Terence: Did – do you remember the day of signing the – do you remember that?

Londborg: Oh definitely.

Terence: What was that like?

Londborg: That was very emotional and the Dr. Langston in Nome told Lorraine you’re going to go to Fairbanks for the signing and he made arrangements for her transportation. So she got to come up there and be there when we went up there and signed the constitution. But that was quite an emotional time and I knew that nobody seemed to want to leave after it was all you know the final gavel went down they just – there had been built up such a close friendship among the delegates.

Terence: So everybody just stayed around. They just didn’t want to leave.

Londborg: Didn’t want to leave.

Terence: This was after you had gone back over to Student Union Building, the Constitution Hall, I mean –

Londborg: Yeah we were around there then. Oh I learned a lot of things while I was up there and that is that you can debate. You can passionately debate but it doesn’t have to ruin a friendship and it is kind of interesting we started talking about missionary work and that but how many churches do not know how to do that. I mean they’ll end up in a bitter fight or something like that, but I learned a lesson there. There were two delegates who were just passionately debating on each of an issue. And this went on for a long time, long speeches and they were debating back and forth and I had something that I wanted to inject and I thought well if I can go to this one fellow and get on his side then you know he might be on my side because he is against that other fellow. And we had a little recess and I went out in the coffee shop and here the two guys were talking about their next hunting trip they were going to take together. And I thought boy or boy you don’t take anything for granted on the way they debated you know.

Terence: Who were those two guys do you remember?

Londborg: I don’t remember right offhand, but it was really interesting. But I mean that was a good lesson for me.

Terence: No kidding, that’s a great example of being able to do something you know to limit it to the issue at hand. Who was the most fiery debater of the whole group? Was there anybody who stood out or a group of them who stood out? Who would you say?

Londborg: Oh, when I think Buckalew was quite a debater. McLaughlin. There were several that were eloquent. I mean they could debate any place you know. But we were not without our humor there. They – one of our delegates sat way in the back and she was always complaining that she couldn’t hear you know the speaker. And so they finally gave her a sign to hold up that said louder and she could hold that up and the speaker would amplify his voice. And a fellow got up to speak and he kept dropping his voice and dropping his voice and she grabbed for her piece of paper to hold up and somebody had slipped another one there that said lousy and she held that up you know and then this fellow stopped. You know I have to be insulted like that in this convention or something. It was really pulled that off really slick.