Valley remembers Stevens

WASILLA — In the wake of former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens’ death Monday in a plane crash near Dillingham, Valley residents took some time to remember the former senator this week.

Stevens, 86, was one of Alaska’s two senators for 40 years before he lost his most recent re-election bid in 2008. He was the longest serving Republican senator in the nation’s history.

“He brought a wealth of information and insight that few could ever match,” state Rep. Mark Neuman said about working with Stevens on energy issues. “He was a big proponent of trying to use Alaska resources to create more jobs.”

State Sen. Linda Menard also said she feels Stevens’ loss and draws a parallel to her own life and the son she lost in a plane crash.

“It just saddens me that such a statesman had to leave this world by a tragic death in a plane crash, of which I know all too well,” Menard wrote.

At a meeting of the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce Tuesday, chamber member Bert Hall said he’d been deeply saddened to hear about Stevens.

“I know I cried this morning,” he said before reading statements of condolences from Stevens’ Republican colleagues Rep. Don Young and Sen. Lisa Murkowski and calling for a moment of silence.

Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright said that without Stevens and the work he did in the Senate, Alaska, at least as we know it, would not exist. Stevens opened the state to development, work Rupright said is still ongoing, but would not have progressed nearly as far without Stevens.

“Uncle Ted’s hand was in it all,” Rupright said.

The memorials extended to Facebook where a number of Valley residents posted pictures of themselves with the senator. Mat-Su Borough school board member Erick Cordero added to his photo a brief story about how he emceed an event in which Stevens participated and how he gave the senator a gift of a tortilla press.

Borough mayor and soon-to-be director of Mat-Su College Talis Colberg said Stevens was the source of a summer of great personal memories from his high school days.

“I came back from a track meet in Kenai and there was a telegram in my locker,” Colberg said. He’d never received a telegram. “I was a little bit annoyed because it was addressed to Miss Talis Colberg.”

The telegram said he’d been selected to intern for Stevens in Washington, D.C., a summer he still remembers fondly as an amazing experience, especially for a kid from Palmer, which then was a rural part of the state.

In the 1970s, before the Capitol ratcheted up its security, “you could go anywhere,” Colberg said. And he did, following the senator around. Colberg said he got a chance to meet Barry Goldwater, Jack Kemp, Hubert Humphrey and Strom Thurmond. Colberg said he has worked with Stevens since then on numerous occasions and kept in touch with other of the senator’s former interns.

He said he thinks the Valley might have had a special place in the senator’s heart. In 2008 when Stevens lost his election on the heels of a guilty verdict in his corruption trial — a verdict that was later overturned with the charges dropped — the Valley was one of the few bright spots for Stevens.

“It was the one part of the state that he carried and he carried it substantially,” Colberg said, adding that he likes to think Stevens appreciated seeing that, especially at a time when large swaths of the rest of the state seemed to have turned on him.

Former Alaska governor, vice-presidential candidate and Wasilla resident Sarah Palin also expressed her regrets in a written statement.

“I am so sorry to hear of this great loss,” she wrote. “Ted Stevens was a great warrior for Alaska’s interests over so many years.”

She outlined Stevens’ achievements — from flying in World War II to fighting for Alaska interests in Congress and educating his colleagues on energy issues. She also mentioned his efforts to pass Title IX legislation dealing with gender equality in athletics.

“Ted visited the Mat-Su Valley quite often and commented to me many times about the hard-working colonists and pioneers who built our communities here,” Palin wrote. “Our Valley communities join the rest of Alaska in mourning the loss of this warrior. Our prayers are with his family.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.