Theodore Stevens

Theodore Fulton Stevens Sr. (November 18, 1923 – August 9, 2010) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1968 to 2009. He was the longest-serving Republican Senator in history at the time he left office, though his record was later surpassed in January 2017 by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. He was the president pro tempore of the United States Senate in the 108th and 109th Congresses from January 3, 2003, to January 3, 2007, and was the third U.S. Senator to hold the title of president pro tempore emeritus. He was previously Solicitor of the Department of the Interior from September 1960 to January 1961.

Stevens served for six decades in the American public sector, beginning with his service as a pilot in World WarII. In 1952, his law career took him to Fairbanks, Alaska, where he was appointed U.S. Attorney the following year by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1956, he returned to Washington, D. C., to work in the Eisenhower Interior Department, eventually rising to become Senior Counsel and Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, where he played an important role as an executive official in bringing about and lobbying for statehood for Alaska.

After winning the Republican nomination, Stevens challenged Democratic incumbent Ernest Gruening in the 1962 Senate election, though he was defeated. Afterwards, he was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives in 1964 and became House majority leader in his second term. In 1968, Stevens ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, losing to Elmer Rasmuson, but was appointed to Alaska's other Senate seat when it became vacant later that year. As a Senator, Stevens played key roles in legislation that shaped Alaska's economic and social development, with Alaskans describing Stevens as "the state's largest industry". This legislation included the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. He was also known for his sponsorship of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which resulted in the establishment of the United States Olympic Committee.

In 2008, Stevens was embroiled in a federal corruption trial as he ran for re-election to the Senate. He was initially found guilty, and, eight days later, he was narrowly defeated by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Stevens was the most senior U.S. Senator to have ever lost a reelection bid. However, before his sentencing, the indictment was dismissed – effectively vacating the conviction – when a Justice Department probe found evidence of gross prosecutorial misconduct. Stevens died on August 9, 2010, near Dillingham, Alaska, when a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter he and several others were flying in crashed en route to a private fishing lodge. Former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and future NASA Deputy Administrator James Morhard survived the crash.

Early life and career

Childhood and youth

Stevens was born November 18, 1923, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the third of four children,Theodore Fulton "Ted" Stevens genealogy.
Rootsweb.com. Retrieved on May 31, 2007. in a small cottage built by his paternal grandfather after the marriage of his parents, Gertrude S. (née Chancellor) and George A. Stevens. The family later lived in Chicago, where George Stevens was an accountant before losing his job during the Great Depression.Mitchell, Donald Craig. (2001). ''Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960–1971''. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, p. 220. Around this time, when Ted Stevens was six years old, his parents divorced, and Stevens and his three siblings went back to Indianapolis to reside with their paternal grandparents, followed shortly thereafter by their father, who developed problems with his eyes and went blind for several years. Stevens's mother moved to California and sent for Stevens's siblings as she could afford to, but Stevens stayed in Indianapolis helping to care for his father and a mentally disabled cousin, Patricia Acker, who also lived with the family. The only adult in the household with a job was Stevens's grandfather. Stevens helped to support the family by working as a newsboy, and would later remember selling many newspapers on March 1, 1932, when newspaper headlines blared the news of the Lindbergh kidnapping.

In 1934 Stevens's grandfather punctured a lung in a fall down a tall flight of stairs, contracted pneumonia, and died. Stevens's father, George, died in 1957 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, of lung cancer. Stevens and his cousin Patricia moved to Manhattan Beach, California in 1938, by which time both of Stevens's grandparents had passed away, to live with Patricia's mother, Gladys Swindells. Stevens attended Redondo Union High School, participating in extracurricular activities including working on the school newspaper and becoming a member of a student theater group, a service society affiliated with the YMCA, and, during his senior year, the Lettermen's Society. Stevens also worked at jobs before and after school, but still had time for surfing with his friend Russell Green, son of the president of Signal Gas and Oil Company, who remained a close friend throughout Stevens's life.

Military service

After graduating from high school in 1942, Stevens enrolled at Oregon State University to study engineering,Mitchell, 2001, p. 221. attending for a semester. With World WarII in progress, Stevens attempted to join the Navy and serve in naval aviation, but failed the vision exam. He corrected his vision through a course of prescribed eye exercises, and in 1943 he was accepted into an Army Air Force Air Cadet program at Montana State College. After scoring near the top of an aptitude test for flight training, Stevens was transferred to preflight training in Santa Ana, California; he received his wings early in 1944.

Stevens served in the China-Burma-India theater with the Fourteenth Air Force Transport Section, which supported the "Flying Tigers", from 1944 to 1945. He and other pilots in the transport section flew C-46 and C-47 transport planes, often without escort, mostly in support of Chinese units fighting the Japanese. Stevens received the Distinguished Flying Cross for flying behind enemy lines, the Air Medal, and the Yuan Hai Medal awarded by the Chinese Nationalist government. He was discharged from the Army Air Forces in March 1946.

Higher education and law school

After the war, Stevens attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1947. While at UCLA, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Theta Rho chapter). He applied to law school at Stanford and the University of Michigan, but on the advice of his friend Russell Green's father to "look East", he applied to Harvard Law School, which he ended up attending. Stevens's education was partly financed by the G.I. Bill; he made up the difference by selling his blood, borrowing money from an uncle, and working several jobs including one as a bartender in Boston. During the summer of 1949, Stevens was a research assistant in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California (now the Central District of California)."With the editors..." 64 ''Harvard Law Review'' vii (1950).Mitchell, 2001, p. 222.

While at Harvard, Stevens wrote a paper on maritime law which received honorable mention for the Addison Brown prize, a Harvard Law School award for the best essay by a student on a subject related to private international law or maritime law. The essay later became a ''Harvard Law Review'' articleStevens, Theodore F. "Erie R.R. v. Tompkins and the Uniform General Maritime Law". 64 ''Harvard Law Review'' 88–112 (1950). whose scholarship Justice Jay Rabinowitz of the Alaska Supreme Court praised 45 years later, telling the ''Anchorage Daily News'' in 1994 that the high court had issued a recent opinion citing the article. Stevens graduated from Harvard Law School in 1950.

Early legal career

After graduating, Stevens went to work in the Washington, D.C., law offices of Northcutt Ely.Whitney, David. (1994-08-09)
"The road north: Needing work, Stevens borrows $600, answers call to Alaska."
''Anchorage Daily News''. Retrieved June 1, 2007. Twenty years earlier Ely had been executive assistant to Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur during the Hoover administration,Ely, Northcutt. (December 16, 1994)
"Doctor Ray Lyman Wilbur: Third President of Stanford & Secretary of the Interior."
Paper presented at the Fortnightly Club of Redlands, California, meeting #1530. Retrieved on June 5, 2007. and by 1950 headed a prominent law firm specializing in natural resources issues. One of Ely's clients, Emil Usibelli, founder of the Usibelli Coal Mine in Healy, Alaska,Alaska Mining Hall of Fame Foundation. (2006)
"Emil Usibelli (1893–1964)."
Retrieved on 2007-06-05. was trying to sell coal to the military, and Stevens was assigned to handle his legal affairs.

Marriage and family

Early in 1952, Stevens married Ann Mary Cherrington, a Democrat and the adopted daughter of University of Denver Chancellor Ben Mark Cherrington. She had graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and during Truman's administration had worked for the State Department.

On December 4, 1978, the crash of a Learjet 25C on approach at Anchorage International Airport killed five of the seven aboard; Stevens survived (concussion, broken ribs), but his wife Ann didnot. Stevens would later state in an interview with the Anchorage Times "I can't remember anything that happened." Smiling, he added "I'm still here. It must be my Scots blood." The building which houses the Alaska chapter of the American Red Cross at 235 East Eighth Avenue in Anchorage is named in her memory; likewise a reading room at the Loussac Library.

Stevens and Ann had three sons (Ben A. Stevens Sr., Walter, and Ted) and two daughters (Susan Covich and Elizabeth "Beth" Harper Stevens). Democratic Governor Tony Knowles appointed Ben to the Alaska Senate in 2001, where he served as the president of the state senate until the fall of 2006.

Ted Stevens remarried in 1980. He and his second wife, Catherine, had a daughter, Lily.

Stevens spent many years living at the Knik Arms, a six-story residential building constructed in 1950 on the western edge of downtown Anchorage. In his earlier years in the Senate, he would often point to this residence when trying to drive home the point that he was not of means and had not achieved such through his Senate service.

Stevens's last home was in Girdwood, a ski resort community near the southern edge of Anchorage's city limits, about by road from downtown. Originally purchased as a vacation home, Stevens later lived there full-time.

Prostate cancer

Stevens was a survivor of prostate cancer and had publicly disclosed his cancer. He was nominated for the first Golden Glove Awards for Prostate Cancer by the National Prostate Cancer Coalition (NPCC). He advocated the creation of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program for Prostate Cancer at the Department of Defense, which has funded nearly $750million for prostate cancer research. Stevens was a recipient of the Presidential Citation by the American Urological Association for significantly promoting urology causes.

Early Alaska career

In 1952, while still working for Northcutt Ely, Stevens volunteered for the presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower, writing position papers for the campaign on western water law and lands. By the time Eisenhower won the election that November, Stevens had acquired contacts who told him, "We want you to come over to Interior." Stevens left his job with Ely, but a job in the Eisenhower administration didn't come through as a result of a temporary hiring freeze instituted by Eisenhower in an effort to reduce spending.

Instead, Stevens was offered a job with the Fairbanks, Alaska, law firm of Emil Usibelli's Alaska attorney, Charles Clasby, whose firm (Collins &Clasby) had just lost one of its attorneys. Stevens and his wife had met and liked both Usibelli and Clasby, and decided to make the move. Loading up their 1947 BuickMitchell, 2001, p. 223. and traveling on a $600 loan from Clasby, they drove across country from Washington, D.C., and up the Alaska Highway

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