Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that is very near to my heart, a bill to provide a lasting permanent tribute to former Alaska U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, who died Aug. 9th in a plane crash in southwest Alaska during a fishing trip. The bill actually calls for creation of two permanent tributes to the Senator, the naming of Alaska's currently highest unnamed mountain peak in honor of the Senator, calling the 13,895-foot peak in southern Denali National Park, Mount Stevens, and the naming of part of the State's largest ice field in the Chugach Mountains as the Ted Stevens Icefield.

Ted Stevens, a colleague of most of us in this body, and a lawmaker that I interned for more than 30 years ago, truly was Alaska. He was the State's senator for all but 11 years of its current existence as a State. During his more than 40 years in the Senate he played a significant role in the transformation of Alaska from an impoverished territory to a full-fledged State. Senator Stevens, a pilot during World War II, came to Alaska as a U.S. Attorney in the then territory of Alaska in 1956. He later served in the Eisenhower Administration where he was a leading force in writing the legislation that led to the admission of Alaska as the 49th State in the Union on Jan. 3, 1959.

In 1961, he moved back from Washington, D.C. to Alaska where he was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives just after the state's great earthquake in 1964. He was subsequently elected as Speaker pro tempore and majority leader until his appointment to the U.S. Senate on Christmas Eve of 1968 upon the death of one of the State's two original senators, E.L. ``Bob'' Bartlett. He was elected in his own right 7 times over the next 40 years, becoming the longest-serving Republican Senator in U.S. history. Stevens was third in line for the Presidency from 2003 through 2007.

While he is remembered by all in Alaska for his tireless efforts to win Federal support to develop the young State's largely 19th Century frontier infrastructure, he did so much more for all Alaskans. He worked tirelessly to enact the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that settled aboriginal land claims and gave Alaska Natives the right to select about 44 million acres of Alaska's 365-million acres to protect their long-term economic, cultural and political future.

Ted helped the State develop an economy by authoring the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, which permitted oil to flow to market from the State's North Slope. He authored the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the High Seas Driftnet Fisheries Enforcement Act that ended the foreign domination of fishing fleets in Alaskan and American waters, allowing the State's commercial fishing industry to rebound. He was a leader in telecommunication policies, leading efforts to pass the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that paved the way to an era of digital television and communications in this country and also launched telemedicine and distance learning. And he attempted to make the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act as workable as possible for the State, while protecting more than 100 million acres of Alaska in parks and refuges--the largest single conservation bill in the Nation's history.

Ted was a committed sportsman, who loved outdoor pursuits such as fishing and hunting, and also amateur sports, authoring the Ted Stevens Amateur and Olympic Sports Act, Title IX amendments to encourage women's sports, and the Carol M. White Physical Education Program that did so much to improve physical education in schools and colleges nationwide. He also became a true expert on defense issues, providing unconditional support to the Armed Forces of the United States in his role as chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations for more than two decades.

Ted Stevens truly was a mountain of a man in policy development for the State of Alaska and thus it is a pleasure to seek to name both a mountain and an ice field in his honor. The peak proposed for naming is the peak referred to as South Hunter peak in the climbing community. It is located on the southern side of Denali National Park. At 13,895 feet it is the largest peak still unnamed in the State and also a peak visible on a clear day from the Parks Highway, the main north-south road for travelers between Fairbanks and Anchorage, two cities in Alaska that Ted is most associated with helping develop.

The ice field in the uplands of the Chugach Mountains is the base for the Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Matanuska, Nelchina, Tazlina, Valdez and Shoup Glaciers--the Harvard being particularly appropriate to be associated with a man who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1950. The entire Chugach Icefield, at 8,340 square miles, the largest in Alaska, will provide a fitting tribute for a senator whose breadth of knowledge covered all of Alaska's 586,000 square miles and whose love of the State and its residents was even larger.

This bill follows proper procedure by directing the U.S. Geographical Place Names Board to name the peak and ice field for the State's former senior senator, it not being done directly by Congress. But to guarantee timely action, it requires the board to act within 30 days of the bill's enactment.

While there are a number of facilities in Alaska that bear the name of Senator Stevens, this bill will guarantee that future generations of Alaskans will remember him when they engage in the outdoor pursuits that all Alaskans love, from mountain climbing to fishing in the waters of Prince William Sound and the rivers of South central Alaska, all fueled by the meltwater from the huge ice field that dominates the South central landscape.

This is a fitting tribute for a mentor and friend, to whom Alaskans owe so much. I hope for quick passage of this act by this Congress to provide another lasting legacy for Senator Ted Stevens.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source