Photos courtesy of Tom Begich
Nick and Pegge Begich with children Mark, Nichelle (in back), Tom (center), Nick, Stephanie and Paul (on Pegge's lap), 1970, Anchorage.
TOM BEGICH: Politics first Part of growing up in a political family with a man who was a workaholic was I didn't know my father.
Interviewed by JUDY FERGUSON
First of two parts
Published: April 30, 2006
Last Modified: May 28, 2006 at 08:26 AM
Until I was nearly 12, I grew up with a man who was a legend, the son of Croatian immigrants, but who disappeared Oct. 16, 1972, into the clouds. No trace of him was ever found. My father, U.S. congressman Nick Begich, was critical in the 1971 passage of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
In 1960, I was born in the old Anchorage hospital, the third child of Nick and Pegge Begich.
My dad grew up in the Mesabi Iron Range in Eveleth, Minn., where his father, John Begich, spent his life working in the iron ore mines.
My grandfather, John Begich, was born in 1893 in Podlapaca, Croatia, a country without a history for strong democratic institutions, in an area of the 20th century's worst genocide in Yugoslavia's recent wars.
After growing up in an impoverished 19th-century village whose survival depended on backbreaking farming, my grandfather, armed with an eighth-grade education, left Croatia in 1911 to join his brother in Minnesota.
He found work and his wife in the Iron Range, and they raised three sons and a daughter. The youngest, my father, Nick, was born in 1932. His older brothers worked in the mines, but Nick was destined for the books.
Eleven years after Dad was born, the mine, mill and smelter workers were allowed to finally organize openly, and Dad was introduced to the world of politics and debate.
During World War II, my grandfather lost most of his relatives back home to Tito's partisans, causing him to hate communists and always support an independent Croatia. Granddad's sympathetic friend, American-Croatian politician John Blatnick, greatly influenced my father when he was only 8 years old. Blatnick encouraged my dad to go to college and to consider politics.
In high school, my father, excelled in everything from sports to academics, accumulated a year of college credit and enrolled at the local teachers college in St. Cloud. He pushed so hard that he got his bachelor's degree in three years, graduating with a cum laude degree in history and political science. While teaching high school, he got his master's degree two years later and worked on his doctorate until he died. A member of the Farmer Labor Young Democrats, he supported Hubert Humphrey for his second term in the U.S. Senate.
As a teacher, Dad's plans for a Minnesota political life changed when he fell in love with a former student. In 1956, Dad's mentor, Hubert Humphrey, got Dad a job in Anchorage, where he could jump-start his political career. He moved, and that winter he returned to Minnesota to marry the student, my mom.
LOBBYING FOR TEACHERS
In 1957 they drove up the highway to Anchorage, where my father pursued his career as a teacher and politician. He always believed that an educated population was critical to Alaska's success.
In 1960, as principal of the elementary school at Fort Richardson, Dad was elected president of the Alaska Principals Association. As he fought for the next two years for teachers, he was still naive about public service. He believed people naturally served altruistically. He was aggressive about politics and didn't understand compromise.
That same year I was born, Dad decided to run for state Senate. He went to union leaders for backing, but they really used him to pressure other Democrats who were in office. Taking advantage of his ambition, they convinced him to run against an incumbent. Though he lost the primary, the incumbent was weakened and lost the seat in the general election. Determined to be his own man, Dad realized he must create his own base and turned to the Alaska Education Association, for which he lobbied.
A key to Dad's lifelong success was the 3-by-5-inch cards on which he recorded the names of everyone he met, their personal information and their issues. He opted for public exposure and became a more professional, streamlined Nick Begich. In 1963, Dad became the superintendent of the Fort Richardson schools and the youngest-ever elected state senator, with a district of 1,200 miles and including one-fourth of the state's population. By long distance during legislative sessions, he supervised the Fort Rich schools and taught classes at the University of Alaska.
Already a father of three, Nichelle, Nick and me, he announced his second candidacy for the Senate the year his fourth child, Mark, was born in 1962.
STUMPING FOR CONGRESS
Part of growing up in a political family with a man who was a workaholic was I didn't know my father. In those days, the legislative session was unlimited, and although the Democrats dominated, they were often not aligned and sessions could stretch into mid-June. My dad would drive to Juneau in January and not return for almost six months.
Before reapportionment made invalid the previous geographic-based Senate districts, Dad's district was enormous, stretching from Spenard to Adak. During the summer he campaigned, and throughout our summer, Mom and we six kids drove, visiting relatives in the Lower 48. Sometimes Dad joined us.
At home, Dad had an inner sanctum that was off limits to us kids. Today it seems kind of funny: Old photos show only a rundown teacher's office with jury-rigged shelves lined with books, most of which I now own. One of my first memories was when he invited me in and showed me headlines of John Kennedy's assassination.
Throughout his years in the state Senate, Dad won 23 of 24 listed goals for teachers. By the time his Senate career finished, Alaska's teachers drew the nation's top salaries and benefits.
Alaska traditionally voted Democratic, but in 1966 we elected a Republican governor, Walter Hickel, and a Republican-dominated Legislature. U.S. Sen. Ernest Gruening, a Democrat, was 79. In 1968, Hickel appointed Republican Ted Stevens to replace Sen. Bob Bartlett, a Democrat, who had just died.
In 1968, Nixon ran against Dad's mentor, Hubert Humphrey, and Dad ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House against John Rader. Dad's teacher-based Democrats beat Rader.
Early on, Dad hadn't realized others played hardball, but he learned and built his own organization. He forged together the teachers and the Native Democrats and defeated Egan's establishment Democrats. In the general election, however, the nation went for Nixon and Dad lost to the Republican Party's Howard Pollock.
Throughout 1960, '62, '66 and '68 (and later, 1970), Dad campaigned. When he ran for Congress, he campaigned statewide, not just in his Senate district. My Dad's obsession with work finally triggered my mother to file for divorce in 1969. Devastated, Dad offered to leave politics. Mom left us kids with him, spent the summer in Minnesota and returned in the fall supporting a Nick Begich who had discovered there was more to life than political pursuits.
Next week: Fatal flight.
Judy Ferguson is a publisher as well as a freelance columnist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. She is the author of Alaska histories "Parallel Destinies" and "Blue Hills" and the children's books "Alaska's Secret Door" and "Alaska's Little Chief." Her Web site is
http://www.alaska-highway.org/delta/outpost.
TOM BEGICH: Dad's big battle (Dad) didn't make the rousing speeches typical of his past but patiently worked his strategy. ... TOM BEGICH
Interviewed by JUDY FERGUSON
Last of two parts
Published: May 7, 2006
Last Modified: May 28, 2006 at 08:26 AM
Tom Begich's father, Nick Begich, moved to Anchorage from Minnesota to teach. In the 1960s, he started a political career that, by 1968, saw him elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1970, Bill Egan was in the race of his life. Frankly, all the Democratic Party's resources were focused on Egan and his running mate, Wendell Kay. My dad was running against Frank Murkowski for the U.S. Congress, and many thought Murkowski would win, but dad beat him soundly.
With the expected oil pipeline blocked by pending Native land claims, dad had one goal: get a land claims bill passed. The previous Congress had gotten a bill through the Senate, but if a bill didn't make it through the House, the legislation could die.
Dad asked Guy Martin, a lawyer who knew land claims well, to be his legislative aide.
The chairman of the Senate's Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, had a bill and was pushing hard for settlement. The chair for the House's Interior and Insular Affairs Committee was a crusty ol' guy from Colorado, Wayne Aspinall. In those days, a chair held that post for life and ruled with an iron hand. It was known that Aspinall didn't support Indians or favor settlement and he didn't like being pushed around at all. He was a conservative Democrat, hard to handle, but he would favor a member who attended all his committee meetings.
Our family had moved by then to D.C. On the weekends, dad would touch base back in Alaska, then return to D.C. 12 hours and five time zones later, drive madly to the committee hearing room just as Aspinall convened the Monday-morning meeting.
From the day dad first arrived in Washington, in December 1970, he made sure he knew every person, Republican and Democrat, in the House of Representatives. He saw each one as a potential vote for the settlement act. Every morning he left his office for the House floor with a 3-by-5-inch card with the names of 10 congressmen, saying, "I am going to get to know these guys and find out the three most important issues to them."
When he met with the Alaska Federation of Natives, he said, "Tell me what you want." They said, "Half a billion dollars, 10 million acres and the corporate structure." He responded, "We can do better." So dad carried the bill forward with 40 million acres and a billion dollars.
He spent a huge amount of time on the bill, discussing with oil companies, talking with his aide, Guy. He supported issues relevant to the colleagues he lobbied. He spent the entire first year positioning himself to get claims passed.
He didn't make the rousing speeches typical of his past but patiently worked his strategy, becoming a true statesman. When opposing members baited him, he nodded, made factual corrections and didn't argue. He wanted a bill Natives could live with and one that worked.
CALLING THE CHAIRMAN'S BLUFF
Aspinall wanted to dictate the solution for the Natives. Dad and a supportive legislator from Washington, Lloyd Meeds, worked out a dynamic. Acting as a "no prisoners, no compromise" spokesman for the Natives, Meeds took the confrontational heat with the opposition, freeing Dad to be the connective tissue between Native and non-Native Alaskans and the politicians.
When Aspinall still wasn't delivering on Native terms, Dad called Aspinall's bluff, threatening to drop the bill. Aspinall replied, "Convince Bud Saylor of Pennsylvania, and we'll have a deal."
Before the final vote, Speaker of the House Carl Albert spoke: "I know of no one who has done more for his state in his first term of his first session than the hardworking, conscientious, never-say-die Nick Begich." On his chairman's advice, then, to combat possible amendments, dad finally gave one of his fiery speeches, replying to all attacks, with facts, dates and numbers delivering satisfactorily against the onslaught. In 1971 a billion dollars was a lot, and Congress was not so inclined, but the bill passed without amendment.
Later, I was told in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., that if all the United States' indigenous land settlements were combined, they would not equal ANCSA's. While handling three committees, dad, a first-session freshman, got a landmark bill that set the model for all subsequent Alaska land development. To this day, dad is revered in rural Alaska.
From the outset, this quick-passage legislation was intended to be tweaked continually to meet the needs of the evolving Native community addressing the rights of those born after passage, the descent of stocks and the accountability issue of the new corporations. The great tragedy of ANCSA is that has not been done effectively. ANCSA is one of the most-amended acts ever, but only 10 to 20 percent of those amendments have been to perfect the act. Rather, they have been to improve ANCSA's playing field, to get additional bites of the apple.
LOSING DAD
In Anchorage the morning of Oct. 16, 1972, dad, Louisiana congressman and majority leader of the House, Hale Boggs, Dad's aide Russ Brown and pilot Don Jonz climbed into Jonz's Cessna 310 bound for Juneau. The next morning, after the plane had not been heard from in 24 hours, our mother broke the news to us before we went school.
As my brother, Nick, and I walked to classes, I looked up and saw a cloud formation. "See that cloud?" I said, "There's a plane and a mountain. You see, dad must have made it through all right!"
When the votes were cast three weeks later, dad won his congressional seat with 56.2 percent, even though he was suspected dead. Later, at the March special nominating convention, mom, though a candidate herself, threw her support to Emil Notti and put him over the top as Alaska's first Alaska Native candidate for Congress. That was an election Don Young won by about a percentage point.
At age 34, Mom was a widow left with six children.
When I was 21, in an attempt to "find" a father I lost when I was 11, I interviewed over 80 people and drafted a book about his life.
Unlike my grandfather's native Yugoslavia, our multi-ethnic issues in Alaska are addressed within the confines of the state and federal constitutions. One-fifth of the Legislature in Alaska is Native, mirroring the population, which is unusual in a state with a "minority" population.
Before the pipeline, times weren't easy in Alaska. Sure, Republicans and Democrats fought -- but when we were finished, we dialogued with respect. That legacy and the gift of our father's instinct for public service have helped keep five of his six children here in Alaska.
Last December, mom and I retraced my parents' first trip up the Alaska Highway in 1956. Fifty years after her marriage to Nick Begich, we drove and we savored the journey.
Judy Ferguson is a publisher as well as a freelance columnist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. She is the author of Alaska histories "Parallel Destinies" and "Blue Hills" and the children's books "Alaska's Secret Door" and "Alaska's Little Chief." Her Web site is
http://www.alaska-highway.org/delta/outpost.
Submitted by Steve Rukavina
Source:
http://dwb.adn.com/life/story/7679658p-7590861c.html
