Political Quotes

“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.…”