Mike Stepovich, Who Led Alaska to Statehood, Dies at 94 (Published 2014)
- ️http://www.nytimes.com/by/william-yardley
- ️Thu Feb 20 2014
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- Feb. 19, 2014
Mike Stepovich, the last presidentially appointed governor of the Territory of Alaska, who helped lobby Congress for statehood, died on Friday in San Diego. He was 94.
The cause was complications of a fall, his daughter Antonia Gore said.
Mr. Stepovich bridged Alaska’s past and future, and not just politically. In the late 1890s, his father, Marko, a miner chasing the Klondike gold rush, traveled from his native Montenegro to a frontier then called the District of Alaska.
Decades later, the miner’s first son had become a lawyer in the growing city of Fairbanks, a representative in the legislature of the Territory of Alaska and, in 1957, at age 38, the governor of the territory, appointed by a fellow Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Mr. Stepovich’s most memorable achievement in office was that he worked himself out of it.
For years, many Alaskans resisted statehood, uncertain that they wanted the federal involvement that came with it, and plenty of members of Congress were uncertain about adding to the federal government’s responsibilities with a 49th state. But Mr. Stepovich lobbied for the cause across Alaska and elsewhere, particularly on Capitol Hill, where he was one of the effort’s most visible faces.
His diplomacy, persistent but warm, was widely credited with helping to build consensus. On June 9, 1958, with momentum toward statehood peaking, his portrait appeared on the cover of Time magazine along with an illustration of a totem pole.
On June 30, Congress approved a bill granting Alaska statehood. Eisenhower signed it on July 7. A month later, Mr. Stepovich resigned. But he did not lose interest in politics.