In the spirit of the celebration of Alaska's 50th anniversary of statehood, many deserving people are hailed for their roles in making it happen. However in those generally good recollections, I have yet to read about the one person who deserves to stand out among the rest.
That is the late Robert B. Atwood, for 54 years publisher of the Anchorage Times. His newspaper was the first to campaign for statehood. He chaired the Alaska Statehood Committee that took Alaska's case to Congress and he even managed to visit recalcitrant President Eisenhower in the White House. And he did it at considerable personal and business sacrifice.
Bob Atwood, sensing great potential in frontier Alaska, came north with Evangeline, his equally adventurous bride, in 1935 to buy a failing 650-circulation daily, The Anchorage Times, with the backing of Evangeline's banker father, E.A. Rasmuson.
" I found dialogue on statehood virtually absent in Alaska when we got here," Bob told me during the many meetings I had with him as we worked on his autobiography. "The powerful business interests liked territorial status. They were getting rich by keeping things the way they were."
It didn't take Atwood long to decide it was his newspaper's mission to free Alaskans from the enslavement of outside exploiters, such as the J.P. Morgan banking house and Guggenheim brothers who controlled the companies that owned the copper mines and 12 of the largest salmon canneries while paying no taxes to Alaska.
However, those exploiters had the clout to cut down anyone who would mess with the status quo. They included millionaire Austin E. "Cap" Lathrop, the most powerful man in Alaska, a fierce Republican who owned the Fairbanks News-Miner. After the first whiff of Atwood's editorials, Lathrop summoned Atwood and threatened to run him out of town by building a newspaper next door to Atwood's struggling daily. Predictably, he later used his newspaper, his radio stations and other business clout to oppose any move toward statehood.
Besides the powerful insiders, Atwood saw a bigger obstacle that had to be overcome if statehood could be achieved. Congress must be convinced that Alaska, so long a territory living on the doles of the federal government, had the means to support itself.
So he set out to correct the image. By the early 1950s, 100 wells had been drilled in Alaska and no one found any oil of consequence. Recalling geologist friends who talked so optimistically about Alaska's potential, Atwood decided to gamble on hunting for oil. He pooled his money with a small group of luncheon friends which the Elks Club bartender dubbed "the Spit and Argue Club."
In 1957, that unlikely crew of wildcatters struck oil at Swanson River on the Kenai Peninsula, the first major discovery in Alaska. This launched an invasion of oil explorers, and soon dozens of new oil fields grew in the Cook Inlet area. They started the state on its road to prosperity.
Now that territorial Alaska was proving it had the economic means to support itself, attention seriously turned to statehood.
Atwood's earlier editorial attempts to launch the idea found little support. His was the only Alaska paper favoring statehood. No radio station endorsed it. Further, the Anchorage Times served only a narrow area of the territory.
Atwood knew he had to get information on statehood's benefits out to all Alaskans. He sought out territorial Gov. Ernest Gruening for advice. That led to strategy sessions in his living room with Gruening, the Atwoods and their friends. They created the Alaska Statehood Association, elected Evangeline president, and then sent her on a speaking mission to organize statehood chapters across the territory.
The association raised enough money to hire George Sunborg, a weekly editor from Juneau, to write a report outlining the benefits and disadvantages of statehood, with the plusses obviously overshadowing the negatives. The booklet was distributed free across Alaska and it generated discussion. Even the dailies opposed to statehood ran it as an insert.
Now Atwood pondered how to get Congress to vote Alaska into the nation. No manual exists on how to make a state. However, the enterprising Gov. Gruening started by appointing a committee with national members to crusade for statehood. It was loaded with glittering public figures such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur among the anointed 100.
Then Gruening named Atwood as chairman of the statehood committee. Atwood was reluctant to take on such a task knowing it would cut into time needed to run his paper and probably drain his pocketbook. Yet, he could not refuse leading the team with a public mandate to convince a skeptical Congress to admit Alaska as a member of the nation.
Many good things happened: the constitutional convention and adoption of the "Tennessee Plan," the conversion of C.W. "Bill" Snedden, who made the Fairbanks News-Miner a champion for statehood after "Cap" Lathrop died, the behind-the- scenes work of Secretary of Interior Fred Seaton and his assistant, now Sen. Ted Stevens, and the personal audience with the president in the White House.
The opponents had waged a long fight in Congress, rebuffing statehood bills in seven straight sessions. Finally, the 85th Congress in 1957 received an Alaska statehood bill, and this one was endorsed by President Eisenhower. The congressional fight dragged on into 1958, but both houses of Congress finally passed it. Overjoyed Alaska voters quickly ratified the required referendum, and President Eisenhower signed the final ordinance Jan. 3, 1959, making Alaska the 49th state in the union.
Bob Atwood died on Jan. 10, 1997. He was the true father of statehood, a label he would vigorously deny. But did anyone do anything more?
John Strohmeyer is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author. He previously held the Atwood professorship in journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
JOHN STROHMEYER
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