JOHN WHITEHEAD: Well, I'm delighted to be with you tonight. I've been in this room many times before. I was for 21 years at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I've come to the Anchorage Museum many times in the past. This was where I first met Bob and Evangeline Atwood. It's where Mead first introduced me to Herb and Miriam Hilscher, the original public relations experts on Alaska. I'll talk a little bit more about them later. It's wonderful to be here with all of you and to see these students here.

I always tell me people that in my years of teaching in Fairbanks though I also taught Mead at Yale my most distinguished student came from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A young lady, a single mother, from Fort Yukon, an Athabascan who came and said that she was going to finish at UAF and then go on to law school and do Native rights in Alaska. Her name was Heather Kendall then. She went on to the Harvard Law School and I didn't know what had happened to my student until one day I was driving in Fairbanks and I turned on the radio and she was representing her people before the Supreme Court of the United States.

In no other place have I taught where one of my students defended Native sovereignty before the Supreme Court. And I was in Washington a few years ago and I looked at the Supreme Court, I saw the stairs going up to the Supreme Court on the outside, they're just mammoth, and I said I had a hand in helping someone from Fort Yukon, Alaska, climb those stairs and stand before all the justices with perfect aplomb.

In one of my classes we listened on the radio as she defended her case to the Supreme Court. So I hope that all of you 49th State Fellows will know that in Alaska there is no limit to which you can go. So I'm very happy for all of you to be here tonight. And I have a little something prepared based on the book I wrote, Completing the Union, in which I had a chance to speak to many, many of the people who helped make Alaska a state. It's so funny when I first came to Alaska, why would you want to read a book about Statehood? Every party you went to there were at least seven or eight of them there who could tell you the whole story. Sometimes you would have to say can we continue it next week. It went on and on and on.

But, gradually, this is one of the things that a historian has to do. One day the actors in the historical period drift away. And this is what I found here in Alaska when I first started interviewing the Statehooders back in 1981. Of 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 38 were still around. Today there are only five. So I found myself in a situation of now having to speak for the people who have passed on so that their story which is really one of the most remarkable ones in American history will not be lost. And so in writing Completing the Union what I tried to do is to bring their experiences in print so that they will last forever.

And tonight I'm going to talk to you a little bit about some of the things I found in my book. Now as you'll see from the book it's a rather big book. Maybe good for use as a door stop or something like that. And I thought maybe this comes from the first grade. Many of us have a linear approach to reading. You're supposed to start on page 1 and go to the end. I also thought what no teacher should readily admit that reading is not as natural as eating or drinking. People don't have a real compulsion to do it every day. And so I found in writing this book that the verb most people use when they talk to me is John, I have your book.

Now I remember from the eighth grade, I believe, I have is a transitive verb of action because it takes a direct object. I have your book. But it's not a very active active verb. It's not I've read your book, I liked your book. So I had to come up, when giving talks with a new way of reading and so I'm a first grade teacher all over again teaching people how to read. So this is the gimmick I've come up with. I'm comparing a book to Whitman's Sampler box of chocolates.

And I tell people if you have a Whitman sampler and you open it and you ate the whole box in one night you'd get sick. So what do you with the book? Well, if you read it all at one night you'll get sick. So why don't you approach it like a Whitman sampler and sort of look through the table of contents, look through the index, spot something that interests you like the coconut cluster or the chocolate covered cherry and go straight for that. Leave the rest of it for another time. Even go down into the second tier of chocolates, pick out what you want. If great Uncle Horace was in the Aleutian War, just read the section about World War II. So the Whitman sampler approach.

Well, since Steve was my host I suggested to Steve, ah, which morsel would you like to pick out for me to talk about? And Steve said, ah, almost going down to that second tier of chocolates I'd like you to go all the way to chapter 9 and talk about what you mentioned was the discovery of oil on the Kenai Peninsula in 1957. Was that one of the factors that led the U.S. Congress to vote for Statehood in the various Congress, in that same Congress in which oil was discovered on the Kenai.

Well, as it also turned out I done some of the research for that with a grant from the Humanities Forum and they were also sponsoring the lecture, so I don't know if Steve will consider this the coconut cluster or the chocolate covered cherry, but I'm going to talk a little bit tonight then about the famous vote that finally brought Alaska into the Union in the latter part of 1958. So that's what I'm going to talk about, just one little part of my book.

Now, let's see where I need to go for that. Okay. To understand what was happening in 1958 we need to go back a little bit in time to what was the problem with the Alaska Statehood bill. Well, after World War II many people who had fought in the war said they had not come back to the United States, they had fought a war abroad to end racism and colonialism. They were not going to come back home and let things simply be the way they were. Also they said America wants to assert a role of world leadership. It can't do that if it still maintains two colonial territories where the people don't have full self government, they can't vote for their own governor, they can't vote for a president of the United States whether they want to or not and they can't elect voting members of the Congress. We can't do this, many of these veterans said and think that we're going to any role of world leadership. Alaska and Hawaii, the two places where the World War II had actually come and was fought can't be the two places left without full self government after the war.

In 1946 President Harry Truman endorsed Statehood for both Alaska and Hawaii. America's colonial role had to come to an end. Well, early Statehood bills for both Alaska and Hawaii gained positive votes in one House of the Congress. A Hawaii Statehood bill passed in both 1947 and 1949. An Alaska Statehood bill passed in 1949 in the House, but for various reasons these bills just could not make it through the Senate. Then in 1954 the House passed another Hawaii Statehood bill, sent it to the Senate where it was combined with an Alaska Statehood bill that was sent back to the House where it failed to be passed. So bill after bill had gone to the Congress.

The citizens of Hawaii actually held a Constitutional Convention in 1950 in an effort to show the nation that they become a state like any other, but that failed to push the Congress to pass the Statehood bill for Hawaii. And so Congress after Congress had failed to pass a Statehood bill for Alaska. In general, Statehood bills were blocked by southern Democrats. And though some people say this was for race because both Hawaii and Alaska were multi-racial states. On the other hand, some of the Senators just didn't want change. There were 96 members of the Senate. Now I know that many of you had been on civic committees where people didn't want to change, not for any specific reason but just didn't want to change, why have to get along with new board members. Let's stay with the ones we know.

So anyway, it was mostly southern Democrats, but then there were the occasional odd person, Senator Hugh Butler of Nebraska who was convinced that the Communists had taken over Hawaii and that Honolulu was Moscow's outpost in the Pacific. So there were all sorts of reasons where there'd be opposition to Statehood.

So nothing had happened. Then in 1955 Alaska also tried to hold a Constitutional Convention to show the nation that Alaska could put together a state. Well, while this was going on absolutely nothing happened in the Congress. No Statehood bill for Alaska or Hawaii came up for a vote between 1955 to 1957. And so no one was sure if Statehood was ever going to come. For at least 10 years the Congress had done everything in its power to keep Statehood from being achieved.

So in 1957 when the 85th Congress met many people wondered if anything would ever change the log jam in the Congress of the United States. Now at the beginning of that session Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas said he really wasn't interested in Statehood at all. He opposed it before. But in a strange statement to Ernest Gruening of Alaska he said he would prefer Alaska if he had to choose between the two of them. Now speaking in sort of (indiscernible) thought and being a Texan Sam just said well, if I've got to choose Hawaii has too many Japs, Alaska is at least on the continent. Well, that was the Speaker of the House of the United States.

Now also as we got into 1957 Alaska had something else going for it that would push it forward first. Now I learned two things about the United States Congress in my research. First, it surpasses crab fishing in Alaska as the deadliest occupation in the United States. More people die on the job as a member of Congress than in any other occupation. It's more deadly than crab fishing. Now if 80 year olds were doing crab fishing they'd be killed instantly, but somehow they keep sitting in the Congress of the United States. Also I learned that the biggest thing that changes a vote in the Congress is death. If the Senator from such and such a state dies his constant vote against you is gone. His successor who is often appointed by the Governor may vote entirely different.

Well then, how did this affect Alaska? Well, in that great attempt to get that joint Statehood bill of 1954 passed through the Congress the territorial delegate from Hawaii, a very nice man named Joseph Farrington, he'd walked the halls of Congress one Saturday morning trying to get the Rules Committee to report this joint Statehood for Congress. He had no success. He went to his office in July of 1954 and died. Joseph Farrington who had been elected in 1942 died in his office in the Congress. His wife Mary was elected to take his place. She had been there with him, one of the big social hostesses of Washington. They were Republicans but they were friends of President Truman and President Eisenhower. Mary was elected to fill his term and then re-elected in 1954.

So the Farringtons had been there for a long time, but then in the fall of 1956 Mary lost her job to a Democrat from Hawaii named John Burns. Well, what did this do for Alaska? It made Alaska's territorial delegate, Bob Bartlett the senior territorial delegate. He had been there since 1944. Joseph Farrington had been there since 1942. So now Bob was senior, the delegate from Hawaii was brand new. And so Bob had the right to push Alaska forward. Now in both Alaska and Hawaii people told me all these stories about who was the cleverer politician, Bartlett or Burns.

The Congress is not rocket science. It's seniority. The senior delegate has the right to go first. So Bartlett is now the senior delegate. Now to tell you how much this upset many people in Hawaii, Hawaii had always hoped that it was going to be the 49th state. In fact, so confident was it that many businesses in Honolulu were the called the 49th State this or that including a 49th State Record Company. And just last week I was given this 45 rpm of The Green Rose Hula from a lady who had been stationed in Honolulu in the 1950s with the Army. She said oh, we all had these, the 49th State Record Company. So this was a real shock to the people of Hawaii, but now Alaska was going to go first.

In fact, Delegate Bartlett and Delegate Burns had decided on an Alaska first strategy. The Alaska Statehood bill would be put in the hopper and no Hawaii Statehood bill would even be entered into the Congressional process until Alaska became a state. Finally, people had learned how the Congress works. And I think most of us would be happier if we simply viewed the Congress as a contact sport that is like football. There's an offense and a defense. And if you're really smart you get your supporters to vote for you, but if you're a hockey player or a football player what can you do to the biggest person on the opposition. You try to maim them, right? Get them out.

So Alaska is finally learning and Hawaii dealing with your friends is part of it, but dealing with the obstructionists is the other part of getting a bill passed. Now the obstructionists aren't necessarily the people who will vote against you. The obstructionists are the people who try and keep your bill from coming to the floor because they know who they'll be voting for. Those Statehood bills had been voted for many times so dealing with the obstructionists don't let them join the two bills back together 'cause there will only be one going through the Congressional process.

So the Alaska first strategy was all ready to go there in 1957. Speaker of the House Rayburn said he really doesn't care what's going to happen. So the Alaska Statehood bill goes through the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. It's reported in June of 1957 and sent to the House Rules Committee. Now the Congressional process is such that in the House a committee passes a bill, but it has to send it to the Rules Committee to be scheduled for a floor vote.

Now the Rules Committee was chaired by a very horrible man, Representative Howard Smith of Virginia, not only a Virginian but an anti-communist. And Smith said I'm never gonna give a rule to the Alaska Statehood bill, I'm going to bottle it up forever because I don't want Alaska to become a state. So nothing was happening until a strange event occurred, and this gets to Steve's chocolate covered cherry, on July the 23rd, 1957 oil was discovered on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska.

On July 25th, 1957 Speaker Rayburn called Bob Bartlett, John Burns, and the two chairs of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee to his office and said I've always opposed Alaska and Hawaii. I've been against them for the last 44 years, I've done everything in my power to stop Statehood but I've changed my mind. I'm going to let Alaska come to the floor, but I believe it should not happen until the next session of Congress which will convene in January. So if you don't do anything until January then I will support the Alaska Statehood bill. Well, was this yet another run around? You're going to have to wait a year.

He also said the Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of the Senate would do the same thing. So why did Sam Rayburn have such a change of mind two days after oil was discovered in Alaska? This is one of the great mysteries of Statehood. Did oil have anything to do with it? Well, let's see then what happened.

January came of 1958 and nothing was happening in the Congress. Howard Smith of the Rules Committee said I'm never going to report the Alaska Statehood bill. It's going to stay bottled up in my committee forever. What did Speaker Rayburn do? Well, some of the Alaska Statehood supporters had filed a very strange parliamentary procedure. They had discovered that you could bypass the Rules Committee by turning the Congress into a committee of the whole for certain priveleged pieces of legislation. One of course, was statehood. This could only happen if the Speaker determined that the Rules Committee was not working and he was going to call the whole House of Representatives into special committee to give a rule to the Alaska Statehood bill. Well, it's now April of 1958 and Speaker Rayburn does this. He's good to his promise. He calls the whole House together as a special committee and on a number of crucial voice votes he declares that the Alaska Statehood bill is a privileged legislation. Now people who were there say that Sam Rayburn's rulings were questionable, but of course, you would have to challenge the Speaker and demand a roll call vote. So the Alaska Statehood bill is finally scheduled for a vote in May of 1958.

Now you know, in the Congress as in football how do you win the game? You run out the clock. And so you dilly and dally until there's not enough time. Okay. May the 28th, 1958 the Alaska Statehood bill passes the House of Representatives, a vote of 210 to 166. It's now got to go to the Senate with less than two months left in that Congress and be accepted. The House version has to be accepted by the Senate without amendment otherwise it has to go back to the House and then a conference committee and could this possibly happen?

Well, what some people call the miracle of 1958 the bill goes to the Senate and a month later on June 30th, 1958, the Alaska Statehood bill is voted at a colossal vote of 64/20. Alaska is now in the Union. Alaska is a state. Did oil have anything to do with it? Why the sudden change of heart? Why is the Congress suddenly so much more efficient than it's ever been before?

Well, this is the question Steve raised. It's the question that was raised in the Anchorage Daily News from time to time. Was it oil? Was it oil? Well, we know that the Congress never does anything idealistically right. Have we observed this? No, there always has to be awful capitalist interests at work? Right? Because that's how the Congress works, right?

All right. So, it had to have been oil. Well, in the voluminous letters of Bob Bartlett, of Ernest Gruening, and Ernest Gruening couldn't keep quite about anything particularly if it had to do with the money interests. That's what he spent his whole life fighting. Bill Egan. There was never any mention in their correspondence at the time that oil had anything to do with it. There wasn't all that much oil coming out of the Kenai Peninsula. In 1958 all those great Swanson River wells were only producing 900 barrels of oil a day. That's not even a good spill at a local service station, but oil.

Then very little mention of oil until sometime after 1969 after the Prudhoe Bay discovery and oil becomes a major factor in Alaskan life. At this point certain people who supposedly might know start talking about oil. Now let's see what they have to say. Ralph Rivers who was Alaska's first member of the House of Representatives, the first man elected to be to the House of Representatives. He was in Washington as a Tennessee Plan representative. Now the Tennessee Plan was the thing that the Constitutional Convention adopted to send these shadow senators and representatives to the Congress in that 85th Congress to push for statehood, so Ralph was there during the vote. He was then in Congress for three years after the vote.

And in 1969 at an interview with a professor at UAF Rivers said I feel Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn went for Statehood because they had actually found an expression of approval from the oil industry. Rivers explained that he thought the oil companies found territoriality an impairment to economic development. He claimed they would rather deal with a responsible state legislature than federal bureaucrats. The Rivers had talked to nearly every member of the House in his years as a Tennessee Plan representative. He did not mention in this interview the name of a single Congressman or oil company official that confirmed his theory about oil, nor did he indicate that Rayburn had ever hinted that the influence of oil in his 1957 meeting with Alaska's delegation. Instead, Rivers simply asserted in a way that excites historians, that's a conjecture on my part, I can't prove it, but I see it just like I see the sun before it rises and sets before the horizon. So we just had to trust Ralph. Well, a few years later in 1978 Mary Farrington the woman who had been elected to succeed her husband as territorial delegate said in an interview in Honolulu, Mrs. Farrington stated that the oil boys in Texas and Oklahoma pressured Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn to pass the Alaska Statehood bill so that the oil companies could get Alaska oil with a 27 percent depletion allowance. If they didn't make it a state, she said, they have to go to Congress every year and tack on an amendment to some bill to get a depletion allowance. Mrs. Farrington had no evidence to confirm her assertions. And simply these are the way -- this is the stuff that makes things happen, but I have no documentation of this at all, but those things don't ever come out. This is the classic politician stuff, it's all hush hush. The real reasons are hush hush behind doors and we never really know.

Mary went on to say in this interview, and, yeah, I was at the Interior Department in 1969 with Wally Hickel and he confirmed my oil story. Well, I went and talked with Wally Hickel. Wally told me he remembered Mary well. She talked a lot, but she had never heard this oil story of Mary Farrington. Well, that's then just more of this tidbit morsels of information that did oil have something to do with making Alaska a state.

Well, back to poly sci 101, let's see. I need to move to my notes here. If oil had something to do with it then let's see how the vote took place. Now again back to poly sci 101 if the oil boys are all that influential, that means they ought to be able to get some votes, right? If the Texas oil boys were pressuring everybody how many votes out of the Texas delegation do you think they could have gotten? 22 Representatives from Texas, in the House of Representatives two voted for the Alaska Statehood bill. In the Senate two Senators from Texas both of whom were absent for the vote on Alaska Statehood. So what kind of oil influence is it that results in 20 people voting against the bill and only two for it?

The only other evidence we have is Oklahoma. There were six Representatives from Oklahoma four of whom voted for Statehood. There were two Senators one of who voted for Statehood, Robert Kerr, you may have seen his name on some of our oil buildings. He's the Robert Kerr of Kerr-McGee, the famous oil company. He had earlier told Ernest Gruening that he wasn't going to vote for Statehood, but then Ernest Gruening heard that Robert Kerr would do anything that Stanley Adams the president of the Phillips Petroleum Company told him to do. So Ernest called the Alaska manager of Phillips who phoned the chair of Phillips who phoned Robert Kerr and Kerr voted for Statehood. But even Ernest Gruening didn't think this had anything to do with oil. It was just one powerful person putting pressure on another powerful person. So that is where we are. We've got these two statements from Ralph Rivers and Mary Farrington that the oil boys who did it. We've got this strange vote in Congress that really doesn't indicate that the oil boys got many votes. Well then in the 1980s I decided that I would try to call to some of the people who actually pushed Alaska through the Union.

So I went to the floor manager of the house bill, a Representative from Albany, New York named Leo O'Brien. Well, Leo wouldn't have excited the political scientists. I said to Leo what pushed the vote? He said 35 years later I'm still wondering. I think it was a miracle. 62 votes that I knew were against were suddenly for. Well, what do you think influenced it? Well, Bill Egan. Bill and I were both Irish and Bill gave me a Shamrock tie tack and I wore it on the floor of the House that night and I'm sure that's what did it. It was a miracle. And I said what about oil? Oh, no, said Leo, oil had nothing to do with it. We knew there was oil in Alaska, but we never dreamed it was commercially feasible that we could get the oil out of the ground and transport it to market at a price that was justifiable. No, oil had nothing to do with it said Leo. I said well, what influenced Sam Rayburn? Said Leo he liked Bob Bartlett. And so that was what the floor manager of the bill said.

I then later had an interview with Jim Wright of Texas. Jim Wright who later became the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives was one of those two members of the House who voted for Alaska Statehood. And I said to Jim, what was the reason? Ernest Gruening was Jim's response. He came to see me and I was so impressed with his commitment to freedom and Statehood that I voted for the Alaska Statehood bill. And I said well some people found Ernest annoying. Did you find Ernest annoying? Not at all Jim Wright. If he had a fault it was that he was passionate about the things he believed in and would do anything to convince you of that.

So Jim Wright said it wasn't oil at all. Leo said it wasn't oil at all. Yet most people persist in thinking that it was oil. That oil was going to provide the economy for the state of Alaska. Of course, what was providing the economy for the State of Alaska was the hundreds of thousands of military service people who had come to Anchorage and Fairbanks in the Cold War. After the Second World War Alaska had a population of 99,000 in 1946. By 1955 it had a population of 250,000. 50 percent of the work force in Alaska was employed by the Department of Defense, either uniformed service personnel or civilian employees.

Everyone thought that oil might one day be a great thing in Alaska, but it's only 900 barrels a day in 1958. And if only Herb and Miriam Hilscher were with us tonight. They were the boosters. Everything was going to boom in Alaska. There was going to be oil, but they were even more excited about electricity. Anchorage had a problem with electricity in the early '50s. There wasn't much of it. There was going to be a great hydro dam built called Tya (ph) project which was going to produce so much electricity that the aluminum industry of America was going to relocate to Alaska and all this electricity would smelt bauxite and oh, it's going to be a wonderful future.

Ernest Gruening was later going to build Rampart Dam and there would be more electricity. And then according to Herb and Miriam there were going to be a million people in Alaska by 1970. Now Minnie and I knew Herb and Miriam and every now and then we were in a devilish mood. We said Herb, where are the million people? They're coming, they're coming. Just wait, they aren't here yet, but electricity, people and oil, it was a good thing to talk about. But it didn't get any of the votes in Congress.

Well, I didn't see that in my research, but then I thought is there anything else that might have brokered that vote? Well, I found a political scientist who had been a consultant to the Alaska Constitutional Convention. Ernest Bartley of Florida. He had his graduate students do an analysis of the U.S. Congress of every district to see who was likely to vote for Statehood. After all these graduate students did this analysis what did they conclude? They concluded there was no discernible pattern as to why anyone voted for Statehood based on the economic disposition of their district. They found that, of all things that West Virginia went for Statehood because of coal. Coal not oil seemed to have a bigger influence. But then Bartley concluded something else.

There was one pattern that he found in the voting and he said it was Bob Bartlett. The one thing that seemed to be influencing people to vote was Statehood was the lobbying ability of Bob Bartlett. Bob had the friends said Professor Bartley. He seems to be the simple most important reason that got people to vote for Statehood. I then went and talked with Bartley in '87 and I said do you believe this? And he said absolutely, yes. Bob Bartlett was the key to it all. If Bob Bartlett had had a heart attack in 1957 Alaska would not have become a state. It was the influence of this man, they said, who was so nice, who never raised his voice, but who won the friends and became the greatest advocate for Alaska Statehood. And the one political scientist who analyzed the Congress with the help of the American Political Science Association said it was Bob Bartlett.

As I talked to more people what I kept finding was that what influenced their vote was persuasive ability of someone from Alaska who came and talked to them. Bob Bartlett won the most votes, but Ernest Gruening won votes from people. Leo O'Brien said it was Bill Egan that made me want to vote for Alaska. We were just overwhelmed by the sincerity and the message of these people. They came and talked to us. I finally came to the conclusion that many of the members of Congress who voted for Statehood had no interest in Alaska, but they did have a great interest in the Alaskans who had come and talked with them. That seemed to be what brought them to this momentous vote. Leo O'Brien said yes, it was Sam Rayburn's friendship for Bob Bartlett. Jim Wright said yes, Bob Bartlett quite liked Sam Rayburn, quite liked Bob Bartlett.

So more and more as I started putting the story together this seemed to be what it was. And a great impression that I would like you to take is what happened when that momentous vote came in the Senate of the United States, June the 30th, 1958. And to me this is the most searing, the most symbolic image of the whole Statehood movement and why it was important. Now picture if you will, we don't have a real picture of it, because no one expected it to happen. But on that day being June the 30th, 1958 Lyndon Johnson, the Majority Leader of the Senate was not there. He fled. Some people have never forgiven Lyndon Johnson for this.

Presiding at the Senate that night was Mike Mansfield of Montana, another Irishman wearing the Shamrock tie tack that Leo O'Brien and Bill Egan had passed on. I mean, as far as Leo and Bill were concerned there wasn't anything else that was going to get Statehood passed. Mike was wearing the tie tack. Dick Neuberger of Oregon is the presiding officer of the Senate that night. Dick was long a friend of Alaska because of his service as a young lieutenant in the building of the Alaska Highway during the Second World War.

The fateful vote 64 to 20, and keep this in mind about the influence of these Alaskans, everyone thought Alaska was going to be a Democratic state, that Senate was very narrowly Democratic, 49 to 47, but the 64 votes were 33 Republican and 31 Democrats. A Republican majority put Democratic Alaska into the Union. The vote was taken, the roll call was called. About 8:00 p.m. the fateful vote was recorded. And we're told that the kind of exuberant celebration broke out in both the gallery where all of the Alaskans were because as a territory they had no membership in the floor of the Senate, they had no representation. They could only sit and observe.

We're told the celebration of screaming and clapping broke out in the gallery and on the floor. And that the Senators turned around and applauded and saluted the gallery. For one brief moment in time the people had manipulated the Congress instead of the other way around. The official Congressional record states that Mr. Neuberger waited an appropriate amount of time before restoring order. The Senators saluted the Alaskans. And of course, they were applauding the Alaskans, but I think they were applauding something else because the Alaskans had for a brief moment reminded the Senators why they were there. And why were they there? The answer to this was given to me by Jim Wright of Texas.

Jim Wright had made in the House a very momentous speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on May the 26th, 1958. He was a freshman Congressman from Texas. He served in the Air Force during the Second World War and he rose to Speaker. And he said to his fellow Congressmen that the vote on Alaska Statehood was the most historically significant decision to confront us in the 85th Congress. Whether or not to grant Alaska's plea for Statehood forces us to face up to some searching questions about ourselves which probe deeply into our national conscience. Does this nation, said Wright, born of a burning passion for freedom and swearing in its founding an oath of eternal hostility against colonial domination still hold this basic principle to be the source of our strength?

The question he asked his fellow Congressman is the United States still young and vibrant with a message and mission to the world, or have we reached the stale maturity from which the only road leads downhill. In the case of Alaska said Jim Wright thrusts these questions uncomfortably before us. It requires an answer and will not be put off.

Thirty years later when I chatted with Jim, now Speaker of the U.S. House, he had not forgotten those words. Why did he vote for Alaska when many other members of the Texas delegation told him not to? Said Wright to me I guess I had a clearer vision. I thought if I couldn't convince people of the rightness of giving people freedom and letting other people enjoy the freedom that we profess to cherish that I didn't deserve to be in the Congress. I ought to be doing something else. So for Wright and the majorities in both the House and the Senate the Alaskans had reminded them why they were there. Friendship and freedom more than oil were the power behind the vote and something worth applauding.

So I hope, and I think in celebration at this anniversary I will hope that we will remember that this is not just a celebration for Alaska, this is a celebration for the nation. Statehood for Alaska is the story of the people of the United States and their Congress.

In our golden years I think it would not be too brash or bold on our part to generally remind the Congress once again why they are there. Gosh, if there's ever a time they need to be reminded of that it's now. And also I hope we will take an opportunity to look at ourselves and ask what answers our example over the last 50 years has given to those questions of freedom posed by Congressman Wright a half century earlier. Jim is still down in Texas. And so the eyes of Texas and the nation are upon us. And I would ask you Alaskans what answers, what do we have to say to the nation today? Are we the reason that the United States is still young and vibrant and has a message to the world? I think this is what after 50 years the nation wants to hear. Thank you. (Applause)