'Put this under the elephant': Memories of Ted Stevens

Back in the early 1970s, just a few years after Ted Stevens went to Washington, D. C. as Alaska's senior U. S. senator, his office was not as big as it was to become as his seniority grew. Back then, his office was very small. The waiting area was the size of a postage stamp and it was just inside the room that was otherwise occupied by the senator's staff members, and just outside his own office door.

At the time I was with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., and spent a lot of time in Washington, and a lot of time in the senator's office. It was always busy. People were on the phone, or typing, or running in and out with messages, file folders and papers. I noticed that staff members would approach the receptionist, then a lady named Gloria McCutcheon, hand her a piece of paper or an envelope, and say, "Put this under the elephant." Gloria would then lift a large brass elephant on the corner of her desk and slide the papers under it.

Soon the brass elephant was sitting atop a growing stack of paper. I wondered why it was important for the papers to be put under the elephant, but understood the minute I saw Sen. Stevens come in from the Senate floor, stop at the desk, lift the elephant, take all the papers and disappear into his office.

"Put this under the elephant" meant "This is important, and the senator must see it as soon as possible." It wasn't the kind of technology with which everybody would become familiar later, but it worked very well.

Ted Stevens was the first public official I met after moving to Alaska from Nebraska to work for The Anchorage Times in 1966. I had come to Alaska with the U. S. Army in 1964 and fell in love with the place, so when I got out of the Army in early 1966 I returned to Nebraska but immediately started applying for jobs in Anchorage. In the meantime, in Nebraska I worked for the Hastings Daily Tribune, which was published by Fred Seaton, who had been Secretary of Interior in the Eisenhower administration.

I got notice of the Anchorage Times job in late summer and I left Nebraska for Alaska right after Labor Day 1966 and drove up the Alaska Highway. After I left the Tribune, Fred Seaton dropped Ted Stevens a note telling him about me. One day, about a month after arriving in Anchorage, I saw Stevens come into the newsroom, and I recognized him because I had seen his photograph. He was a member of the state House of Representatives at the time.

After talking briefly to Bill Tobin, the managing editor of the Times, Stevens said, "I'm looking for a guy named Bob Miller," and Bill motioned for me to join them. "Fred Seaton told me to welcome you to Alaska," Ted said, and that's how we met.

Ted started his Alaska career in Fairbanks in the early 1950s when he was fresh out of UCLA and Harvard Law School, and it was in Fairbanks that he became U. S. Attorney, beginning his lifelong dedication to serving the public.

It didn't take long for Stevens to come to the attention of Secretary Seaton, who asked him to come to Washington, D. C., where he was first an advisor to Seaton, and later named solicitor of the Interior Department. As we all know, while at Interior, Ted was a key player in the battle for Alaska statehood, and he helped write the Alaska Statehood Act.

Many years later, in 1980, Ted would ask Seaton's widow, Gladys, to come to Washington, D. C. for an appearance at the National Press Club with him and Alaska Gov. Jay Hammond when we were all working together on resolving the Alaska D-2 Lands issue. She sat proudly at the head table as the senator and the governor talked about the need for Alaska to be able to explore and develop the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which had been created by her late husband. It was her first trip to Washington in a long time, and she was immensely pleased and honored to be there as a guest of Ted Stevens and the State of Alaska.

Whether he was at the head table at the National Press Club or in his Washington office or visiting Alaska, Ted Stevens never forgot his friends.

A friend once told that he had to call on Ted one summer weekend for help with an administrative matter: "Ted came in from the lake to help me with a federal permit problem, and I didn't even expect to see him until Monday, but there he was. And he didn't leave until my problem was solved. You can't imagine my appreciation."