Ted Stevens, an American politician born on November 18, 1923, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and found dead on August 10, 2010, near Dillingham, Alaska, served as a Republican U.S. senator from Alaska from 1968 to 2009. He perished in an airplane crash on August 9, 2010, having previously survived a 1978 crash that claimed the life of his first wife.

During his four-decade tenure as a senator, Stevens was recognized for his influential advocacy for Alaskan industries. Notably, he played a pivotal role in crafting the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, facilitating the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which was completed in 1977. Despite opposition from environmentalists, he orchestrated legislation in the early 1980s that permitted logging in the Tongass National Forest and secured substantial federal payments to Alaska for safeguarding other vast wilderness areas, although this earmark was eventually reduced in 2009.

Following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Stevens introduced legislation to increase federal funding for cleanup efforts, contending that Exxon Corporation had not fulfilled its obligations. He also advocated for research into the effects of nuclear waste dumped by the former Soviet Union into the oceans, securing $10 million in funding from Congress in 1993. Additionally, Stevens fervently supported oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, though his endeavors in this regard were ultimately unsuccessful.

Stevens was particularly effective in directing federal funds to Alaska during his tenure as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee from 1997 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2005, channeling over $3 billion to the state between 1995 and 2008.

Before his political career, Stevens served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1947 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1950. Following a stint at the Department of the Interior from 1956 to 1961, he relocated to Anchorage, Alaska, to practice law. Despite initial setbacks in his bids for the U.S. Senate in 1962 and 1968, Stevens was appointed to fill a vacant seat in the Senate in December 1968, succeeding Sen. E.L. Bartlett.

In 2003, allegations surfaced in a Los Angeles Times article suggesting that Stevens had invested personal funds in Alaskan companies benefiting from his sponsored legislation and obtained earmarks. Stevens refuted these claims, asserting that his actions did not breach Senate rules. Subsequently, in 2007, the Justice Department launched an investigation into Stevens’s ties to Bill J. Allen, a former oil-service company executive accused of bribing state legislators. Following Allen’s allegations of funding home renovations for Stevens, the senator was indicted in July 2008 for failing to disclose these gifts. Although he was convicted in a corruption trial, a federal judge overturned the verdict in 2009, citing prosecutorial misconduct.

Stevens’s death in the 2010 airplane crash marked the end of a long and influential political career, leaving behind a complex legacy intertwined with both significant legislative achievements and controversies.

Photos courtesy of  Slate.com, Alaska Public Media