Word: mikes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...cheechako (newcomer), Mike Stepovich knows his country, puts in a solid day's work in his office in Juneau's grey stone Federal Building, deals with the 47 appointive territorial boards and commissions, oversees emergency work projects, orders examination of fiscal programs that will help prove Alaska's ability to stand alone, confers with Washington and territorial officials, studies his mail, e.g., "We the undersigned students have been recently examined by Dr. Brownlee and 60 having been found with defective teeth, do humbly petition our Governor, Mike Stepovich, to send us a dentist...
Time to Change. Up on Squaw Hill, in the three-story, columned gubernatorial mansion, Mike pursues a rollicking, split-second family life. The eight little 'itches have to be undressed in assembly-line fashion for their showers; the mansion's third floor is blocked off ("We're always losing Dominic," says Matilda); Band-aids, next to food and clothing, are the big expense, what with the children falling downstairs or sliding too fast down the bannisters, or falling off the gubernatorial totem pole that stands outside. After dinner and a session of TV-watching, church-going Roman...
...morning Mike swings out of bed at 6:30, goes down the hall to look in on the children, methodically counts heads as he passes from room to room. Then, midst the morning chatter and leggy tumbling of this brood, the Governor of Alaska hoists his three youngest children to the stately hardwood table on which, 91 years earlier, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward proudly signed the historic Alaska purchase with Russia (for $7,200,000) and, one by one, proceeds to diaper them...
Discovery. Mike's use of so hallowed a table symbolizes no bottomless irreverence for Alaskan tradition, but rather the muscular spirit of the ever-changing, booming vastness that was once a faraway, forgotten frontier. As Governor, he has, in a sense, discovered Alaska all over again. "Man," says he, "it wasn't until I got into office that I really began to appreciate, with our resources potential, how much we could have accomplished even by now, if only we had the freedom and the responsibility to operate...
...tell you this," says John Butrovich, with the special kind of awe that seems to flourish in Alaskans, "a dynamic chemistry is working here." That chemistry is a passion for life and growth. To Mike Stepovich and the rest of Alaska's leaders, statehood is a birthright, and they have etched that declaration on the skylines of the cities and on the cold, unyielding glaciers of their land...