Alaska Business Junior Achievement Hall of Fame Laureate: Jack Coghill: this man of achievement has done everything from run a business to serve as lieutenant governor.

• Author: Friedenauer, Margaret

Jack B. Coghill can list many honors under his name: delegate of the Alaska Constitutional Convention, small-businesses owner, entrepreneur, longest-serving mayor in the state's history, lieutenant governor. But he easily identifies what he considers his greatest accomplishment.

"I think the most important thing in my life is my marriage to Frances and the raising of our six kids," he said recently from his home in Nenana.

But Coghill's life also is peppered with business enterprises and life adventures beginning when his father, a Scottish immigrant, bought property in 1912 at the new town site at Nenana and started a trading post. Coghill was the youngest of three boys who all got an early education in business through the trading post. At 15, he lied about his age and got his first job not related to the family business as a mess boy on the steamer Alice that ran the Tanana and Yukon rivers to Ruby, Rampart and Holy Cross.

Coghill's served in the Army and was stationed in the Aleutians during World War II before returning to Nenana and taking over the family store. He had many entrepreneurial endeavors in Nenana. As one of 10 people to hold a winning ticket in the 1952 Nenana Ice Classic, he used his $18,000 in winnings to buy a sawmill, cut lumber and build a hotel.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Coghill always kept his family involved in his endeavors, including son, John, now a state representative from North Pole who was trained in business management through working at the family store. He also was involved in his dad's fuel oil distribution service Jack started in the '50s and by the time John was 10 years old, in 1960, was rolling and cleaning barrels.

"He's a detail man," John said. "He tried to expand business. He tried to put Nenana on the map. All of us kids worked with him in some fashion or another. We were all part of building what he was doing. Everything was such an adventure for us kids and dad; he was just leading the charge."

John also vaguely remembers visiting his dad in Fairbanks while he attended the Alaska Constitutional Conventions. Jack said participating in the convention was, next to his family, Jack's most important accomplishment in his life. He spent much of the year traveling the state for various events celebrating the 50th of the convention.

"Fifty-five of us sat down and produced the finest document in the U.S. and it will probably be the finest ever conceived," Coghill said.

A CALL TO...