Morris Thompson: carrying the torch of tradition.

• Author: Pratt, Fred
• Position: Doyon Ltd. president

Morris Thompson has led the Interior Native corporation Doyon Ltd. for almost a decade with the same quiet effectiveness that took him to important posts in Juneau, Anchorage and Washington, D.C.

An easygoing man people call "Morrie," Thompson mixes well with the riverboat and sled dog racing crowds in Fairbanks. An avid runner for many years, he completed three marathons and many 10-kilometer races. Lately, in what he admits is a concession to age, he gave up running after a tendon injury and became an enthusiastic fitness walker.

Born 56 years ago in Tanana, the son of the village postmaster, Thompson graduated from Mount Edgecumbe High School in Sitka and attended the University of Fairbanks as a civil engineering major. He later attended an RCA electrical technician school in Los Angeles and got a job at RCA's Gilmore Creek Satellite Tracking Station near Fairbanks in 1964.

In 1963, he married Thelma Mayo of Rampart. Only three years later, his busy political career took off.

"In 1966, I was campaigning for Jules Wright, who was running for a seat in the (Alaska) Legislature," Thompson recalls. "Ralph Purdue introduced me to Walter Hickel, who was running for governor then, and as he needed some help in the Interior, I volunteered to go on his campaign swings to Tanana and Nome and worked for his campaign in Fairbanks."

Wright won his seat in the state house, and Hickel went to the governor's mansion, with Thompson, then 29 years old, in tow. Hickel made him deputy director of the Rural Development Agency; a year later, Thompson became executive director of Hickel's North Commission, planning a network of transportation routes intended to open rural Alaska to development.

When Hickel was named Secretary of the Interior in 1969, Thompson followed him to Washington, D.C...