Ted Stevens reflection: there settled a stillness across the land.

• Author: Stomierowski, Peg
• Position: IN MEMORIUM - In memoriam

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Former Sen. Ted Stevens was nothing if not resilient. His death at 86 in a plane crash Aug. 9 on a lonely mountaintop north of Dillingham cast a long shadow in The Last Frontier. It was a jolting end to a life lived large. Four others died with him in the crash.

When interviewed a year ago by phone from Washington, D.C., for purposes of inclusion in Alaska Business Monthly's annual lineup of Junior Achievement laureates, Mr. Stevens made it clear that, despite difficult transitions, his focus was full charge ahead.

"You have to keep going," he wanted young people to understand, "no matter what happens. If you lose one job, you have to find another."

His four decades as senator for Alaska, beginning in 1968, were laced with big triumphs and challenges. The nation's longest-serving Republican senator was known as a dedicated proponent for his rugged state, its interests, its people--sometimes gruff about it, oftentimes fierce.

His life story contains whispers of vulnerability, even mortality. As we noted in January, in previewing Mr. Stevens' life and potential legacy, it would be hard to conceive of a worse period to be young than the times when Ted and his three siblings were growing up.

Son of an accountant, he was born in 1923 and lived in a small cottage in Indianapolis. Eventually he moved with his parents to Chicago, but the stock market crash ended his dad's job and ushered in the Great Depression. After their parents divorced, the kids went back to live with their grandparents. His father went blind for several years. Mr. Stevens the boy helped care for his dad and a disabled relative. He recalled that he began working at the tender age of 6, doing whatever he could to alleviate family pressures.

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He never stopped pushing on--it was his way of life.

Mr. Stevens was instrumental in Alaska being granted statehood in the Eisenhower era. He was...