www.90yearsofvision.com

By Ron Dalby
Associated General Contractors
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Every country, every state and every region of the world offers some sort of rags-to-riches story, but only Alaska can claim the indomitable Walter Hickel.

He stepped off the boat in Alaska in 1940 with 37 cents in his pocket and is now one of the most influential and wealthiest people in the state, detouring along the way to serve as both the second and eighth governors of Alaska and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.

 

How he got here is a tale of youthful naiveté mixed with a lot of luck, grit, integrity and the history of construction in southcentral Alaska.

After winning the Golden Gloves boxing tournament in his home state of Kansas, he fought his way west, eventually beating the California champion. Afterward, he decided he wanted to go to Australia and went to see a travel agent. When asked for his passport, Hickel said, “Where do I buy one?” After it was explained that he had to apply for one and it would take some time, he asked where he could go without one. Among nearly a dozen options were the Panama Canal Zone, Hawaii and Alaska. He chose Alaska.

“I didn’t have any money,” Hickel said. So he ended up sleeping in a hammock in the engine room of a steamer bound for Alaska. Seven days out of Seattle he looked outside and saw Prince William Sound. He then looked up at the great Wrangell Mountains and said, “You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.”

Ashore, “one guy gave me a sleeping bag,” explaining that it was cold at night. Another, who didn’t speak English, handed him $10. That was enough to buy breakfast and rail passage to Anchorage. The following year on a street in Anchorage, Hickel ran into the fellow who gave him the money and pressed a $20 bill into his hands.

Hickel did not simply leap into the construction business in Alaska. It was winter in Alaska, he was broke, and the first job he could find was washing dishes at Richmond’s Café for $4 a day. Later a newfound friend found him a position as the helper to the head boilermaker at the Alaska Railroad. In those days he slept on the floor of an empty cabin on 5th Avenue in what is now downtown Anchorage.

Construction
His first construction project was building a house for himself and his wife, Ermalee, on 15th and E in Anchorage. That went well enough that he built five more houses behind what is now Chilkoot Charlie’s, launching his career in construction.

Hickel believes you “win with ideas,” and he had to be pretty creative in finding the means to build the five houses. The land owner wanted $500 each for the lots, and Hickel agreed to the price, but only if the land owner would allow the houses to be built before being paid. “After I had the houses built, I could get a mortgage,” he said, and that’s how he put together the deal that launched his career.

He would later go on to build 250 or more houses in the Turnagain subdivision using the same means of financing the land purchases.

According to Hickel, “You’ve got to have a vision beyond tomorrow. Vision is more powerful than money.

“I’ve always believed that,” Hickel continued. “That’s why I built the Hotel Captain Cook after the earthquake.”

The decision to build the Captain Cook and its subsequent construction remain Hickel’s most cherished memory. As he tells it, after the earthquake there was total confusion bordering on panic in Anchorage, and people were running around hastily making plans to move the entire city. A couple of days after the earthquake, Hickel called a press conference in downtown Anchorage where the hotel now stands and stepped up to the microphone.

“I came down here without a plan and announced that I was going to build tower number one of the Captain Cook Hotel, and it will open in June of next year,” Hickel said. “And I built it, and that’s all there is to that story.”

Actually there’s a whole lot more to the story. His vision and willingness to risk his reputation on Anchorage’s first high-rise hotel in the days immediately following the earthquake settled things down a lot. The city stayed in place and rebuilt itself bigger and better than before.

Beyond that, Hickel also notes that people everywhere were willing to help him after he got going on the construction of the first tower. “I got started that summer and the world helped me out,” is how he describes it. “If I needed something, they helped me.” 

Politics
Within two years, his hat was in the ring for governor of the state on the Republican ticket. He would replace his longtime friend, Democrat Bill Egan, in Juneau in late 1966.

Describing why he ran for governor, Hickel noted that, “Alaska is a unique country.” He outlines how the state’s constitutional convention thought so and provided the governor with more power than any other state in the union. He believes he used that power for the betterment of the state and its people.

“I ran and got elected, and that’s how I got the owner state going,” he said.

All of the oil companies had abandoned the Slope, except Atlantic Richfield, by the time Hickel took office. The new governor flew to Prudhoe Bay with Harry Jamison, Atlantic Richfield’s chief exploration geologist. When Jamison said that his company, too, was going to leave the Slope, Hickel threatened him, “You drill or I will.” This got the attention of Robert O. Anderson, president of the company, and the drilling proceeded. That well hit the largest oil province in North America.

Halfway through Hickel’s first term term as governor, newly elected President Richard Nixon persuaded Hickel to become Secretary of the Interior by telling him he would never get the oil pipeline otherwise. In just under two years, Hickel launched dozens of programs to improve the national energy picture and address the awakening environmental movement. These programs were detailed in his national bestseller “Who Owns America?” He also laid the groundwork for the pipeline legislation that was ultimately signed into law in 1973. Construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline began in earnest the following year.

Commons
These days Hickel tends to direct his thinking at a more global level. He sees the resources of the world as held more in common than by individuals or businesses. He uses the term commons to say that most of the world, 84 percent by his calculations, is not owned by individuals or business entities but by governments, the political extensions of the people.

“Our economy should be developed for the region’s people,” Hickel says. “The whole Arctic is rich, but the reason they [business and industry] don’t want to develop it is that they don’t own it.”

In Hickel’s view, Russia and China “get it” because they view resources for the benefit of the whole, not for the health of a single company.

“If you manage the commons for the benefit of the region’s people,” he says, “you can eliminate poverty from this earth. The reality of who owns the world is in the commons, but the United States doesn’t understand it yet.”

In typical Hickel fashion, which almost always manages to upset some people, he also supports what Russia did a few months back when his friend Arthur Chilingarov planted a flag on the floor of the Arctic Ocean and claimed the land for itself. To his way of thinking, this woke up the world to the riches in the Arctic.

Hickel has never been too concerned that others might find his ideas a little strange, and he has on more than one occasion given his detractors cause to eat their words.

Not slowing down
Now 89, Hickel still bubbles over with ideas and energy … and a lot of frustration with the press because they “don’t get it,” and with the United States’ attitude toward business and the economy.

“I like business. I’ve made money in business,” Hickel said, “but you’ve got to understand the limits of business.” Here again he dives back into his belief in the commons and the actual ownership of the earth’s resources. He carries this thinking about the commons even farther and applies it to outer space as well.

 

He presents this view of the world at meetings of Commonwealth North, the organization he and the late Bill Egan founded decades ago to promote northern resources and ideas around the world. As governor, he also founded the Northern Forum in which membership is extended to people from any country with lands north of the 60th parallel of latitude. Hickel has a polar projection map on his wall highlighting that part of the world and is perhaps most animated when he discusses the potential of the resources in the Arctic.

As for himself and looking ahead to the next 20 years, Hickel says, “When I get to heaven, I’m going to tell St. Peter, ‘if you don’t have a spot for me, send me back. I’m not through yet.’”