Theodore Fulton Stevens (born November 18, 1923) is a former United States Senator from Alaska, serving from December 24, 1968, until January 3, 2009. Stevens was President pro tempore in the 108th and 109th Congresses from January 3, 2003, to January 3, 2007. Stevens is the longest-serving Republican senator in history (Strom Thurmond, who might otherwise have held this title, was a Democrat until 1964) and 7th longest-serving senator in history. Stevens was Alaska's senior senator all but 10 days of his tenure. Stevens was replaced as President pro tem by Robert Byrd assuming Byrd's previous honorary role of "President pro tempore emeritus." He is only the third Senator to hold the title of President pro tempore emeritus, having been preceded in this position by Byrd and Strom Thurmond.
Stevens served for six decades in the American public sector, beginning with his service in World War II. In the 1950s, he held senior positions in the Eisenhower Interior Department. He served continuously in the Senate since December 1968. He played key roles in legislation that shaped Alaska's economic and social development, including the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. He is also known for his sponsorship of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which resulted in the establishment of the United States Olympic Committee.
On July 29, 2008, Stevens was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts of failing to report gifts received from VECO Corporation and its CEO Bill Allen on his Senate financial disclosure forms, formally charged with violation of provisions of the Ethics in Government Act. Stevens pleaded not guilty and asserted his right to a speedy trial, which began on September 25 in Washington, DC, to have the opportunity to clear his name before the November election. On October 27, 2008, barely a week before the election, Stevens was found guilty on all seven counts. National Public Radio reported on April 1, 2009, that United States Attorney General Eric Holder, citing serious prosecutorial misconduct during the trial, decided to drop all charges against Stevens—an action that vacated his conviction.
During his trial, Stevens campaigned for re-election to his Senate seat. On November 4, 2008, eight days after his conviction, he lost the election to Democrat Mark Begich by 3,953 votes, a 1.24% margin. Stevens conceded defeat in a statement released the next day, making him the first U.S. senator from Alaska to be defeated in a general election and the longest-serving U.S. Senator ever to lose a re-election bid.
Early life and career
Childhood and youth
Stevens was born November 18, 1923, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the third of four children, in a small cottage built by his paternal grandfather after the marriage of his father, George A. Stevens, to Gertrude S. Chancellor. The family later lived in Chicago, where George Stevens was an accountant before the stock market crash of 1929 instigated the Great Depression, ending his job. Around this time, when Ted Stevens was six years old, his parents divorced, and Stevens and his three siblings went back to Indianapolis to live with their paternal grandparents, followed shortly thereafter by their father, who developed problems with his eyes and went blind for several years. Stevens' mother moved to California and sent for Stevens' siblings as she could afford to, but Stevens stayed in Indianapolis helping to care for his father and a mentally disabled cousin, Patricia Acker, who also lived with the family. The only adult in the household with a job was Stevens' grandfather. Stevens helped to support the family by working as a newsboy, and would later remember selling a lot of newspapers on March 1, 1932, when newspaper headlines blared the news of the Lindbergh kidnapping.
In 1934, Stevens' grandfather punctured a lung in a fall down a tall flight of stairs, contracted pneumonia, and died. Stevens' father, George, died in 1957 in Tulsa, OK, of lung cancer. Stevens and his cousin Patricia moved to Manhattan Beach, California to live with Patricia's mother, Gladys Swindells. Stevens attended Redondo Union High School, participating in extracurricular activities including working on the school newspaper and becoming a member of a student theater group, a service society affiliated with the YMCA, and, during his senior year, the lettermen's society. Stevens also worked at jobs before and after school, but also had time for surfing with his friend Russell Green, son of the president of Signal Gas and Oil Company, who remained a close friend through Stevens' life.
Military service
After graduation from high school in 1942, Stevens enrolled at Oregon State University to study engineering, attending for a semester. With World War II in progress, Stevens attempted to join the Navy and serve in Naval Aviation, but failed the vision exam. He corrected his vision through a course of prescribed eye exercises, and in 1943 he was accepted into a Army Air Force Air Cadet program at Montana State College. After scoring near the top of an aptitude test for flight training, Stevens was transferred to preflight training in Santa Ana, California and received his wings early in 1944. He went on to Bergstrom Field in Texas, where he trained to fly P-38s; but, because during the graduation ceremony a fellow graduate booed the colonel who delivered the graduation address, Stevens never flew a fighter in combat. Instead, he later recalled, "Suddenly we were copilots in a troop carrier squadron."
Stevens served in the China-Burma-India theater with the Fourteenth Air Force Transport Section, which supported the "Flying Tigers," from 1944 to 1946. He and other pilots in the transport section flew C-46 and C-47 transport planes, often without escort, mostly in support of Chinese units fighting the Japanese. Stevens received the Distinguished Flying Cross for flying behind enemy lines, the Air Medal, and the Yuan Hai Medal awarded by the Chinese Nationalist government. He was discharged from the Army Air Forces in March, 1946.
Higher education and law school
After the war, Stevens attended UCLA, where he earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1947. At UCLA he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Theta Rho chapter). He applied to law school at Stanford University and the University of Michigan, but on the advice of his friend Russell Green's father to "look East," he applied to Harvard Law School, which he ended up attending. Stevens' education was partly financed by the G.I. Bill; he made up the difference by borrowing money from an uncle, selling his blood, and working several jobs, including one as a bartender in Boston. During the summer of 1949, Stevens was a research assistant in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, now the Central District of California.
While at Harvard, Stevens wrote a paper on maritime law which received honorable mention for the Addison Brown prize, a Harvard Law School award made for the best essay by a student on a subject related to private international law or maritime law. The essay later became a Harvard Law Review article whose scholarship Justice Jay Rabinowitz of the Alaska Supreme Court praised 45 years later, telling the Anchorage Daily News in 1994 that the high court had issued a recent opinion citing the article. Stevens graduated from Harvard Law School in 1950.
Early legal career
After graduation, Stevens went to work in the Washington, D.C. law offices of Northcutt Ely. Twenty years previously Ely had been executive assistant to Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur during the Hoover administration, and by 1950 headed a prominent law firm specializing in natural resources issues. One of Ely's clients, Emil Usibelli, founder of the Usibelli Coal Mine in Healy, Alaska, was trying to sell coal to the military, and Stevens was assigned to handle his legal affairs.
Marriage and family
Early in 1952, Stevens married Ann Mary Cherrington, a Democrat and the adopted daughter of University of Denver chancellor Ben Mark Cherrington. She had graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and during Truman's administration had worked for the State Department.
On December 4, 1978, the crash of a Learjet 25C at Anchorage International Airport killed five people. Ted Stevens survived; his wife, Ann, did not. The building which houses the Alaska chapter of the American Red Cross at 235 East 8th Avenue in Anchorage is named the Ann Stevens Building in her honor.
Stevens and his first wife, Ann, had three sons, Ben, Walter, and Ted; and two daughters, Susan and Beth. Democratic Governor Tony Knowles appointed Ben to the Alaska Senate in 2001, and Ben served as the president of the state senate until the fall of 2006.
Ted Stevens remarried in 1980; he and his second wife, Catherine, have a daughter, Lily.
Stevens's current home in Alaska is in Girdwood, a ski resort community located within the extreme southern boundaries of Anchorage.
Prostate cancer
Stevens is a survivor of prostate cancer and has publicly disclosed his cancer. He was nominated for the first Golden Glove Awards for Prostate Cancer by the National Prostate Cancer Coalition (NPCC). He ad
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