A toast to Alaska, and some of her heroes

June 30, 1958. The United States Senate passes the Alaska Statehood Act, ending Alaska's 42-year fight to pin its star to Old Glory.

"WE'RE IN" The Anchorage Daily Times proclaimed, with a Page One headline 5 inches tall.

Alaska celebrated. Sirens screamed from the fjord towns of Southeastern Alaska to Arctic villages basking in the midnight sun. Bonfires blazed in Anchorage and Fairbanks. There were parades, songs and prayers.

In Fairbanks, my hometown, a boyhood pal lifted his .44 Magnum from its holster, aimed high and pumped a couple of rounds into the summer sky.

The 207th Infantry Battalion of the Alaska National Guard topped that by firing a 49-gun salute, 49 for the 49th state.

I almost wept with happiness when I heard the news about the statehood victory.

I was remembering the times our Alaska family shuffled through an immigration line when we flew into Seattle from the Territory of Alaska.

"We're being treated like second-class citizens," my father grumbled.

True. Alaskans back then couldn't even vote in presidential elections. They were limited to having a nonvoting delegate in Congress. Their governor was appointed by the president, and the "boss" of Alaska was an unpleasant secretary of the interior named Harold L. Ickes. Ickes once suggested that Alaska be set aside as a penal colony.

"But we were given the privilege of paying federal income taxes," my dad said. "Taxation without representation."

Statehood was the solution. But hopes were slim. Outside interests, especially the Seattle-based canned-salmon industry, fiercely opposed statehood. Federal bureaucrats allowed canneries in Alaska to block the mouths of salmon-spawning streams with "take all you want" fish traps. Also opposed to statehood were bigots in Congress who feared the future influence of Alaska's (and Hawaii's) native peoples.

The struggle began back in 1916 when James Wickersham, Alaska's delegate to Congress, introduced the first statehood bill. No action was taken. It would be June 30, 1958, before the Senate approved a new Alaska Statehood Act, and it was Jan. 3, 1959, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the official statehood proclamation.

(Statehood for Hawaii, the 50th state, followed in August 1959.)

Alaska historians have documented the chapter-by-chapter campaign for Alaska statehood in meticulous detail. But most didn't write enough about my heroes.

I begin with Ernest Gruening, a former territorial governor of Alaska, later, along with E.L. "Bob" Bartlett, to be one of the state of Alaska's first U.S. senators.

Gruening, brilliant and sometimes abrasive, came into the country in 1939 as an uninvited, appointed governor in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. At first he was branded by many Alaskans as a carpetbagger. That changed when he helped lead Alaska through the tense World War II years (with Japanese forces occupying the outer Aleutian Islands) and later became a champion of statehood.

He despised Interior Secretary Ickes, and the feeling was mutual. Gruening also detested outside-Alaska capitalists and federal bureaucrats who he believed were strangling Alaska.

"They treat Alaska as an unwanted stepchild," he said.

Interviews with Gruening were great fun, like verbal sparring matches with a favorite professor. I miss the old warrior.

Ernest Gruening died in 1974. At his request, his ashes were scattered over a mountain near Juneau in his beloved Alaska.

Next up: Robert B. "Bob" Atwood, the late editor and publisher of The Anchorage Daily Times.

The affable journalist promoted Alaska statehood for more than 20 years, with a grand total of 250 or so editorials. He also served as chairman of the Alaska Statehood Committee, organized by the Territorial Legislature to lead the statehood effort both inside and outside Alaska.

Atwood and Gruening were present in the White House Cabinet room on the momentous morning in 1959 when President Eisenhower signed the Alaska statehood proclamation.

"Now, you're in," Ike said with a grin as he handed Atwood one of the pens used to sign the document.

I'll never forget the time we traveled through the Soviet Union with Atwood and other Alaskans in the early 1970s. We were in Siberia, at Lake Baikal, for a reception arranged by our Soviet hosts.

There were cheerful toasts with Champagne and wine. Atwood stood to respond for our group.

"We were delighted to purchase Alaska from Russia in 1867," he teased. "Now we would like to make an offer for Siberia."

The Russians were not amused.

Bob Atwood died in 1997, still promoting Alaska as the center of the world and Anchorage as the hub of Alaska.

Another of my statehood stars was William A. "Bill" Egan, the first elected governor of the new state of Alaska.

The soft-spoken, Alaska-born grocer from Valdez was an unlikely hero. Egan eased into the spotlight at the outset of the 1955-56 Alaska Constitutional Convention when he was elected president of the convention. Hopeful Alaskans, 55 delegates in all, gathered on the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, campus to write a pre-statehood constitution.

Later, with the statehood victory, Egan was elected governor.

One of his first acts was to abolish the hated fish traps.

I was in Juneau, on assignment for The Seattle Times, in June 1959 when I decided to call on the governor.

Egan was at work in his third-floor office in the state Capitol. I noticed a fresh 49-star flag behind his desk.

"Bill (Alaskans and their political leaders customarily are on a first-name basis), would you come down to the Capitol steps with that flag so I can take a photo?" I didn't want to tell him that I couldn't afford flash gear for my camera.

"Gladly," he replied.

And there, in bright sunshine, Egan unfurled the flag of the new state and posed for a photograph that I still treasure.

"She's a real beauty," Egan said of the 49-star flag.

Egan died in 1984. Most of the other Constitutional Convention delegates are gone, too.

It has been an eventful 50 years for Alaska:

The Good Friday earthquake (1964), discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay (1967), the Fairbanks flood (1967), settlement of the Alaska Natives' aboriginal land claims (1971), first delivery of crude oil from the North Slope to Valdez through the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline (1977), the Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989), election of Sarah Palin as Alaska's first female governor (2006), blossoming of the Alaska travel industry (with more than 1.5 million visitors last year) ...

Among my keepsakes is a 1959 cartoon from The New Yorker. It depicts three Eskimos in an igloo (Alaska doesn't have igloos) gathered around a seal-oil lamp and toasting Alaska statehood with an adult beverage.

The caption: "Here's to the biggest and best damn state in the Union."

Cheers!

Happy birthday, Alaska.

Alaska-born Stanton H. Patty is a retired assistant travel editor of The Seattle Times.