Part of growing up in a political family with a man who was a workaholic was I didn't know my father.
Until I was nearly 12, I grew up with a man who was a legend, the son of Croatian immigrants, but who disappeared Oct. 16, 1972, into the clouds. No trace of him was ever found. My father, U.S. congressman Nick Begich, was critical in the 1971 passage of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
In 1960, I was born in the old Anchorage hospital, the third child of Nick and Pegge Begich.
My dad grew up in the Mesabi Iron Range in Eveleth, Minn., where his father, John Begich, spent his life working in the iron ore mines.
My grandfather, John Begich, was born in 1893 in Podlapaca, Croatia, a country without a history for strong democratic institutions, in an area of the 20th century's worst genocide in Yugoslavia's recent wars.
After growing up in an impoverished 19th-century village whose survival depended on backbreaking farming, my grandfather, armed with an eighth-grade education, left Croatia in 1911 to join his brother in Minnesota.
He found work and his wife in the Iron Range, and they raised three sons and a daughter. The youngest, my father, Nick, was born in 1932. His older brothers worked in the mines, but Nick was destined for the books.
Eleven years after Dad was born, the mine, mill and smelter workers were allowed to finally organize openly, and Dad was introduced to the world of politics and debate.
During World War II, my grandfather lost most of his relatives back home to Tito's partisans, causing him to hate communists and always support an independent Croatia. Granddad's sympathetic friend, American-Croatian politician John Blatnick, greatly influenced my father when he was only 8 years old. Blatnick encouraged my dad to go to college and to consider politics.
In high school, my father, excelled in everything from sports to academics, accumulated a year of college credit and enrolled at the local teachers college in St. Cloud. He pushed so hard that he got his bachelor's degree in three years, graduating with a cum laude degree in history and political science. While teaching high school, he got his master's degree two years later and worked on his doctorate until he died. A member of the Farmer Labor Young Democrats, he supported Hubert Humphrey for his second term in the U.S. Senate.
As a teacher, Dad's plans for a Minnesota political life changed when he fell in love with a former student. In 1956, Dad's mentor, Hubert Humphrey, got Dad a job in Anchorage, where he could jump-start his political career. He moved, and that winter he returned to Minnesota to marry the student, my mom.
LOBBYING FOR TEACHERS
In 1957 they drove up the highway to Anchorage, where my father pursued his career as a teacher and politician. He always believed that an educated population was critical to Alaska's success.
In 1960, as principal of the elementary school at Fort Richardson, Dad was elected president of the Alaska Principals Association. As he fought for the next two years for teachers, he was still naive about public service. He believed people naturally served altruistically. He was aggressive about politics and didn't understand compromise.
That same year I was born, Dad decided to run for state Senate. He went to union leaders for backing, but they really used him to pressure other Democrats who were in office. Taking advantage of his ambition, they convinced him to run against an incumbent. Though he lost the primary, the incumbent was weakened and lost the seat in the general election. Determined to be his own man, Dad realized he must create his own base and turned to the Alaska Education Association, for which he lobbied.
A key to Dad's lifelong success was the 3-by-5-inch cards on which he recorded the names of everyone he met, their personal information and their issues. He opted for public exposure and became a more professional, streamlined Nick Begich. In 1963, Dad became the superintendent of the Fort Richardson schools and the youngest-ever elected state senator, with a district of 1,200 miles and including one-fourth of the state's population. By long distance during legislative sessions, he supervised the Fort Rich schools and taught classes at the University of Alaska.
Already a father of three, Nichelle, Nick and me, he announced his second candidacy for the Senate the year his fourth child, Mark, was born in 1962.
STUMPING FOR CONGRESS
Part of growing up in a political family with a man who was a workaholic was I didn't know my father. In those days, the legislative session was unlimited, and although the Democrats dominated, they were often not aligned and sessions could stretch into mid-June. My dad would drive to Juneau in January and not return for almost six months.
Before reapportionment made invalid the previous geographic-based Senate districts, Dad's district was enormous, stretching from Spenard to Adak. During the summer he campaigned, and throughout our summer, Mom and we six kids drove, visiting relatives in the Lower 48. Sometimes Dad joined us.
At home, Dad had an inner sanctum that was off limits to us kids. Today it seems kind of funny: Old photos show only a rundown teacher's office with jury-rigged shelves lined with books, most of which I now own. One of my first memories was when he invited me in and showed me headlines of John Kennedy's assassination.
Throughout his years in the state Senate, Dad won 23 of 24 listed goals for teachers. By the time his Senate career finished, Alaska's teachers drew the nation's top salaries and benefits.
Alaska traditionally voted Democratic, but in 1966 we elected a Republican governor, Walter Hickel, and a Republican-dominated Legislature. U.S. Sen. Ernest Gruening, a Democrat, was 79. In 1968, Hickel appointed Republican Ted Stevens to replace Sen. Bob Bartlett, a Democrat, who had just died.
In 1968, Nixon ran against Dad's mentor, Hubert Humphrey, and Dad ran for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House against John Rader. Dad's teacher-based Democrats beat Rader.
Early on, Dad hadn't realized others played hardball, but he learned and built his own organization. He forged together the teachers and the Native Democrats and defeated Egan's establishment Democrats. In the general election, however, the nation went for Nixon and Dad lost to the Republican Party's Howard Pollock.
Throughout 1960, '62, '66 and '68 (and later, 1970), Dad campaigned. When he ran for Congress, he campaigned statewide, not just in his Senate district. My Dad's obsession with work finally triggered my mother to file for divorce in 1969. Devastated, Dad offered to leave politics. Mom left us kids with him, spent the summer in Minnesota and returned in the fall supporting a Nick Begich who had discovered there was more to life than political pursuits.
Next week: Fatal flight.
Judy Ferguson is a publisher as well as a freelance columnist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. She is the author of Alaska histories "Parallel Destinies" and "Blue Hills" and the children's books "Alaska's Secret Door" and "Alaska's Little Chief." Her Web site is www.alaska-highway.org/delta/outpost.
