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Alaska was last living framer of the state's constitution has died.

Vic Fischer was 99.

I do want to point out that participating in the Constitutional Convention was a fabulous way of being part of democracy and state.

Building.

His legacy in our state is huge.

We'll hear about some of his major accomplishments as we honor Vic Fischer tonight on Alaska INSIGHT.

In.

Good evening.

Alaska has lost one of the people who helped build the state's foundational ideals.

Vic Fischer was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that paved the way for statehood.

He helped communities across the state plan their future.

He was a champion of equity, civil rights and free speech.

Tonight, we're going to review Vic Fisher's life and work and the impact his legacy will continue to have long into the future of our state.

I'm joined by a Jane Angvik, Vic's partner in so much work throughout Alaska and his wife of 42 years.

Thank you so much for being here, especially on such a difficult week.

Thank you.

I'm really proud to be here to talk about Vic.

That's fantastic.

Thank you, Jane.

And also with us this evening is Charles Wohlforth.

Charles is a former Anchorage Daily News reporter and columnist.

He's written several books about Alaska and helped Vic Fischer write his memoir, called To Russia With Love.

Charles also served two terms on the Anchorage Assembly.

Charles, welcome.

Thanks also for being with us this evening.

Thank you.

In a life as productive as Vic Fischers, there's a lot to discuss.

Let's start off with some of his own words.

He came to Alaska in 1950 after serving in the Army during World War Two.

After that service and his earlier years in the Lower 48, he saw raw opportunity in Alaska, but felt the territory should move toward statehood.

While I was still in Wisconsin.

I had voted for president and voted for the United States Senator.

And I came to Alaska and Alaska was just wonderful in every way that I could think in terms of the physical and the human surroundings.

And I had everything except I was no longer a full fledged citizen of the United States.

The convention was organized in order to take a step forward toward becoming a state.

And so those of us who were active in the state movement ran for election.

And so amongst everybody at the Constitutional Convention was solidly for statehood, and the Constitution was a major and critical part of becoming a state of the United States.

It was one of the coldest winters we ever had in Alaska.

And we persevered and wrote what is probably the best constitution.

Look, all United States is very much like the United States Constitution in terms of being short and specific.

Laying out the foundation for the state.

Without going into a lot of detail, that would require changes and it will.

All right.

So good to start off with Vic's own words.

Jane, again, thank you for being here.

My sincere, sincere condolences.

And we really appreciate your time in reflecting on these comments that Vic just made about that event, the Constitutional Convention.

What did he talk about most from the those days?

It must have been such an exciting time in Alaska.

He did say it was perhaps the most thrilling activity.

He was engaged in when it comes to political and government life.

Because you're creating new things.

And from his perspective, Article one section one of the Constitution talks about not only the rights that you have.

It then says comma, and you have corresponding responsibilities to the state and to your community.

And for him, I'd say his life was largely measured at trying to encourage people to participate in their government.

And at the very least, they had to vote.

I heard him several times tell individuals who said, I hate government, I don't vote.

And he said, Well, then I don't have to talk to you because you don't count.

You don't count.

You're not using the tool that we gave you to be engaged in in the government.

Yeah, counting yourself out.

Actually, Charles, when you think about the politics of today and and what Alaskans of differing political ideologies accomplished in the 1950s, what really stands out to you about that?

Well, it's a it's a complex question because Alaska was so different in those days.

We can talk about there being amazing consensus around the Constitution and the work that Vic was doing, but it didn't really include the native community, which was something that became very important to Vic as someone who helped birth the AFL in the 1960s.

But I think in terms of when we think of our Republican and Democratic partizanship and the things that pull us apart, those things were present in those days.

But when it came to statehood, there was quite a common goal and folks pulled together and all had a common belief that they were Americans and they wanted to be full Americans and the convention that happened in Fairbanks in 1955 was really a unique moment where politics was set aside and people who really cared about Alaska thought through what the problems would be for the creation of this new state.

It set a plan which has been held up as a model as it is a very perfect constitution and very had a huge part of that.

The news and the debates were heated and people worked really hard, but in the end they pulled together and there was only one delegate who who was ultimately opposed.

They all supported it.

And and I think they all went forward through life thinking of it as one of their greatest accomplishments.

Well, against that backdrop, did he ever express any regrets about any part of it?

Did.

Did he say through the years that he wished maybe some parts would have been changed or worded differently?

Were there elements of it that he thought could have been done better?

Yeah, there are definitely things that could have been done better, but the Constitution had an amendment system which has been used a number of times and has been further perfected through the years.

And that goes back to the basic philosophy of the Constitution, which is something Vic talked about a lot and which relates to what Jane was talking about just now, about responsibility.

And that was he believed and I think the other delegates believed, that the Constitution should be very open ended, which should set up a structure for how Alaskans would govern themselves.

But it wouldn't pre make decisions.

It would be up to each generation as it came along to understand the problems of Alaska and take responsibility for them and solve them in their own way.

And that was the inherent optimism that Vic Fischer brought to the Constitution.

It was a belief in people and a belief that they really can come together and solve their problems if they love Alaska and if they want to do what's right.

And I think he died with that belief, even though there have been some very frustrating times and some real reasons to wonder if that is going to work.

But inherently, I think he thought there's no way people in the past could look, you know, 80 years into the future and see what was needed.

That would be up to us.

And it is up to us because of the Constitution.

They wrote.

Thank you for that.

Jane, when you and I talked the other day, you mentioned his values, written in his words.

In the first few pages of his memoir To Russia With Love.

You have a copy of it with you today.

Tell us about those values that helped him shape his work and and on the Constitution and also across the state.

These are his values for life, and they apply to all the pieces of his life that he got to work with.

But first and foremost, here is a man who believed in in the rights of people to be able to represent themselves and their individual rights of individuals.

And he was opposed to all forms of discrimination.

He hated bullies.

And he didn't think that there was any room in in the government structure for the government to serve as a bully.

He needs to make sure there's a two way conversation.

He was also really dedicated to those without power.

He devoted most of his time to making sure that people who were without, who were poor, who were discriminated against, who were in any way harmed because of discrimination, that there would be a step up for them to do that.

To that end, he was really devoted to making sure that the public education system in Alaska would provide equal access to education for everyone in the state.

Thank you for helping us better understand his strong feelings about equity and that such a, you know, a topic today as well that as we're seeing in so many places, so that that life of service in that regard is so important.

Charles, you worked with Vic for three or four years on his memoir.

It was published in 2012.

It's my understanding that he wasn't really enthusiastic about writing a memoir initially anyway, So writing is always difficult, maybe even more challenging with a partner.

Talk about how the two of you worked together and what he most wanted people to take away from this book.

Well, the reason why Vic wasn't that enthusiastic about writing a memoir and he took many, many years of convincing by Jane and by many friends and family members was because he simply did not have a big ego.

Most people who write a book about their own lives just are egotistical.

And what does everybody know about them?

And Vic was not it did not have these narcissistic qualities that are so common a politician.

The other aspect that made him reluctant was he really liked to think about the future and he really liked to be with people.

And writing a book, especially one that's a memoir, is about thinking about the past, and it's about sitting in a room all by yourself.

And so those are two things that are totally opposite from his personality.

So he tried because everyone told him he should do it, and he made very little progress.

And that's when Jane and Vic approached me because I had written books previously.

I'd done one with a governor while he recalled one with Dave Rose.

And I've done more since then and said, you know, can you help us?

And so we did.

And it turned out to be just a wonderful, delightful, fulfilling experience for both of us, because essentially he would tell me the stories.

I would put them on the page and then he would work with that language and make sure it was his own.

And it took a long time.

We did, I think, 130 interviews, many of them hours and hours long, and we talked about it basically every step of his life, much of which obviously most of which never made it into the book.

But the process of talking and then going back and forth with the words until they were right.

And and in the end, I think he was really glad that he'd done it.

And it was very well received.

I think people think it really did reflect and stay with you for a moment.

Charles, in in the lead up to last year's vote and the tenure vote and holding another constitutional convention, in speaking with Vic about that, he was quite opposed to that convention happening, but he said that he wasn't absolutely opposed, as you referenced earlier, to having another constitutional convention.

He said it shouldn't be a document that just sits on a shelf somewhere.

But he felt now wasn't the time.

What did he have to say specifically about why he felt like it wasn't a good time to do so now?

Well, I think Jane would have more to say about that than I do, because she was super involved in that campaign.

But in general, I think he felt there was a mechanism there, too, mechanisms for amending the Alaskan constitution.

One is by amendment and the other is by custom constitutional convention.

And the big risk of having a constitutional convention in a time of great division and disagreement is you started legislating in the Constitution and determining for all of Alaska's future issues.

It really should be decided, you know, at the in the let in the legislature and in the ongoing process of politics.

So I don't think many Alaskans like the idea of suddenly opening this can of worms and letting people go and fight over what was going to be in the Constitution and have that be sort of our permanent document.

But I would really defer to Jane, because she did yeoman's work on that on that issue.

Yes, please.

Jane, what what's what did he was he most troubled about in this recent round?

He was very concerned about the divisiveness and the and the rhetoric associated with having a difference of opinion.

So he thought that the community of Alaska was so divided and so entrenched, which is so different from the situation that they were in in 1955.

But he believes strongly that we had the power, as, as Charles said, to amend and we have amended the Constitution.

Many times.

We amended it to create the permanent fund.

We amended the Constitution to provide for the privacy provision in the Constitution.

We have the ability to change it.

And that then provides the guarantee that the citizens still have a right to be able to do it.

He was just concerned that the angry conversation, the angry concerns of some factions in Alaska would would just harm the structure of the government.

Was this too heated a time to hold another convention?

Vics early years in Germany and Russia cemented his beliefs regarding equality, anti-racism and personal liberty, and especially his strong feelings about capital punishment.

Let's hear from him again.

I've had sort of a, you might say, public interest as well as individual interest in me making life better for the community, for your society, and in part, it's been to overcome the evils that I have seen and to strengthen the positive things that a human being can be to seeing the state in Germany killing Germans in Russia on this Stalin, killing a million people on more than one occasion, the state killing its own people.

And I just didn't didn't I couldn't stand that happening in Alaska.

I was elected to the last territorial legislature that met in 1957.

And my most important contribution was being the coauthor of the repeal of the Death Penalty in Alaska, which were which was very important to me.

And based on my abhorrence of the power of the state to kill its citizens, as I had seen in Germany and in Russia.

So, Jane, about 27 states and the federal government still have the death penalty.

A Pew Research study from 2021 found that more than 60% of Americans favor it for murder, even though nearly 80% are concerned about the risk that innocent people may be put to death.

Was Vic mainly opposed to the idea of governments having lethal power over their citizens, or was it more about the fairness and who ends up getting death sentences?

I think both.

And that he is really opposed to to having the state have the right to kill people.

We have a we do have the right to remove people from society who are a harm potential, you know, risk of harm for other people and they can go to jail and stay there.

But he did think that if you looked at most of the statistics about who was the victim of who became who was killed by that process, there were many, many, many people who were the vast majority were of minority race or and the majority were poor.

And so if you were poor and black or Alaska native in Alaska, those are the people who were put to death by the state.

And he found that that the process is unfair to the least of our brethren.

Anything to follow up there, Charles?

No, I think that's exactly right.

And, you know, he was involved in that that very early stage and not that many people had been executed, but they had essentially all of the people of color with Warren Taylor, who was his comrade in legislature, who was a lawyer, who represented a lot of those people and knew the cases and made one of the greatest speeches ever at the legislature winning that.

But then they didn't give up.

I mean, he didn't say like, okay, we won that, don't worry about it anymore.

He stayed involved, you know, from that day in the late 1950s until his death just Sunday, continuing to fight that issue.

And every time it came up, he was there to talk about it.

And, you know, I will miss him a lot as a dear friend and a wonderful man, but I also miss him as an incredible voice for that.

You know, that that voice of of the such deep ethical commitment and the voice of history, which would still reach us every time these issues come up and remind us of what was right, you know, his God.

And that's and that's what's very sad.

Charles His accomplishments in building Alaska are so numerous as we've been talking about in the sixties, he happened to get a high level appointment in Washington, D.C., and that aided in rebuilding South central Alaska after the 1964 earthquake.

Tell us about that.

That's right.

Well, Vic had had worked in housing and urban renewal.

He had a degree in urban planning from M.I.T.

and he was very well connected politically, obviously, and having been in the Constitution convention in the legislature.

So he received this appointment in the John Kennedy administration and stayed in the Johnson administration, high up in the housing department, had a different name than it does now.

Essentially, the housing urban development is what it's called now.

And he was in that position when the great Alaska earthquake hit in 1964 and was called to the White House to attend a cabinet meeting, although he wasn't yet a cabinet member with President Johnson and flew on Air Force One and in fact slept in the president's bed on the way to Alaska on the very first visit of federal officials to Anchorage to see what had happened.

And then for the next year, he was intimately involved in rebuilding housing, which was very challenging thing.

If you think about all the homes that were destroyed, it still had mortgages.

You know, if you think about your home being destroyed right now and the house is gone, you still you still owe the money to the bank.

You know, you need another house.

So the federal government had to step in a lot of money to be spent.

The old, old construction had to be destroyed.

In the case of Valdez, a whole new town had to be built, a new location, extraordinarily complex in the fact that it was able to be done so rapidly was a credit to Vic and many others.

Obviously, it wasn't wasn't only his doing, it was really in terms of American history, really significant because it was the first time when the federal government took total responsibility for a disaster.

Prior to that, Americans really didn't think it was the federal government's job to come in and fix a major natural disaster.

It was a state job.

It was a local job.

This was too big for the locals.

And President Johnson decided to nationalize it.

And really, now that's our complete expectation.

If there's a disaster, we always think it's the federal government's job.

Yeah, such a big transformation.

And today we see the need to across the nation.

He was the director of the University of Alaska's Institute of Social and Economic Research, and as you mentioned earlier, even had a hand in helping the formation of the Alaska Federation of Natives, AFN.

How in the world did that come about?

He had that many.

Go ahead.

Well, go ahead, Jane So, anyway, I couldn't tell if you were looking at me or Charles.

So I say that he had been working with the with a lot of rural communities in Alaska and had the opportunity to see what kind of opportunities existed.

And he became a good friend with the people who were doing the Tundra Times newspaper and Howard Rock was a person who was doing that, and they were very good friends about what we could do together to try to create a way that all the Alaska native people who were far flung, but without cell phones, without computers, without any communications structure that would allow people to come together.

So he was really engaged in trying to get that happen through through the Tundra times.

So amazing, all these accomplishments, his work in the legislature, Jane, he was elected to two Senate terms as an Anchorage Democrat in the 1980s.

What was his working relationship like with politicians from across the aisle?

He worked with anybody that would work on a project that he was engaged in, so he could easily work across the aisle because, again, the partizan nature of the state, even at that time, was not as divided as it is today.

He was very good at making sure that that if there was a pride at the time the pipeline was completed in the state, started receiving billions of dollars, which was a very different situation than what had been before.

So there was opportunities to build infrastructure, to build roads and highways and ports, but there was also opportunity to build social infrastructure.

So, for example, when it came to domestic violence, he he created a bill that allowed domestic violence shelters to be built in 12 communities.

Those were people from across the state.

So in across those those party lines as well.

Thank you so much, both of you, for being here this evening.

Alaska owes much to the decades of vision, hard work and dedication of Vic Fisher.

We're going to give Mr. Fischer the final word tonight.

Participate, be involved, be stand up for democracy, fight discrimination wherever you see it.

And above, above all, be a participant in your state in your community.

Vote.

Always vote.