[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 64 (Thursday, May 1, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5645-S5646]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                          RALPH KRISKA PERDUE

 Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I honor a pillar of the 
Fairbanks business community and a respected Athabaskan Elder, Ralph 
Kriska Perdue, who passed on early Tuesday morning at the age of 73. I 
doubt that most folks in Interior Alaska knew his real age. You see, 
for years Ralph's wife, Dorothy, conducted a 39th birthday sale, every 
Christmas, at the family store, Perdue's Jewelers.
  Ralph was born on December 16, 1929 in the village of Koyukuk on the 
Yukon River. He became interested in making jewelry around 1946 and in 
1961 opened a jewelry store in downtown Fairbanks. Ralph was a 
determined individual. He once told a reporter for the Fairbanks Daily 
News-Miner, ``To me, there is satisfaction that something is done the 
way it should be done, whether it's a piece of jewelry or anything that 
confronts me.'' The Fairbanks economy has experienced booms and busts, 
but Perdue's Jewelers has grown and prospered.
  Ralph will be remembered in Interior Alaska for many things. A bridge 
between the Native community and the broader community, he served for 6 
years as president of the Tanana Chiefs Conference and as a member of 
the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly and the Fairbanks North Star 
Borough School Board.
  He will be dearly remembered as the father of the Fairbanks Native 
Association, which he helped found in 1963. Today, the Fairbanks Native 
Association has an annual operating budget of about $13 million and a 
workforce of

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300 people. It provides a variety of social services to the people of 
Fairbanks, including a very successful regional alcoholism treatment 
center, which was appropriately named the ``Ralph Perdue Center.''
  Annette Freiburger, executive director of the Fairbanks Native 
Association (FNA), is quoted in the News-Miner as follows, ``Ralph has 
always served as a guide and inspiration for FNA. We recognized him as 
our FNA chief, the only chief we have in Fairbanks.''
  Ralph was also the devoted father of Karen Perdue Bettisworth, the 
distinguished former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Health 
and Social Services, and of Mona Perdue Jones. I extend to Dorothy, to 
Karen and to Mona, my deepest condolences and I join with the Fairbanks 
community in extending my appreciation to the late Chief Ralph Kriska 
Perdue for a job well done.

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