[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 51 (Thursday, March 26, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2049-S2050]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. MURKOWSKI (for herself and Mr. Sullivan):
  S. 873. A bill to designate the wilderness within the Lake Clark 
National Park and Preserve in the State of Alaska as the Jay S. Hammond 
Wilderness Area; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation to 
rename a wilderness area in my home state of Alaska in honor of 
Alaska's fourth Governor, Jay S. Hammond. I am pleased that I am joined 
in sponsoring this bill by my Alaska colleague, Senator Dan Sullivan.
  Jay Hammond is truly one of the unique figures in Alaska history. In 
a state with many unique statesmen, Hammond is truly worthy of honor. A 
New Yorker who first studied petroleum engineering at Penn State, he 
became a Marine fighter pilot who fought in World War II in the 
Pacific/China with the famed Black Sheep Squadron. After the war he 
found life on the East Coast too confining and flew an old plane to 
Alaska in 1946, never looking back. Initially a pilot to ``Bush'', 
remote rural parts of Alaska, he worked as a trapper, wildlife guide 
and laborer before heading back to college to gain a degree in 
biological sciences in 1949 from the University of Alaska.
  He then went to work as a wildlife biologist and hunter for the U.S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service. By 1950 after conducting some of the first 
swan studies in northern Alaska, Jay Hammond was transferred to 
Southwest Alaska where he conducted predator/prey studies on Alaska 
Peninsula caribou, flew fisheries enforcement flights out of Dillingham 
Alaska, and fell in love with Lake Clark and its surrounding 
wilderness, a 45-mile lake on the west side of Aleutian Range that he 
would call home, besides a setnet salmon site at Naknek, for nearly 55 
years.
  Mr. Hammond, upon Alaska entering the Union in 1959 ran and won 
election to the Alaska State House of Representatives as an 
independent, serving

[[Page S2050]]

three terms before redeclaring himself as a Republican and serving two 
terms in the state Senate. He then served as mayor of the Bristol Bay 
Borough from 1972 to 1974, after serving as the borough's manager in 
the 1960s and 1970s.
  Mr. Hammond then was drafted to run for Governor of Alaska in 1974, 
defeating the state's second Governor and former Secretary of the 
Interior Walter J. Hickel in the Republican Primary before defeating 
the state's first Governor William A Egan in the general election. It 
was an election dominated by Hammond's opposition to oil leasing in 
Southcentral's Kachemak Bay, concern over the State of Alaska's salmon 
fisheries and fear over the state over spending soon after the 
discovery of oil on Alaska's North Slope.
  Governor Hammond during his two terms oversaw construction of the 
Trans-Alaska oil Pipeline System, TAPS, championed creation of the 
Alaska Permanent Fund savings account, and was the author of the Alaska 
Permanent Fund Dividend program, which provides Alaskans a yearly 
dividend check from the interest earnings of the savings from a quarter 
of the State's petroleum revenues. He also won approval of a 
constitutional budget reserve that was intended to reduce State 
spending, and championed agricultural development in Interior Alaska. 
He also oversaw the state's purchase of the Alaska Railroad from the 
federal government.
  Hammond on environmental issues opposed construction of a proposed 
Ramparts hydroelectric dam on the Yukon River, supported the 
congressional creation of a 200-miles fisheries zone off the State's 
coast that improved state fishery stocks, oversaw creation of a state 
limited entry fisheries regime, oversaw the creation of the Nation's 
largest State park, the Wood Tikchik State Park in Southwest Alaska, 
which contains 1.6 million acres of wilderness, and worked with 
Congress and observed congressional passage of the Alaska National 
Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980 that replaced the designation 
of 120 million acres of Alaska into protected status under the federal 
Antiquities Act, while placing 104 million acres of new lands into 
national parks, preserves, refuges, monuments, wilderness and wild and 
scenic river classifications. The law added 5.5 million acres of 
wilderness in 14 units in national forests, added more than 40 million 
acres in 10 new units to national parks, including the 3.86 million-
acre Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, bringing to 54 million 
acres the total size of Federal park holdings in Alaska; added a number 
of new wildlife refuges in Alaska, bringing to 19 the number of refuges 
covering 76.8 million acres in the State; and created 13 wild and 
scenic rivers running 3,131 miles. The act created 57.9 million acres 
of formal wilderness in the State, Alaska containing about 60 percent 
of the nation's total formal wilderness.
  Mr. Hammond was also a talented and prolific writer and poet, 
presenting to the University of Alaska Library Archives an impressive 
collection of speeches, testimony, notebooks and papers. He also wrote 
several books on life in Alaska, led by his first book, ``Tales of 
Alaska's Bush Rat Governor.'' He died on Aug. 2, 2005, at age 83 in his 
sleep at his homestead near Port Alsworth, Alaska, having survived five 
plane crashes and innumerable close calls during his first flight to 
Alaska and in fighting a fire at his home at Lake Clark, and over the 
following 59 years in the State. He was survived by his wife, Bella and 
daughters Heidi and Dana.
  Jay Hammond was well-respected for reaching across the aisle to forge 
bipartisan alliances and enjoyed many close friendships with colleagues 
in both political parties and with his staff, who were deeply loyal to 
him. The designation of the 2.6 million acres of already created 
wilderness in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, where his 
homestead lies, will honor Jay Hammond and will be a fitting tribute to 
his honorable life and legacy, a man that the Anchorage Municipal 
Assembly on August 7, 2005, called, ``the finest example of a true 
public servant. There are few men who have influence through their 
quiet articulation of what is right and fair in the way of Jay 
Hammond.''
  I hope for quick passage of this bill prior to the anniversary of 
either his birthday or the date of the tenth anniversary of this death. 
He was creative, funny, thoughtful, respectful, wise and courageous and 
truly deserves this honor.
                                 ______