[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 27 (Wednesday, February 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S1205]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Tribute to Mona Painter

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, in the past month, I have come to the 
floor to recognize Alaskans who have generously devoted their time and 
talents to our State and made it a better place for all of us to live 
in. It is a great place to live. There is a mystique surrounding my 
great State--a well-earned mystique. People travel to Alaska from all 
over the world to discover a part of themselves that craves high peaks, 
beautiful mountains, streams, and swaths of wilderness.
  The real wonders of Alaska are our people--kind and generous people, 
many of whom have etched warm homes and welcoming communities out of 
wilderness. One of those people who has helped make my State truly 
extraordinary is Mona Painter, our Alaskan of the Week.
  Mona, who will be 80 years old soon, first visited Alaska when she 
was just 11 in 1949. She flew, by herself, with others in a tiny four-
engine passenger plane to visit relatives. In the 1950s, she moved to 
Alaska for good and eventually settled in Cooper Landing. Cooper 
Landing has about 350 year-round residents, but that number swells in 
the summer. It has some of the best fishing and rafting anywhere in the 
world--an astonishingly beautiful place.
  It has people like Mona, a devoted wife, grandmother, great-
grandmother, and someone, who according to one fellow resident, is 
``the glue that binds the community of Cooper Landing together.''
  She has done so much for this community--volunteering countless hours 
over the decades to ensure community cohesion in the schools, churches, 
and various clubs, including the Cooper Landing Community Hall, which 
serves as the community's unofficial city council.
  Since living in Cooper Landing, Mona received an art degree, has 
taken anthropology classes, and even took a taxidermy class--once 
practicing her skills on a moose left on the side of the highway.
  One of Mona's passions throughout the years has been to keep history 
alive in Cooper Landing. To that end, she started the Cooper Landing 
Historical Society and Museum, with which she is still very involved. 
For years she has devoted her time and energy to collecting bits of 
history about Cooper Landing and sharing that history with her 
neighbors, with residents, and with all Alaskans. She is also the 
founding member of the Kenai Communities Association and helped to 
spearhead the effort to create a national heritage area in that part of 
our State.
  One of her friends said about her: ``The whole essence of her life 
has been to make this community a better place to live and to restore 
the history of the community.''
  People like Mona make my State great, and I want to thank Mona for 
all she has done for Alaska, and thanks for being our Alaskan of the 
Week.