[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 17, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4920-S4921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO AVES THOMPSON

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, it is that time of week again. It is the 
time when I get to recognize a special person from a special place--the 
great State of Alaska--in what we call our ``Alaskan of the Week.'' It 
is one of the best times of the week for me because I get to talk about 
Alaska's community and its individuals. I think we have new pages here, 
but I think the pages unanimously agree every year that this is the 
most exciting speech of the week. I will not disappoint because you get 
to learn about Alaska, and whether it is summer--right now--or winter, 
you get to learn about what people are doing in Alaska.
  I recognize Mr. Aves Thompson today. He is one of the many people in 
my State who has worked diligently to ensure that Alaska runs well and 
that goods get properly transported from one place in Alaska to another 
place. We are a big State. He ensures that when delivering things, the 
systems that make a functional State and a functional society are in 
working order in Alaska. Now, I will get to what Aves has done in a 
minute here and will talk about him. What I always like to do is talk a 
little bit about what is going on in Alaska right now.
  The weather is gorgeous, and the fishing is great. A couple of weeks 
ago, I was up on the mighty Yukon River, which is way up north. I was 
with my wife and three daughters and a bunch of family members. We were 
fishing for one of the most iconic fish on the planet--the Yukon River 
king. It is a time of festivals and parades all across the State.
  Last week, I was at Eagle River, which is about 15 minutes north of 
Anchorage, for the Bear Paw Festival. Among other things, many 
Alaskans--myself included--partook in the Slippery Salmon Olympics. I 
am not going to describe exactly what happened, but as you can imagine, 
it involved running and obstacles with salmon. It was a lot of fun. So 
it is a great time to be in Alaska, and I encourage everybody who is 
watching on TV to come on up. You will love it. I guarantee it will be 
the trip of a lifetime.
  As you know, events like these reflect something larger about a 
place. They reflect ties and commitment and, importantly, people and 
community. They reflect people who help each other and spend their 
lives working to make things better. So let me introduce you to Aves 
Thompson, our Alaskan of the Week. He is someone who has definitely 
spent his life making Alaska better and, more fundamentally, making 
Alaska work well and efficiently.
  I will admit it. Alaska is not the easiest place in which to live. 
For one, it is really far away from the rest of the lower 48. I am 
going to get on a plane. I try to get home every weekend, so I will go 
home tomorrow afternoon. It will be about 11\1/2\ hours door-to-door, 
one way, to get to my home in Anchorage. That is pretty far. The winter 
weather, of course, can be brutal. Our mountains and our tundra are 
beautiful, but it can be challenging, to say the least, to build on 
that terrain.
  Getting goods in and out of Alaska is particularly vexing in a State 
the size of Alaska. Now, my colleagues from Texas don't always like to 
hear about it, but I like to say, if you were to split Alaska in half, 
then Texas would be the third largest State in the country because we 
are 2\1/2\ times the size of the State of Texas. More than that, we are 
a continental-wide, expansive State. When you look at communities like 
Ketchikan, which is down in the southeast, at communities like Barrow, 
which is in the north, and all the way out west to the end of the 
Aleutian Islands chain, you will literally cover Florida, North Dakota, 
and San Francisco. That is the size of Alaska. So it is a challenge to 
move things.
  Aves Thompson is currently the head of the Alaska Trucking 
Association. He has spent his entire career working to make sure 
Alaskans get the goods they need not only to survive but to thrive. He 
has also worked to ensure that the goods are measured properly and that 
people aren't overpaying for them. This is very important.
  Aves and Phyllis, his wife, came to Alaska in 1970. First, it was to 
visit friends, then to build a life. They love the State. They love the 
weather. They love the people. They love the community. Phyllis taught 
elementary school, and eventually Aves worked for a small trucking 
company. Then he worked for the State as, first, the division director 
of the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Program and then as the director 
and the chief of the Alaska State Division of Measurement Standards. 
Now, that is a mouthful, but it is a really important job.
  What does it mean?
  It means that he was in charge of all of the scales in Alaska--
everything from the scales to weigh your fruit at the grocery store and 
your gas at the pump to the scales that weigh huge shipments of goods 
that come into our State.
  When she was a little girl, Kristin, who is Aves' daughter, remembers 
how her father used to always check the scales at the grocery store. So 
she told her friends that her father weighed cheese for a living. That 
is a family

[[Page S4921]]

joke; that he weighed cheese for a living.
  Aves became the chairman of the 3,500-member National Conference on 
Weights and Measures, and he was given a lifetime achievement award for 
his work, particularly around his work in setting the standards for 
international weights and measurements, which is incredibly important 
for the global economy, much of which runs through Alaska.
  In 2006, Aves became the head of the Alaska Trucking Association. 
Why? Well, his daughter said he wasn't a trucker himself but that he 
was always one at heart. He loves the music of Waylon Jennings and 
Kenny Rogers. He loves the culture. Most of all, he loves the truckers 
themselves. They are great, hard-working Americans who drive our 
trucks.
  Aves said:

       The thing I like most about this industry is that it is 
     made up of hard-working, tough people who want to make a 
     living. We are not looking for a handout; we are looking to 
     pay our fair share. Our drivers work hard. They make a good 
     living throughout Alaska.

  Kristin, his daughter, said that as she was growing up, a trucker was 
always calling, and her dad was always offering to help.
  Let me tell you a little bit about the trucking industry in Alaska. 
Trucking employs over 13,700 people in Alaska--almost 1 out of every 19 
workers. They are good-paying jobs with benefits, and they are sorely 
needed in my State. With the exception of communities in Southeast 
Alaska, almost everything that we get in Alaska comes into the Port of 
Alaska and is delivered by truck.
  The rides themselves are unlike any rides in the country. We actually 
had a reality show--one of the first of many reality shows about 
Alaska--called ``Ice Road Truckers.'' These were the guys--the men and 
the women--who drove the haul road, as we call it. I was just on it 
going up to our fish camp on the Yukon. In the winter and on ice, they 
drive these trucks hundreds of miles up the haul road to Prudhoe Bay. 
That show ran for 10 years. Americans loved it. Those were our 
truckers.
  As Aves puts it, ``in Alaska, if you got it, a truck brought it. It's 
absolutely essential to our economy. If trucking in Alaska stopped,'' 
the entire Alaskan economy ``would stop.''
  Now, Aves is going to be retiring from the Alaska Trucking 
Association at the end of this month, but he sits on so many other 
boards and associations and he is involved in so many other elements of 
his community, his State, and his country, that I guarantee you there 
is not going to be much time for him to rest during his well-deserved 
retirement.
  He is the kind of guy--and we all know him--who when people call on 
him to do things, he gets things done.
  But one project he is passionate about, as am I, and it is still 
ongoing, and he is still leading on it and he is absolutely determined 
to finish--let me explain what this is.
  Like so many Alaskans, Aves is a veteran. I like to brag about 
Alaska. We have more veterans per capita than any State in the United 
States of America. He is one of them.
  He served in the Army from 1964 to 1966, in the 2nd Infantry 
Division. He was stationed at the DMZ in Korea. Like so many of our 
veterans in America and Alaska, these experiences never left him.
  In 2002 he read about a 2nd Infantry Division reunion, and he thought 
he would go. He found kinship among his fellow veterans and got talked 
into becoming an officer, eventually becoming the chair of the 2nd 
Indianhead Division Association and chair of the association's Memorial 
Foundation Board of Trustees.
  As I said, this guy is a doer and a leader. Among other things, he 
has led and raised money for two trips for veterans from the Korean 
conflict and who have served in Korea to go to Korea, and he has been 
working diligently to update the U.S. Army 2nd Division Memorial, which 
is located here at 17th and Constitution in Washington, DC.
  The memorial was first erected in 1936 to honor the 2nd Division 
fallen soldiers in World War I. It was then modified to honor the 2nd 
Division fallen soldiers in both World War II and Korea. This is a very 
highly decorated Army division.
  Aves and other veterans of the 2nd Division thought that the memorial 
should be expanded even further to honor even more of the members of 
the 2nd Division who have lost their lives and to leave space for 
future modifications of this important memorial for soldiers from the 
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
  Like so much of what happens here, none of this was easy. When he 
first started to work on the memorial, he went to the Park Service, 
which gave him a firm ``No, we are not going to help you. We are not 
going to let you move it. We are not going to let you expand it.''
  Eventually, he came to us, his congressional delegation from Alaska, 
and we gave him a firm ``Yes, we will help.''
  We were able last year to include a provision in the 2018 National 
Defense Authorization Act to allow for the expansion of the 2nd 
Division Infantry Memorial.
  Aves has been working hard at this ever since--working with agencies, 
raising private money for this memorial, and getting design approval.
  Aves has been married to Phyllis for almost 51 years. Kristin is a 
wonderful daughter who has two sons of her own. Aves is proud of his 
grandsons, Logan and Aaron Michael, and we are all very grateful for 
his work on the economy of Alaska, on the logistics, on the supply, and 
for his work for veterans. He is someone who cares so much and so 
deeply about his State, about his community, about his industry, about 
his country.
  So, Aves, happy retirement, although we know you are going to 
continue to work hard. Thanks for all you have done for Alaska, for 
America, and thank you for being our Alaskan of the Week.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________