[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19754-19755]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               REMEMBERING DR. SIDNEY CHARLES HUNTINGTON

  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I wish to take a few minutes this afternoon to pay 
tribute to an amazing Alaskan, a man who lived a life that many would 
say was remarkable. Yet I think in his humble words he would respond 
that he just lived his life and did the best he could.
  Dr. Sidney Charles Huntington was truly a great Alaskan. He died 
yesterday at the age of 100 years old in Galena, AK, which is on the 
Yukon River.
  Sidney Huntington was a respected Athabascan elder. He was a culture 
bearer. He was a role model--definitely a role model. He was a mentor 
to so many, not only in his village but in his region and in his State. 
He was a prolific storyteller. He was a philosopher. He had words of 
wisdom. He was a reservoir of traditional knowledge. He was an 
outdoorsman who knew, understood, loved, and feared the land. He was a 
businessman. He was truly a public servant, especially when it came to 
education and conservation, and he was a warrior in the fight against 
youth suicide. These are just some of the words by which we remember 
one of our State's most treasured, cultural icons.
  Sidney Huntington was known to his family and his friends as Grandpa 
Sid, and probably, for many good reasons, he had a lot of grandkids. 
There were the personal stories, and I think as we reflect on the 100 
years of this great Alaskan, we will begin to share these many stories 
and tributes. He was certainly a savvy poker player. That is going to 
come out. He was a very generous man.
  We were talking about him earlier today in my office. He was one of 
those guys who would truly give the shirt off his back. Sidney once 
encountered a young Native student who he thought had left the village 
and gone off to school, and the young man said: I couldn't go because I 
need to stay home and earn some money. Sidney literally took out his 
wallet, gave him eight hundred-dollar bills, and he told him to get to 
school. That was vintage Sidney. School was important. School had to be 
a priority, and Sidney wasn't going to let the fact that this young man 
thought he needed to stay home and make money stop him from going to 
school. He literally took out his wallet and solved the problem.
  Sidney Huntington was one tough Alaskan. He was a man of very 
impeccable standards. He told it like it was. He would hold back not 
one iota.
  I was in Galena after they had experienced some terrible flooding 
several years back, and the community had come together to talk about 
the FEMA response, how that was working with the State. You had the 
Federal Agency reps, you had the State people, and everybody was trying 
to figure out how to get through a difficult situation. Sidney 
Huntington--not sitting in the back of the room but sitting right up 
front at that table--said: By gosh, we have to get to work. No mincing 
words about it; he told it like it truly was. He was hardy. He was 
determined. He was very resilient. He was the real deal.
  I was very privileged to know Sidney, and I was honored to be called 
his friend. That is quite an honor because you didn't choose Sidney to 
be your friend. Sidney chose you. He had identified me as somebody who 
could not only be helpful but that he could relate to, that we could 
have conversation back and forth.
  It wasn't too many years ago that I flew into Galena. Galena is a 
very small village on the Yukon River, as I mentioned. You fly into the 
little airport there. I went to the very small terminal, and there was 
Sidney sitting on a chair right outside the little airport terminal.
  I asked him: Where are you going, Sidney? I am sorry you are not 
going to be here while I am visiting Galena.
  And he said: No, no, no. I am here because I have some talking to do 
with you. Where are we on some of these education things? He was 
talking to me about No Child Left Behind. So Sidney was like: I am not 
going to miss her coming to Galena and perhaps not getting a chance to 
talk to her. He wasn't leaving. He was parked there to visit.
  If Sidney Huntington chose to call you a friend, you didn't take it 
for granted, and you accepted that gift with great humility. I think 
about the relationships, the friendships I have made over the years. I 
can say nothing can make me, a third-generation Alaskan, feel more like 
an Alaskan than knowing I had earned the respect of Sidney Huntington.
  Eric Mack, a journalist who worked in Galena, tells the story of how 
Sidney managed to survive when his snow machine fell through the ice. 
He was coming back from a trip. He had been out tending his trap line, 
and it was cold. It was about 30 degrees below zero. It was night. It 
was dark. He was on his snow machine. His snow machine went through a 
hole in the ice into a shallow section of the Yukon, and he was a long 
way from home. He dragged that snow machine out of the water, out of 
the icy water by himself. He made a fire from the gasoline and some 
frozen wood he had, and he kept himself from freezing to death. Think 
about how you do all of that. That is one tough Alaskan there.
  Sidney Huntington was born in Huslia, which is on the Koyukuk River. 
He was born in 1915 to a Scots-Irish father who arrived from New York 
in 1897 to participate in the Gold Rush. His mother was Athabascan 
Indian. Sidney's mother died when Sidney was about 5 years old, and for 
about 2 weeks it left Sidney and two younger siblings to survive in the 
wilderness. Think about that.
  This is all laid out in an exceptional book that Sidney wrote called 
``Shadows on the Koyukuk.'' The details in the opening chapters are 
about the situation when he, as the oldest of three children, at 5 
years old, was in a cabin in the middle of the wilderness with his 
mother and his mother died. At 5, he was the only one to care for his 
two siblings. This was the beginning of, again, a remarkable life for a 
remarkable man.
  His father lived off the land as a trapper and a trader, and so the 
stories that are shared through Sidney's book, again, are just 
remarkable about what was happening in Alaska in the early 1900s. 
Sidney and his siblings first were sent to the Anvik Mission for 
schooling, and then he later attended the BIA school at Eklutna. He 
basically got the equivalent of a third-grade education. That was it. 
That was it for his formal schooling--third grade.
  You need to keep that in mind as I talk about the rest of Sidney's 
story and his life. When he was 12 years old he returned to help his 
father work the trap line and learn the subsistence lifestyle, so he 
was out in the middle of Alaska. He was out in the wilderness. He was 
not in school. By the age of 16 he was earning a living hunting and 
trapping and at age 22 he went to work in a gold mine. In 1963 Sidney 
moved to Galena to work for the Air Force as a carpenter, and then in 
the 1970s he went into the fish-processing business. So he had been 
everything. He had been a gold miner, he had been a carpenter, he had 
been in fish processing, he had

[[Page 19755]]

been a hunter and a trapper and a subsistence guy. He was truly living 
a traditional life in rural Alaska, sustaining himself and his family 
through a mixture of subsistence and participation in the cash economy. 
Many around the State share this life story, but that was just one 
dimension of Sidney.
  This man, who had the equivalent of a third-grade education, served 
two decades on the Alaska boards of fish and game. In 1993 he published 
the best-selling biography I just mentioned entitled ``Shadows on the 
Koyukuk.'' In fact, this book he wrote is so good, is so compelling, it 
is the book I take around to the high schools when I go to visit 
students. I never leave a school visit without leaving something there, 
and I leave a book for their library. The book I have chosen to leave 
with students all over the State is ``Shadows on the Koyukuk'' because 
of the amazing accomplishments of this amazing Alaskan.
  The University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1989 awarded Sidney an honorary 
doctorate in public service. Here again is an extraordinarily 
accomplished man, a man with a third-grade education, focused on public 
service, education, helping his community, his State, and publishing a 
best-selling biography.
  Through the University of Alaska system, Sidney participated in oral 
history interviews that will be examined by historians and students for 
decades to home.
  He was truly the stuff of which legends are made. Alaska holds a lot 
of legends. It is a big State with tall stories. But Sidney, once 
again, was the real deal. His life was a profile of courage and 
inspiration. It has not only been chronicled in books and interviews--
it was even played out in theater in a stage play called ``The Winter 
Bear.''
  ``The Winter Bear'' tells the fictional story of a young Native man 
who contemplated suicide. In this play, this young Native man is 
sentenced to cut wood for Sidney Huntington. Making a pact with Sidney 
to live, he goes on to construct a traditional bear spear under 
Sidney's guidance. That spear is used to bring down this marauding 
bear. But Sidney is injured in the incident, and the young man, who is 
very insular and very afraid of public speaking, must now speak for 
Sidney before thousands of people at the Alaska Federation of Natives 
convention. At this point, the young man finds himself and his voice, 
recognizes the value of his life, and emerges as a leader.
  While this play, ``The Winter Bear,'' may be fictional, Sidney 
Huntington's experience with suicide is absolutely not. In real life, 
Sidney lost children to suicide. He grieved for them every day and 
shared his loss with schoolchildren who visited his cabin. As we 
visited in quiet conversations, he shared with me the loss and grief 
that he felt, as not only his children but others in his community and 
his region have suffered because of suicide.
  Sidney was a champion for young people. He believed in the future of 
our young people, urging that they choose life, that they get a good 
education, and that they take pride in their proud heritage.
  Sidney Huntington was the patriarch of a large and extended family. I 
know so very many of them, and they are all very accomplished in their 
own right. He is survived by his wife, Angela. They were married 72 
years; that is a pretty good marriage there. He has some 30 children, 
both biological and adopted, and many, many grandchildren. On May 10 of 
this year, they gathered in Galena to celebrate the centennial of 
Sidney's birth, and they all wore T-shirts that bore some of Sidney's 
words of wisdom: Make life worth living; work hard; keep up a good 
spirit; have a good attitude toward others--this will take you a long 
way in life. These are words to live by and words to remember an 
Alaskan who was truly larger than life and as large as the great State 
that he called home.
  I was privileged by the gift of the friendship of Sidney Huntington. 
Alaska is privileged by the gift of his legacy. This man is a true hero 
of our homeland. He is now gone, but his life of inspiration will long, 
long be remembered. I am grateful for the opportunity to again pay 
tribute to a great Alaskan and to extend my condolences and that of the 
U.S. Senate to his family, his many extended relatives, and those of us 
throughout the State who cherish a great Alaskan leader.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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