Former Senator Ted Stevens has been killed in a plane crash near Dillingham, Alaska.
No, I never worked directly for Ted Stevens, but I do think of him as a former boss. I was an F-15 pilot at Elemendorf AFB in Anchorage from 1982 to 1985, flying for what we all fondly called “Ted Stevens’ Air Force.” Then-Senator Stevens was the man responsible for changing Alaskan Air Command from a forgotten NORAD backwater into a centerpiece of America’s late Cold War strategy. If it hadn’t been for Ted, Alaska would never have gotten F-15s and A-10s, an instrumented air combat range, or, later on, F-16s and F-22s.
Corrupt he may have been, and probably an utter asshole to his underlings — as almost all of these movers & shakers are — but he had the Senate figured out, and he consistently brought home the bacon for Alaska.
I note that one of his fellow-passengers was Sean O’Keefe, a former head of NASA. The NYT article says the two were old fishing buddies, but, knowing Ted Stevens, I assume he was lobbying O’Keefe for an Alaskan spaceport. And he probably would have made it happen, too.