chiefatticcreator

[askthealaskan]

In the summer of 1988 I was a young driver/guide working for a cruiseline in Ketchikan, Alaska. It was just the beginning of the tourism boom that would see the total cruise ship visitor number increase from about 100,000 in that year to today’s annual visitation of over 1,000,000. The company liked to pickup extra work when it could and I reported to work on a July morning with news that I would be driving around a charter group for the next three days. I was hoping to get the days off as it was the Fourth of July and that was always the most celebrated holiday of the year in Alaska on the account that it happened in the middle of summer. That was reason enough for people to take a break and hike, steer, paddle, and fly to town to have a little fun. The events actually started the day before and ended the day after the fourth making it a small festival rather than a holiday. Ketchikan was still a lumber town back then too, with fishing a close second. The town was a bit scruffier then too but Senator Ted Stevens never missed a Fourth of July celebration in Ketchikan. My displeasure at having to work the holiday was quickly ended when I was told that Senator Stevens had brought several senate colleagues and their wives to town with them to celebrate the 4th with him and do a little fact finding on Alaska issues. They would be staying at the newly opened Salmon Falls Resort and would be needing a ride from the airport, then rides into town the following day, then a ride back to the airport in a couple of a days. My dispatcher told me that I would be driving the bus for all these trips. I was a bit of a political junky at the time and knew the players pretty well. If they had had political cards like baseball cards I would say I did well with the pack that came with Senator Stevens. There was Fritz Hollings the Democrat from South Carolina, John Warner from Virginia, Tom Hawkins from Iowa, and a couple more that I frankly don’t remember now, and a freshman newly elected from Arizona named John McCain. Now to get to the airport I needed to take a 7 minute ride on a small ferry to the island directly across the channel from town. [see video] There was nothing else on that island, so the road from the ferry terminal on that side led to the airport and no where else. A bridge had been proposed, but at the time no one call it a “the bridge to nowhere” yet. I remember driving out to the tarmac to pick up the Senators and their families. I had been giving tours all summer and had my script down. I knew my facts and had the benefit of growing up in Ketchikan, and so the ride across the channel between the island the airport was a great opportunity to point out fishing boats, ferry boats, and floatplanes. I wonder now if Senator McCain had any premonitions of the future that day as he rode the ferry between the islands. On the drive out to Salmon Falls, we went past Ward Cove Cannery and saw eagles perched on trees. My standard tour spiel was to look for the white “golf balls” against the green backgrounds as the first clue to see them. And then to call out those who were “experts at finding golf balls in trees” to help those who were not to find one. The pulp mill was still active in 1988 so I gave them my standard spiel about its economic impact and the environmental issues. I remember is taking them into town one day so that they could shop. I parked my bus on the dock and they all got off to shop. I had set a return time and since I had no place to go I just stayed with my bus and broke open a book to read. After awhile I heard someone knocking on the door and I opened it to see Senator McCain. He explained he was early but he had grown tired of shopping. I invited him onboard. I fully expected him to go back to his seat and start reading important papers from out of briefcase or something but instead he sat in the front seat across from me and started a conversation. I don’t recall what we actually talked about but what I remember is total lack of pretense, the sincerity in his eye contact, and the manner that he conversed that made you feel that you were talking to an old friend. This side of John McCain doesn’t translate in stump speeches, but I have heard other people who have had similar encounters with him that will tell you same thing. It’s why he is respected by so many from both sides of the political isle. I didn’t know his story back then. That he had once been a fighter pilot. That he was the son of an Admiral. That he had been shot down and was repeatedly tortured in that time, that he was a close friend of Senator Mo Udal, a Democrat. That he would lose the 2000 Republican nomination because he would refuse to indulge in dirty campaign politics. That he would nominate the governor of Alaska, and former classmate of a cousin of mine, to be his historical nomination for Vice President. But even though I often disagreed with his politics, I have never met a politician I have respected more than John McCain. I think if everyone in America had the chance I did to talk with him like I did, he would be president.