By Sue Bergstrom for Valdez City News –
Valdez is intimately connected with the history and politics of this state. We have taken part in its big events; the Alaska gold rush, the 1964 earthquake, the building of the Trans Alaska Pipeline, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. We have supplied our state with legislators like Gene Kubina and former Speaker of the House John Harris, who was also Mayor of Valdez. Wasilla Mayor, Bert Cottle was also Mayor of Valdez as well as our Chief of Police.
Valdezans all know that both our present governor, Bill Walker, and our first governor, Bill Egan, were ‘from’ Valdez. But they may not know that they are the only two governors of Alaska who were actually born in the state. Walker was born in Fairbanks in 1951. But his family moved to Valdez in 1960 so he did grow up in Valdez and graduated from Valdez High School. Egan, on the other hand, was born in Valdez in 1914. His old family home, moved from its Old Town site, now houses Northwind Gifts.
Both men came from hard-working backgrounds. Egan’s father was a miner who died in an avalanche in 1920. By age ten Bill Egan was working in a cannery. He went on to drive shuttle buses and by age fourteen was driving dump trucks for The Alaska Road Commission. Bill Walker’s father was a World War II veteran who had been a member of the Castner’s Cutthroats unit of U.S. Army Scouts working in the Aleutians. He was co-founder of Arctic Block Construction, which erected the first permanent buildings at Eielson Air Force Base and Ladd Army Airfield. Bill was already working for his family’s construction company at the age of twelve.
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Both men served as mayor of Valdez. Egan was elected in 1946, while he was serving in the Alaska Territorial House of Representatives. He went on to serve in the Alaska Territorial Senate in 1953 and was chosen to lead the Alaska Constitutional Convention in 1955. He was elected the state’s first governor in 1959 and held the post until 1966 then returned for another term 1970-1974. Walker was elected mayor of Valdez in 1978, becoming our youngest mayor at the age of 27. He served for one year as mayor and was also on the Valdez City Council and served as Valdez City Attorney. Walker ran for the Republican nomination for governor in 2010, but lost to Sean Parnell. In 2014, he ran again as an Independent and eventually invited then Democratic gubernatorial candidate Byron Mallott to join him, forming the winning ticket.
In 1964, when the aftermath of the Good Friday earthquake devastated Old Town Valdez, Bill Egan was the governor, supervising the state’s response to the disaster. Bill Walker was a twelve-year-old who was fortunately out of danger that day, working for the family business, which constructed parts of New Town. The two men tie our state’s and city’s history together.
