Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history, once said "they say I lose my temper. But I know right where it is." He began his political involvement before statehood and he helped build Alaska but it wasn’t always pretty.

He left the U.S. Senate wearing an Incredible Hulk tie after being convicted by a federal jury for lying on Senate disclosure forms in an attempt to conceal more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from an oil field services company.

A man of contradictions, he created the Denai Commission which underwrote waste treatment systems and clean drinking water and clinics to remote native villages in rural Alaska. However, federal money subsidized timber sales where the U.S. Forest Service lost 96 cents on the dollar.

One of my favorite “Uncle Ted” moments came in 2005 when Sen. Maria Cantwell blocked his efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. He called her a “bad apple” and tried to derail her reelection bid by threatening to campaign against her and repeal safeguards against tankers in Puget Sound. He even palled around with a group of legislators who called themselves the “Corrupt Bastards Club.” Seriously.

Now, this sounds like I’m bashing Stevens. I might’ve not agreed with him and he was the boogeyman to environmentalists but I admired his tenacity. His death in a plane crash in Bristol Bay is particularly sad, after remembering he survived a 1978 plane crash that killed his first wife and four others. He did not tow the party line like so many do in the Senate today and had the ability to reach across the aisle, living by "to hell with politics, just do what's right for Alaska." Two of my favorite columnists, Joel Connelly and Danny Westneat, have obituaries on Stevens here and here, respectively.