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Ted Stevens was famous for his temper. He took pride in it. Alaskans remember well the image of him on the floor of the U.S. Senate, shaking a finger in the air and wearing his Incredible Hulk necktie.
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And when “Uncle Ted” was serving in Washington, every Alaskan knew what that tie meant: Stevens was angry, and ready for battle. He was tenacious and unapologetic when fighting for Alaska, and wasn’t known for backing down from a confrontation.
So, understandably, I was feeling some trepidation when I showed up at his door one summer day five years ago. We needed pictures of Stevens for a feature we were preparing for our November issue, and freelance photographer Clark Mishler asked me to meet him at the senator’s Girdwood home. He hoped that having a staff editor there might help grease the wheels of a photo shoot that was already feeling tense. Over the previous weeks, Clark had pleaded with the senator’s staff for an hour or two of access. He had been given a time slot of about 20 minutes, and it was rapidly slipping away.
An aide let us inside and said Stevens would be down in five minutes or so. We started making small talk and explained we were hoping for some casual portraits of the senator relaxing at home. Clark asked if there was any chance the senator might unwind enough to be photographed without a necktie.
“You can ask him to take off his tie,” the aide said, raising his eyebrows. “I’m not going to ask him to take off his tie.” The guy seemed to know there were lines not meant to be crossed.
After the aide left the room, I turned to Clark and said something like, “Don’t get your hopes up about the tie thing.”
Soon, Stevens walked in—wearing a tie—and shook our hands before leading us up to the living room. To say he was cool and businesslike would be an understatement.
A handful of staffers bustled in and out of the room as they prepared chairs on the front deck for an afternoon gathering. Clark and I tried to initiate some friendly chat to loosen up the senator as he began asking what sort of photos we wanted. He offered us some coffee. We declined, but encouraged him to pour a cup, so he pulled out a can of the stuff and started rifling through the cabinets for coffee filters.
Seriously? This seemed odd. A guy with staff buzzing about and two armed guards out front—the guy who was third in line to the presidency—made his own coffee?
Still, there was that tie. The guy looked stiff.
Clark began to explain that we just wanted some shots of a guy relaxing at home with a cup of coffee.
“Well, if I’m relaxing with a cup of coffee, I’m not wearing this damned thing,” Stevens said. And as the coffee brewed, he loosened the knot, yanked off the tie and tossed it aside. Clark grinned, and we went to work.
I quickly figured out the best thing I could do was to keep the senator talking, and distract him a bit as the camera shutter started clicking. Come to find out, the man behind the tie started seeming like a fairly regular guy.
We talked about fishing the Kenai River, and how we each came to Alaska. He shared his thoughts on the local newspaper’s coverage after finding out I once worked there. He absentmindedly turned his back on the camera while showing me a wall hanging and explaining how he and his wife found it in Belgium and knew instantly that it was perfect for that very spot.
I grabbed a barstool by the kitchen counter, and Stevens leaned back and relaxed on the couch and swapped stories with me as Clark snapped a picture that ran in the magazine that fall.
Our 20 minutes grew to nearly an hour before the senator’s handlers had to shoo him out the door because he was running late for a speech at the opening of the new Girdwood post office. It was built, of course, with money he secured in Washington.
I encountered Stevens a couple of other times over the five years since that day. And I watched him grow terse when he had to answer a question he didn’t like, or when the conversation was going into uncomfortable territory. But I also saw him warm and smiling, like that regular guy who showed up after the tie came off in Girdwood.
The Senate’s “Incredible Hulk” wasn’t a guy you wanted to have angry with you.
But if you put a cup of coffee in his hand and got him to talk about a day pulling a king salmon out of the Kenai River, he could be an all-right guy.
Tim Woody is editor of Alaska magazine.