Yesterday, Alaska and the World Celebrated Senator Ted's Life

Alaska Newspapers by Margaret Bauman.  Vice President Joe Biden ... saluted his friend ... "To the people of Alaska I can say with absolute certainty, without fear of contradiction, what Hamlet said to Horatio: "we shall not look upon his like again."

The Anchorage Baptist Temple was the site, yesterday, of Senator Ted Stevens' funeral

(NGP Photo: 8-18-10)

In addition to those mentioned in the ADN story below, we were delighted to note the attendance of General Colin Powell and Donna de Varona -- both of whose lives intersected your author's, because of Senator Ted....  -dh

See KTUU, KTVA and KIMO Coverage.

ADN, by Sean Cockerham and Kyle Hopkins.   Ted Stevens' friends and former colleagues, including the vice president, remembered him at his funeral service as a generous, loyal man who went far beyond partisan politics and was a master in delivering vast sums to the state he embodied.  ...  The vice president recalled how the Alaska Republican Stevens reached out to him when Biden, at the time a 30-year-old Democrat from Delaware, was first elected to the U.S. Senate. Biden, lowest in the Senate in seniority, had lost his wife and baby daughter in a car accident a month after he was elected.  ... Steven's close friend, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Dan Inouye, said Stevens was a man of trust, a good friend who went beyond the idealogy that divides politicians.  ...  In the pews, Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, who narrowly defeated Stevens in the 2008 election, sat clapping. U.S. Rep. Don Young nodded next to him.  ...  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ... also spoke at the funeral service.  He said it is hard to imagine that any man ever meant more to a single state than Stevens did to Alaska.  ...  U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski put it simply, saying in her tribute that "Ted was Alaska."  ...  The service included voices not usually heard talking about Alaska's senator for four decades, like Rear Adm. Barry Black, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate. "Senator Stevens gaveled me in for the Senate prayer and we would have a wonderful conversation before each prayer and he always left me with a smile."  ... The Rev. Norman Elliott, a retired Episcopal priest and longtime Stevens friend, said "Alaska and the nation have lost a mountain," He suggested naming a great peak somewhere in Alaska after Stevens and calling it "Uncle Ted."  ... Anchorage Baptist Temple Pastor Jerry Prevo was the final speaker. He said he wouldn't be surprised if the wiry, compact Stevens was 6 feet, 10 inches tall in his new life. "He's going to be the Hulk we all knew he was," Prevo said.