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What they like best is his open-faced friendliness, his native talent for conveying to doubters "outside" what Alaska is all about. "I'm Mike Stepovich," he says quietly to strangers, and then, tentatively : "I'm Governor of Alaska." Unschooled in the well-oiled sophistication expected of Governors, he is content to make his points with an earnest warmth that radiates alley or when a he waits his barbershop—or turn a in a territorial bowling committee meeting. And beneath all of this is the tough mettle that was born in him and was strengthened on the cold, hard anvil of Alaskan living.
Mike was born in a Fairbanks log cabin on March 12, 1919. His father was known far and wide as "Wise Mike," an emigrant from Serbia who followed the gold rush call to Alaska in 1898. Wise Mike was rugged and sometimes mean tempered, and there are those who say he won his nickname with wise-guy answers to everything. His breakfast appetizer was four or five coffee royals—a couple of slugs of bourbon sweetened with a dash of coffee—and his hobby was seven-deck "pan ginney" dealt out at the Pastime Cafe. Wise Mike laboriously scratched dust for 30 years before he came up with a modest gold strike, but instead of in vesting it in "pan ginney," he put his faith in Alaska and bought real estate in Fairbanks.
Cats & Dogs. The Stepoviches were divorced when Mike was an infant, and his mother took him to Portland, Ore. when he was six months old. When he was 1 6, young Mike began spending his summers near Fairbanks working in his father's "Cat" and mines. For bought $5 a food day, for he the drove a camp, sometimes packed in 35-40 lbs. on his back across swampy terrain. Alaska's beauty and swat got him; he decided to take a permanent swat at it himself.
Back in the states at Columbia Prep, and later at the University of Portland and Spokane's Gonzaga University, Mike played baseball (first base), gave up a chance to turn pro, went on instead to Notre Dame for his law degree. After that, he put in 3-½-years on Navy desk duty, was discharged a yeoman third class.
In 1947 he returned to Portland to court a hearty, good-looking social worker named Matilda Baricevich. "Mat" knew that marriage to Mike meant frozen bliss in the tundra. "I rather looked forward to it," she says, "even though I had the usual idea of eternal snow and sled dogs cuddling up to you in a cabin for warmth." Mike went on to Fairbanks in the fall of 1947, took his bar exams. Before the year was out, he was appointed city attorney and had settled down with Mat in a four-bedroom frame house.
Step by Step. Mike soon quit his job to set up private practice in a cubicle on Cushman Street. He liked the law but being the friendly sort, found it hard to apply himself seriously. He lost his papers on the way to court to try his first case; he seemed forever to be playing golf or shooting the breeze with friends on Cushman Street while Mat stayed home and cared for an increasing crop of children—now the famous "eight little 'itches" (five months to nine years old), who are part of a Step-by-Step plan that calls for an even dozen children.