(6 of 9)
Time to Shine. "You know," says Mike Stepovich, "a fellow doesn't quite realize, right after his election or appointment to such a job, just how much it means. People say hello, everything's gay and fine. And then comes that time—the time when you know you're going to have to stop just showing your teeth and start producing." Mike started producing right after his inauguration in June 1957. Says Matilda, who calls him "Mali" (Slavic for "little boy"): "When we were living in Fairbanks and Mali was practicing law, the jacket pocket on every one of his suits used to be torn from getting caught on a parking meter where he'd be leaning up while talking with the boys. There haven't been any torn pockets since we came to Juneau. But he's getting a shine on the seat of all his trousers."
No cheechako (newcomer), Mike Stepovich knows his country, puts in a solid day's work in his office in Juneau's grey stone Federal Building, deals with the 47 appointive territorial boards and commissions, oversees emergency work projects, orders examination of fiscal programs that will help prove Alaska's ability to stand alone, confers with Washington and territorial officials, studies his mail, e.g., "We the undersigned students have been recently examined by Dr. Brownlee and 60 having been found with defective teeth, do humbly petition our Governor, Mike Stepovich, to send us a dentist."
Time to Change. Up on Squaw Hill, in the three-story, columned gubernatorial mansion, Mike pursues a rollicking, split-second family life. The eight little 'itches have to be undressed in assembly-line fashion for their showers; the mansion's third floor is blocked off ("We're always losing Dominic," says Matilda); Band-aids, next to food and clothing, are the big expense, what with the children falling downstairs or sliding too fast down the bannisters, or falling off the gubernatorial totem pole that stands outside. After dinner and a session of TV-watching, church-going Roman Catholic Mike sings out: "Prayers, everyone, let's say our prayers." He and the youngsters then kneel in a cluster about a big armchair before they are paraded off to bed.
In the morning Mike swings out of bed at 6:30, goes down the hall to look in on the children, methodically counts heads as he passes from room to room. Then, midst the morning chatter and leggy tumbling of this brood, the Governor of Alaska hoists his three youngest children to the stately hardwood table on which, 91 years earlier, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward proudly signed the historic Alaska purchase with Russia (for $7,200,000) and, one by one, proceeds to diaper them.
Discovery. Mike's use of so hallowed a table symbolizes no bottomless irreverence for Alaskan tradition, but rather the muscular spirit of the ever-changing, booming vastness that was once a faraway, forgotten frontier. As Governor, he has, in a sense, discovered Alaska all over again. "Man," says he, "it wasn't until I got into office that I really began to appreciate, with our resources potential, how much we could have accomplished even by now, if only we had the freedom and the responsibility to operate."