newsminer.com

Today is Bob Bartlett Day, set aside by state law to recognize E.L. “Bob” Bartlett for a “lifetime of public service to Alaska and the nation.”

As part of my research for a book on the first half-century of Alaska statehood, I recently came across some letters in the UAF archives that dealt with a bit of harmless deception employed by one of Alaska’s most popular politicians in the interests of diplomacy.

The Alaska State Museum in Juneau includes an assortment of 49-star flags donated by various people.

One of those flags occupied a prominent place in the chambers of the U.S. Senate from Aug. 20, 1959 until July 5, 1960, when it was retired for the 50-star model that recognized Hawaii.

How the historic flag ended up in Juneau reveals something about Bartlett’s penchant for solving problems and how he differed from Sen. Ernest Gruening, the other man who first represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate.

On July 6, 1960, Bartlett wrote to Burke Riley, who was the top aide to Gov. Bill Egan, about a “sticky situation” regarding Gruening and the Senate’s 49-star flag.

Joe Duke, the sergeant at arms of the Senate, had asked if Bartlett would like to have the 49-star flag and send it home to the museum in Alaska.

Bartlett said of course he would. In the meantime, however, Gruening walked into the room and asked Duke for the flag.

Duke was not friends with Gruening and he didn’t want to give him the flag, but he was in no position to speak his mind.

“Joe does not like Ernest at all, at all,” Bartlett revealed in his private letter to Egan’s aide.

“One of the reasons, and probably the controlling one, is that Ernest bawled Joe out unmercifully one time and another time spoke disparagingly about him on the floor of the Senate,” Bartlett wrote.

It’s easy to understand why Duke didn’t want to do any favors for Gruening, a man some people considered to be as abrasive as sandpaper.

Gruening had gone on the floor of the Senate a year earlier and embarrassed Duke by complaining about the lack of a 49-star flag in the Senate chambers.

The flag behind the vice president’s desk had only 48 stars. While another man might have tried to solve this quietly, Gruening turned it into a public dispute.

“Sergeant at Arms Duke explained to me that this flag cost $175 and that with the admission of Hawaii there would shortly be a 50-star flag and that it would be economical to await the 50-star flag,” Gruening told his colleagues in a speech preserved in the Congressional Record.

“But I must register an emphatic dissent from this particular economy. Alaska is entitled to a full year’s display of the 49-star flag which Alaska’s admission to the Union brought into being,” Gruening said.

Thus rebuked, Duke bought a new 49-star flag in August 1959 and put it in the Senate. When it came time to get rid of the flag the next summer, the last person in the world he wanted to give it to was Gruening.

Leave it to Bob Bartlett to think of a way to avoid a direct confrontation and preserve the peace.

He suggested that Duke write a letter to both senators saying that he would love to give them the flag, but he had promised Egan months earlier that he would send the flag to the state museum in Juneau.

Then Bartlett set about to rewrite this little bit of history.

“I told Joe I thought this might be arranged and it would relieve the situation all around,” Bartlett told Riley.

Egan was out of town, but all that was needed for the plan to work was for the governor’s office to go along with the ruse, Bartlett said.

“I hope you can do this and I hope you can do it without waiting for Bill’s return by backdating a letter and sending it on to Joe and by forging Bill’s name,” Bartlett said.

Bartlett even wrote the proposed backdated letter, which purported to be a plea from Egan to Duke for the Senate flag, dated Feb. 17, 1960.

“I am especially anxious to acquire for the Alaska State Historical Library and Museum the 49-star flag which has been in the Senate chamber,” said the letter from Egan, actually written by Bartlett.

The deception worked. Duke had a perfect excuse to ignore Gruening and send the flag to Juneau, where it remains to this day, a testament to the Bartlett brand of diplomacy that continued until his death in 1968.