Laura Waterman Wittstock: A tribute to journalist Tom Richards

The late Tom Richards Jr. 1949-2014. Photo by Bill Hess

Tom Richards moved from Alaska to Washington, D.C. to do triple duty with the U.S. Navy; as the new intern for Alaska U.S. House Representative Nick Begich (Dem.), and as a news correspondent for the American Indian Press Association (AIPA).

Following the enactment of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971, Tom became president of Alaskans on the Potomac, a lobby for Alaska Native organizations that monitored implementation of the Settlement Act.

Timothy Egan, writing for the NY Times on January 11, 1993 recalled a December in 1991 when the Tundra Times, Alaska’s premier newspaper aimed at the state’s 80,000 Natives, sank to the point of closure. "When I heard that news it put me in a state of shock, as if a part of me had died," said Thomas Richards Jr., a former editor of the paper. "The first thing I did was hop on my snow machine and spend a couple of days chasing ptarmigan across the tundra."

That quote captured the 1970s sense of Tom we all had in the AIPA newsroom and across the way at the Legislative Review, where I was editor. He was part serious newsman and part Don Quixote. It must have been all that snow and ice some of us thought. When Charlie Edwardsen, Jr. appeared on the scene, we had more than quixotic behavior on our hands. He was the boy wonder of the Settlement work. He had drawn the definitive map of the Settlement area, and despite being a stutterer, got up to point out that the Native areas were never lost or conquered territories. There could be no doubt with him who Alaska belonged to.