Geoffrey Dunn makes some very interesting observations about the passing of Wally Hickel and the betrayal he suffered at the hands of Sarah Palin.

From the Huffington Post:

I spent a fascinating morning with Hickel this past summer, in the office of his downtown Anchorage landmark, the Captain Cook Hotel, and he was every bit as dignified and gracious as he was when I first encountered him 35 years earlier in Anchorage, then a raw and wild oil town.

As he approached his 90th birthday, his grip was still strong and his "boomer" vision of Alaska remained his passion. A former boxer, he looked like he could still go a few rounds and I wouldn't want to cross him. He may have lost some of his intellectual edge after nine decades, but his spirit remained undaunted, his eyes bright, particularly when his bride of 67 years, Ermalee, later joined us in the conversation.

Hickel was still pushing his vision of an "owner state"--articulated in his book Crisis in the Commons: The Alaska Solution--and he remained upbeat about the possibilities facing Alaska. He was convinced that the "Age of the Arctic" was still ahead and he still believed in "big ideas."

But when I asked Hickel about then governor Sarah Palin, his disposition turned hard.

RIP Wally Hickel.

From the AP:

Former Alaska Gov. Walter J. Hickel, who served as Interior secretary under President Nixon until he was dismissed for objecting to the treatment of Vietnam War protesters, has died at age 90.

Wally Hickel was a complex guy, a REAL Alaskan with a boatload of idiosyncrasies and novel ideas about the state, the government, and the future of Alaska .

Just get a load of just some of what he did in his long life.

Hickel was fired from his Interior post in late 1970 after sending Nixon a letter critical of the president's handling of student protests following the National Guard shootings at Kent State and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

The letter helped to stir national debate about the growing generational rift over the Vietnam War.

"I believe this administration finds itself today embracing a philosophy which appears to lack appropriate concern for the attitude of a great mass of Americans — our young people," Hickel wrote. (You have to love a guy who takes on Richard Nixon on behalf of the hippies.)

Hickel had never held elected office when he upset two-term Democratic Gov. William Egan in 1966.

Hickel resigned in 1969 to become Interior secretary and quickly made national headlines as the environmental movement began to take root in America.

Hickel imposed stringent cleanup regulations on oil companies and water polluters after an oil rig explosion off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. He also fought to save the Everglades from being destroyed by developers and advocated for making Earth Day a national holiday.

An "Alaska boomer" with complex views on environmentalism and developing the state's oil-rich resources, Hickel railed against "locking up" the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling and used settlement money from the Exxon Valdez oil spill lawsuit to help repair Prince William Sound.

He frequently described Alaska as an "owner state" and advocated that the state's wild frontier should be developed responsibly to preserve its value.

Though I believe Governor Hickel and I are probably, for the most part, on opposite sides of the political fence I have still always been kind of impressed with the guy.  I mean whether it was jumping from the Republican party to the Alaska Independence Party to win the Governor's seat in 1990, to the bizarre story of the "little man" that he claimed whispered advice into his ear, Hickel was as colorful and complicated as the state that he clearly loved above all else.