PIONEERS IN ALASKA'S DEVELOPMENT RECOGNIZED AT UAF'S 76TH GRADUATION CEREMONY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 19, 1998

Fairbanks, Alaska — The University of Alaska Fairbanks will recognize seven individuals later this spring whose significant achievements have brought distinction to their academic or professional careers and who have made lasting contributions to the state and the nation.

Five will receive honorary degrees and two will jointly receive a meritorious service award at UAF's commencement exercises May 10. UAF also expects to confer about 1,000 student degrees at the ceremony, which occurs this year on Mother's Day.

Former Alaska aviation industry leader Bruce Kennedy is the 1998 commencement speaker. Kennedy, 59, will also receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. A 1963 UAF business management graduate, Kennedy is the former chairman, president and CEO of Alaska Air Group, the parent company of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air.

Kennedy was elected to the board of directors of Alaska Airlines in 1972, serving as chief operating officer and senior vice president of properties until 1979, when he became CEO and president. In 1985 he became president and CEO of Alaska Air Group, resigning in 1991 to join the non-profit Christian organization, Mission Aviation Fellowship. The humanitarian relief group provides free air travel and telecommunications services worldwide. Kennedy last year was appointed director of ARIS Corp., a worldwide integrated information technology service company based in Seattle.

Also receiving honorary degrees from UAF this spring are polar regions writer and librarian Evelyn Stefansson Nef, linguist Irene Reed, electrical engineer Irving Reed (no relation to Irene) and retired Western Airlines Capt. Robert Stevens.

Alaska riverboat Capt. Jim Binkley and his wife Mary will receive an award for meritorious service to UAF, the Fairbanks community and to the state of Alaska.

Evelyn Stefansson Nef, 83, will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. She is perhaps best known as an author. Her first book "Here is Alaska" was a best seller and continued in print for 45 years. She was editor-in-chief of the Great Explorer Series of books and she reviewed polar books for the New York Times and the Herald Tribune.

In 1939, Nef was employed by arctic explorer and anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson. In 1941, the two married and together worked to convince a skeptical public that the Arctic in general and Alaska in particular were inhabitable. Until his death in 1962, the two lived in Alaska and New Hampshire.

Nef played a key role in developing the Stefansson Polar Library, which was moved to Dartmouth College in 1951. Dartmouth's Stefansson collection, along with those at Ohio State and UAF, form the core of the Polar Libraries Colloquy used by researchers, explorers and others worldwide. In 1964 she married history professor John Ulric Nef and in 1974, at the age of 60, she returned to school to become a psychotherapist.

Irene Reed, 67, will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree for her contributions to the field of Alaska Native language education. She is the principal author of the "Yup'ik Eskimo Grammar" book, which is considered a landmark in the development of Native language textbooks. She is also responsible for compiling much of the original card file for the Central Yup'ik lexicon which led to the first full dictionary of any Native language in Alaska. An early advocate of Native language preservation, today she is recognized for her foresight in documenting Alaska's Native culture and language.

Reed helped create the first bilingual Native language program in Alaskan schools. She was instrumental in establishing the Eskimo Language Workshop in Fairbanks, moving it to Bethel where it became the Yup'ik Language Center. Reed is the former director of UAF's Alaska Native Language Center.

Due to illness, Reed is not expected to attend the May 10 graduation ceremony. Her sister Laverne Reed will accept the honorary degree on Irene's behalf.

Irving S. Reed, 74, will receive an honorary doctor of science degree for his contributions to the field of mathematics, particularly in the area of number theory and computation. Reed helped design and build one of the world's first digital computers. His mathematical theories have been used in practical ways to advance communications and science, including the development of compact disks and the design of CAT scanners. Reed's work also includes the development of several error-correcting codes, including the Reed-Solomon code. NASA uses RS codes for transmitting data to spacecraft, and RS codes are used in computers to accurately read and write data stored on disc drives.

Reed spent his early years in Fairbanks. His grandfather was a district judge in Nome during the Gold Rush. Reed's father was born in Nome and later came to Fairbanks where he was a civil engineer and a Fairbanks city councilman. An early prodigy, Reed began taking classes at UAF in 1940 while still a high school student. Reed never received a high school diploma, transferring instead from UAF to the California Institute of Technology, where he received his doctorate in mathematics in 1949.

From 1951 to 1960, Reed worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and from 1960 to 1963 he was a senior staff member of the RAND Corp. Since 1963, he has been a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles. After UAF's May 10 commencement, Reed travels to Boulder, Colo., where he'll receive an honorary degree from the University of Colorado May 15.

Retired Western Airlines pilot Capt. Robert Stevens, 79, will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. Stevens is being recognized for his contributions to Alaskan aviation and its history.

Stevens came to Alaska as a Pacific Northern Airlines pilot in 1946. He worked as a commercial bush pilot and major airline pilot in Alaska for more than three decades, flying everything from a Piper J-3 Cub to a Boeing 720.

In 1978, he retired as a DC-10 captain with Western Airlines and devoted the next 15 years of his life to researching and collecting information about aviation in the Far North. His two-volume "Alaskan Aviation History, 1897-1930" is considered the most complete account of flight in Alaska, from hot air balloon flights in the 1890s to the first airplane ever flown in Alaska, a Gage-Martin which took off from Fairbanks in 1913.

The book also contains an early picture of fellow honorary degree recipient Irving S. Reed, who was photographed as a small child in the arms of Col. Carl Ben Eielson, the first person to make an air mail flight in Alaska and the first pilot to fly over the North Pole. Eielson, who was a World War I American Air Service pilot, died in 1929 while on a rescue mission off the coast of Siberia. The Eielson Building on UAF's campus is named in his honor.

Stevens is working on volume three of "Alaskan Aviation History" from 1930 to present-day. He currently is president of the Alaska-Yukon Pioneers and is on the board of directors for the state of Washington's Klondike Gold Rush Centennial Committee.

Alaska pioneers and business entrepreneurs Mary and Jim Binkley will receive a Meritorious Service Award for their role in developing tourism in the Interior and their contributions to UAF and the state.

The Binkleys will celebrate the 100th anniversary of their family's riverboat operations in Alaska this year. Capt. Jim Binkley's father traveled the Chilkoot Pass and began a freight hauling business on the Stikine River in 1898. Binkley, 78, was born in Wrangell, Alaska.

Binkley first crewed on riverboats in Southeast and later moved to the Interior where he took classes at UAF during the winter and worked on a small fleet of riverboats on the Yukon, Nenana and Tanana rivers during the summer. Sternwheelers were at one time the primary distribution method of products in Alaska. Rivers still play an important role in the transportation of goods and services throughout the Interior.

Mary Hall Binkley, 71, came to Alaska from Oregon in 1944 to attend UAF as an anthropology student. In 1946, she met Jim Binkley and they married the next year. She is credited with promoting an understanding of Alaska's early Native culture by providing information to visitors at the Chena Indian Village. The village, on the banks of the Tanana River and a regular riverboat stop, focuses on Athabaskan Indian life and employs Native Alaskans as interpretive guides. The Binkleys employ about 100 seasonal employees each year, many of them UAF students.

In 1950, the Binkleys took out a $4,000 loan and Jim converted an Episcopal missionary cruiser into a 25-passenger river tour vessel named the Godspeed. The Binkleys' first sternwheeler, Discovery I, was built by Jim in his backyard.

Today, after 50 years of marriage, the Binkleys' family riverboat operation hosts thousands of visitors each year and in 1994 was named a top ten visitor attraction in North America by Mayflower Travel.

In addition to being a riverboat pilot, Jim Binkley served in the Alaska Legislature from 1961 to 1964. The Binkleys have served on several boards of directors for various Alaska businesses, educational groups and community organizations throughout their 50 year partnership.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Photos of honorees available upon request

CONTACT: Associate Professor of Mechanical UAF Public Information Officer Debra Damron, (907) 474-7581.

DPD/3-18-98/98-042