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  Sheffield, William "Bill"
CANDIDATE DETAILS
AffiliationDemocratic  
  2023-01-01  
 
NameWilliam "Bill" Sheffield
Address
Anchorage, Alaska , United States
EmailNone
WebsiteNone
Born June 26, 1928
DiedNovember 04, 2022 (94 years)
ContributorNot in Public Domain
Last ModifedPoliticoomer
Feb 01, 2023 06:19am
Tags Impeached - Protestant -
InfoFormer Gov. Bill Sheffield has a lot he wants to see get done before he finally retires.

He's working on a project to improve the Ship Creek dock area that will add trails and community gathering places to a spot that is now drab and aged.

There's also hundreds of millions of dollars in work he'll oversee at the Port of Anchorage, where he's the director, and at the Alaska Railroad Corp., where he serves as the board chair.

"I'd also like to see Anchorage have a new sports complex, so we could see games inside, with a retractable roof," he said. "I'd like to see the railroad go to the Bush to haul our zinc and coal. That'll keep me busy when I leave the port.

"But I gotta hang around here a while yet. I've got to get dirt moving and make sure the money is there."

The 77-year-old Sheffield has spent most of his days trying to make life better for both himself and for other Alaskans, whether it be through developing a chain of hotels, running the state or building a legacy of transportation infrastructure.

William J. Sheffield Jr. was born in Spokane, Wash., in 1928 to Bill and Hazel Sheffield.

Sheffield Sr., in those days, was an insurance salesman. But as the Great Depression descended on the nation, money for insurance premiums was more often spent on food and other necessities.

The Sheffields lived on a five-acre farm, growing fruits and vegetables through the summers. At harvest time, the family loaded their goods into two Model-A Fords and drove to the Idaho border, where they would set up a little roadside market.

But around 1940, the Sheffield farmhouse burned, and the family had to split up for a while - Bill Sr. and Harold, six years older than Bill Jr., moved across the state to Silverdale to find some land and start over, while young Bill and his mother lived in a motel near Spokane while Bill completed the school year.

Growing up in that era taught Sheffield to aim higher, and to always think of the future, he said.

"(The Depression) instilled into me to worry about tomorrow, to save for tomorrow," he said. "When you were born in that era, you never change."

After he graduated high school in 1946, Sheffield joined the Air Force, becoming a radar technician. When he got out three years later, jobs had become scarce, so he enrolled in Chicago Technical School to become a broadcast engineer.

"Operating a radio station paid about $150 a month, and I had my sights set higher than that," he said. So he headed West, and entered the Bremerton Navy Guard as a radar technician.

"I was there four or five months, and I never was on a ship, never had much to do," he said.

He quit that job, walked up the street to Sears Roebuck and got a job fixing television sets. Before long, he was transferred to a mail order plant, in charge of the sales and service department in the Hood Canal area in Washington state.

Then one day in 1953, his boss came to the store and asked Sheffield if he wanted to go to Anchorage the next month to work at the sales and service store there. "Now I was getting paid about $500 a month. I said, 'I'm pretty happy here. I have a nice car, a nice apartment. I just don't know.' He said, "Whatta mean, you don't know?' So I left after that."

Sears expanded in Alaska, and soon Sheffield became an outside salesman hawking appliances across the state and earning $1,500 a month.

"That still didn't satisfy me," he said. "So I said I'm going to leave and go into the hotel business or in insurance. I finally chose the hotel business."

Sheffield Hotels

In late 1957, and still a few years before leaving Sears, Sheffield and roommate Brad Phillips - now known for his glacier cruise business - partnered to lease a 13-unit apartment complex located between Eighth and Ninth avenues on D Street.

Eventually, Phillips and his brother leased the Westward Inn annex, located on Fifth Avenue and Gambell Street, and renamed it the Red Ram. Sheffield was involved in running the restaurant.

In the early 1960s, Brad Phillips got into politics, and Sheffield bought him out of the Red Ram, borrowing $10,000 from Matanuska Valley Bank. Much to the chagrin of his father, Sheffield offered his Sears stock - worth about $2,000 - as collateral.

About this time, too, his boss at Sears told him he needed to make a choice of professions. Sheffield stuck with the hotels. He worked hard during those early years to make it successful, he said, serving as bartender, housekeeper and desk manager.

Soon after he paid off his loan, the bank called him saying that Travelodge Corp. representatives were in town looking for a partner. Sheffield jumped at the chance.

Travelodge proposed to build the hotel and oversee much of the backdoor operations, such as taking reservations. Sheffield came up with the money - about $300,000 - to furnish the hotel and oversee the main operations.

The Travelodge, located at Third Avenue and Barrow Street, paid Sheffield half the profits. Sheffield eventually bought the hotel.

His reputation as a successful hotelier began to grow. Soon, the Atwood and Rasmuson families offered Sheffield a 10 percent interest in the Baronoff Hotel in Juneau if he agreed to run it.

He continued to expand during the 1970s and '80s, opening up Sheffield Hotels in Whitehorse, Kodiak, Bethel and other communities in Alaska and in the Yukon Territory.

The Governor

Sheffield grew up on dinner table political discussions. The political debates during the nation's most tumultuous years instilled into young Sheffield a desire to get into public service.

As his newfound Alaska friends ran for office, Sheffield worked behind the scenes, but it didn't satiate his desire to be in the foreground.

"Being behind a candidate is good work," he said. "But it's a lot more fun being the candidate."

Sheffield had planned to run against Jay Hammond in the 1978 election, but his wife learned she had cancer. He dropped the idea, and took a year away from work to be with her. She died in June 1978.

As the 1981 election approached, Sheffield threw in his name, running against his old hunting buddy, Tom Fink, who later became the Anchorage mayor.

He won the general election by 18,000 votes, sweeping the Bush and Southeast Alaska.

A Democrat, Sheffield campaigned against a capital move, and supported Alaska Native lands claims, resource development and women's rights.

During the 1970s and '80s, Alaska was swimming in oil wealth. Sheffield, taking a lesson from his childhood, touted restraint.

His administration cut $1 billion in two years from the state budget.

"We were going to have a bad time," he said. "We were overbuilt, over-financed across the state. Banks opened up overnight. Everyone was gushing in money. I kept saying for two years that we have got to cut back. We would have went broke anyway."

As Sheffield's term was closing, oil prices went from $28 a barrel in the peak years to $8 a barrel by 1986. The state's economy collapsed.

"Cutting the budget was a tough thing to do, but it was the right thing to do," Sheffield said. "That's why I got fired. But I was supposed to be a leader."

During his term, Sheffield spearheaded proposals that would eventually lead to some of the state's most profitable ventures. He led the way for permitting the Red Dog mine, and he finagled the purchase of the Alaska Railroad.

The Federal Railroad Administration had for years wanted to sell the struggling rail operations. While Sheffield worked on the state Legislature to provide funding to buy the rail, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens worked on encouraging the federal side to sell at a reasonable price.

In 1985, Sheffield signed the paperwork to purchase the Alaska Railroad for a total of $23 million. The organization was valued at $225 million, but Sheffield's administration negotiated discounts for massive deferred maintenance costs, and credit for the more than 2,500 safety violations the railroad would have to fix under state ownership.

Sheffield's term was at times contentious, most notably due to a lease deal in Fairbanks. The governor was accused of favoring a political donor in a plan to lease a building that would house state offices. An investigation found no fault with Sheffield.

Still, his proudest moment in life was the time he spent in office.

"Every day, you can make someone's life better," he said. "There are a lot of bad things, too, but you can help people."

Retirement years

After he left office, Sheffield was tired. In 1987, he sold his hotels to Holland America, the cruise company. Holland renamed the properties Westmark Hotels.

But retirement didn't last long. He still sat on boards. He ran an environmental company for a year while it was in bankruptcy.

In 1995, then-Gov. Tony Knowles appointed Sheffield to the Alaska Railroad board of directors. Sheffield was elected chair during his first meeting. Two years later, the board asked him to resign from the board to serve as president of the organization, a position he held until 2001, when he again retired.

But again, retirement didn't satisfy the man. In 2001, George Wuerch, who was the Mayor of Anchorage at the time, asked Sheffield to serve as the interim director at the Port of Anchorage, "just for a bit, to fix a few things," he said. The city dropped the 'interim' a couple of years ago.

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RACES
  08/26/1986 AK Governor - Open Primary Lost 18.11% (-6.25%)
  11/02/1982 AK Governor Won 46.14% (+9.04%)
  08/25/1982 AK Governor - Open Primary Won 16.01% (-10.69%)
ENDORSEMENTS
AK Governor - Nov 05, 2002 R Frank Murkowski