Much of George Sullivan's Anchorage legacy is obvious. Project 80s, which includes the arena that bears his name, also gave us the Loussac Library, the Egan Civic and Convention Center, an expanded museum and, eventually, the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts.
Alaskans who have lived here for at least a generation can remember those days in the early '80s, when the state was awash in oil money. The Sullivan administration swiftly put together a plan to use Anchorage's share -- and in the process accelerate our passage from town to city. You couldn't have booked "The Lion King" into the old Sydney Laurence Auditorium downtown.
Go back a few more years to 1975 and we see Sullivan's hand in unifying the old Greater Anchorage Area Borough and the City of Anchorage. George Sullivan already had served as mayor of the city for eight years. He defeated Jack Roderick, the borough mayor, to lead the unified municipality and served another six years, running a booming city where people were making history in a hurry and building subdivisions overnight.
Sullivan's life and leadership spanned the old and new Alaska, particularly in Anchorage, as he steered the town into cityhood.
On Thursday, some of his contemporaries remembered Sullivan's less obvious legacies. They remembered a tough, savvy politician -- a "classic Irish pol," as former Assemblywoman Heather Flynn said. They remembered a man who tempered the rough and tumble of politics with charm, humor and humanity.
As a young Assemblyman, former mayor Rick Mystrom bucked Sullivan's line on the Project 80s and pushed to make what is now the Sullivan arena a domed facility built more for participants than spectators. He lost that vote 10-1, a decisive lesson in Sullivan's political command. Yet Mystrom's strongest memory of Sullivan wasn't political, but rather his genuine interest in Mystrom's family. It wasn't all politics all the time.
Rep. Mike Doogan, former Daily News columnist and old best friend of Sullivan's son Tim, knew George Sullivan both politically and personally. "I spent a lot of time hangin' around his house when I was a kid," he said. "George was the same guy when he was being the mayor as he was when he was being the father. ... He was as concerned about his kids as he was about the city."
Not all was sweetness and light. Flynn said she had a good relationship with Sullivan, but also some disappointments. Most notable was Sullivan's veto of a unanimously passed equal rights ordinance in 1977 that included sexual orientation. Flynn said that veto, which the assembly upheld, gave us a more divided Anchorage.
"We used to be truly, honest-to-God nonpartisan in public office," she said. "George for a long time tried to stay out of that partisanship stuff. ... George was, I think, a whole lot more nonpartisan."
Mystrom said in Sullivan's time people's political persuasions were no secret, but less important.
"We had a lot of fun with the disagreements then. It was just a little softer time."
George Sullivan was no softie. He came from a hard-working generation of Alaskans, and from a school of Alaska politicians, who wanted to build up their states and cities. Project 80s was a confluence of that vision and the means to realize it.
But Sullivan also plied his political craft at a time when relationships mattered more than ideology. Humor leavened differences; the idea was that you might fight a fierce political battle with someone, yet still be able to break bread with her, and make common cause when you agreed.
But, as Doogan pointed out, that was because the politicians involved made it that way.
Politicians like George Sullivan.
That's the less visible and equally valuable part of Sullivan's legacy.
On Wednesday, old rival Roderick paid him greater tribute than any legacy building could.
"He was honorable. He was honest. You could count on him."
BOTTOM LINE: Anchorage has lost the man who shaped our transition from frontier town to modern city.