“He held that blade around my neck, screaming at me,” recalls Boehner, who says he managed to stab the Alaskan MP with a sharp nonsense. “One of the proudest moments of my career.” As the story was retold over the years, Young considered it “mostly true” and claimed that the blade of the knife was not open, but matched the person he cultivated until his death on March 18 at the age of 88. Young was in the US Capitol on Tuesday as congressional leaders exchanged tributes, and President Biden made a rare trip to the Capitol to pay his respects. Funeral services are scheduled for Wednesday in Great Falls, Va., And Saturday in Anchorage. Strong and bullshit, with the walls of his office covered with animal trophies and a 10-foot grizzly, Yang was a former cruise ship captain willing to do anything to send money home to Alaska. Boehner’s sin that day on the House floor was to attack the pork-barrel spending that secured Young’s job as Alaska’s sole MP for 49 years, making him the longest-serving Republican in House history – despite his threats of violence. offensive comments and corruption investigations. I met Young at the age of 13 when I was a reporter for Alaska public radio stations, including four as the Washington correspondent for the Alaska Public Broadcasting Network. He regularly kicked me out of his office when I asked him a question he did not like, either quoting a critic or invoking an inquiry into one of his expense accounts. He would shout and fall on me, or worse, look at me silently until he growled: “Get out.” When I got tickets to a congressional dinner hosted by the Washington Press Club in 2010, I invited Young, without thinking he would say yes. An official called to say the MP would actually attend and that it would be his first major outing since losing his beloved wife, Lou, for 46 years. The story goes on under the ad Usually at these dinners, people get mixed up and work in the room, but I realized that Young would be by my side for the night. Looking for an icebreaker, I asked if he was really carrying a knife everywhere, even at a formal dinner. “That’s right,” he shouted and pulled out a knife with a closed blade. “You can turn off a man like him,” he said, and used my dress to teach me where to strike an attacker with just the handle of a knife, a defensive skill, he said, that every woman should know. I remember the rolled eyes of the people near us in the crowded ballroom. That night, Yang told me stories about his early years on the Yukon River and meeting his wife, Guichin Athabaskan, who was not initially interested in the arrogant newcomer to Alaska. Yang then held my hand and cried as he said how happy he was the day Lou agreed to marry him. The story goes on under the ad As we spoke, politicians and lobbyists gathered to shake his hand and say, “Hello, Mr. President.” At that point the title was simply an honor because Yang had been removed from the valuable and powerful leadership of the committee by Speaker Boehner. Young was under the cloud of a corruption probe and despite our news that described a detailed commitment of $ 10 million in favor of a campaign member and a possible reprimand from the House Ethics Committee for accepting travel and gifts, its residents to send him back to Washington. It was an unprecedented re-election record that shocked many people – except those who voted for him again and again. It terrified a Who’s Who of Alaska Democrats and even Republican challengers. It did not seem to matter what he said or how he said it: He told me that the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill was not a natural disaster but nature was on its way. He joked that a set of black eyes, the by-product of a minor surgery, came from a quarrel with a “green coma”. An ardent opponent of gun control, Yang told me after the shooting of spokeswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) At a meeting-and-salute of voters in 2011 that she would carry a gun at similar events, “returning whatever happens to me.” He suggested that the Jews could have survived the Holocaust if they had been armed. He told lawmakers who wanted to protect the gray wolf that he would like to introduce wolves to their area and solve the problems of their homeless. He found it difficult to back down after arbitrary racist and homophobic slander. The story goes on under the ad And as the spring thaw follows in the winter, Alaskans would re-elect Young. What set Young apart from the current fever of rage and discord was his willingness to work beyond party lines and overthrow the leadership of Republicans, including President Donald Trump, if he believed he would benefit Alaska or it was right, like being the only Republican to vote in favor of a 2019 bill that raises humanitarian standards at border detention facilities. Young could go from pushing you — in my case, literally — to bringing you in for a bear hug. “Don Young worked with people on both sides of the aisle and respected people on both sides of the aisle,” Boehner said. Prior to his death, Yang lamented the loss of days when committee chairmen seized power and shared it with members of an independent party, with Democrats and Republicans gathering in a president’s office at 5 a.m. to overturn a bill. . The story goes on under the ad “Drink some bourbon and water, maybe a few shots, and by the third shot we would have solved the problem,” he told former MP Sean P. Duffy (R-Wis.) On his 2018 Plaidcast podcast. In a reversal, Boehner said he could not imagine being on the wall, he ended up being Young’s best man when Young remarried in 2015 at the Capitol at the age of 82. “He was as different as they came,” Boehner said, “but a good, steadfast member who did his job for Alaska.”
