Anchorage — Ted Stevens, who died in a tragic plane crash Tuesday, was known in Alaska both as “Uncle Ted” and “Alaskan of the Century.” In Washington, it was sometimes “the Hulk” — he was known for his vision as well as his temper, as a man who could hold up the Senate at Christmas to redress some crazy D.C. decision that threatened jobs back home. To the consternation of many, he forced Washington to deal with Alaska’s issues on Alaska’s terms, and that made him a hero here.

As one who watched him at both ends of the country — from the time I was a Senate page in 1973 to the time he was unfairly driven from office by Alaska voters in 2008, before they learned a federal prosecution against him had run amuck — I hope history judges him better than conservatives have in recent years.

Stevens was labeled a big spender; conservative circles hung a “bridge to nowhere” around his neck in the year or so before he left. But he was a staunch anti-Communist when it counted, and he supported Ronald Reagan’s efforts to bring down the Soviet Union. He constantly pushed back against environmental extremism, but was a realist about supporting science and technology to address environmental and health problems. His role in deregulation, especially of communications, helped usher in competitive phone service, the age of cable television, and ultimately the Internet. He promoted a strong military and missile defense. He helped America develop its energy in Alaska and elsewhere. With his “Pacific” colleague Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, he built diplomatic bridges to Asia, priding himself on his annual trip to bolster ties with our allies in Japan, Korea, Taiwan; he even took a honeymoon in China when he remarried in the early 1980s. It was not his first trip to Asia — he’d flown “over the hump” with the Flying Tigers during World War II. He returned often, and understood the importance of never ceding U.S. military leadership in the Pacific.

Though less understood, I would argue that Stevens’s push to develop Alaska was itself a conservative act. Alaska is America’s “Last Frontier,” fighting for its way in a nation that understands less and less that we need to dig things up, drill holes, put out our nets, build a road now and again, and shoot a wolf if we’re to protect a moose population large enough to feed people who still subsist with very little cash. Most of this happens on public land, so we have to tussle with government to do it at all. Even conservatives fail us sometimes: Stevens’s natural allies in pushing to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, for instance, were often the same folks who broke with him when he sought to replace a national icebreaker fleet that can hardly handle the reduced conditions of the Arctic.

Thus, in his latter days, just as he’d accrued the seniority to guide appropriations, Stevens’s practice of “earmarks” became a target. Since Congress wouldn’t let us drill for new oil, we were told, we had decided to “drill” in the federal budget. Well, even today, a recent poll showed that Alaskans would be willing to give up much federal spending in our state in return for greater control of our natural resources.

Ted was also one of the Senate’s biggest “gearheads” and a big supporter of research and development — in the Arctic, in the military, in health research, and, ironically, in aviation safety. The “NextGen” air-traffic control system being adopted in the United States and around the world — which uses GPS signals for navigation rather than a network of ground beacons — was pioneered as the Capstone program in western Alaska, where he died. Stevens made that happen. As I mourn him and our other friends who died in the crash, I’ll be watching the NTSB investigation closely. Stevens is not the first member of Congress to die in Alaska — House Speaker Hale Boggs and Alaska congressman Nick Begich’s (father of current Democratic Senator Mark Begich) plane has been missing in Prince William Sound since October of 1972. Hopefully, Ted’s work will prevent more accidents of the same kind.

– Mead Treadwell is a senior fellow at the Institute of the North and former chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. He is currently a candidate for lieutenant governor of Alaska.