A plane that crashed, killing former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, was owned by Alaskan cable firm GCI and was headed to a fishing lodge the company owns, according to published reports.
The crash also claimed the lives of Dana Tindall, GCI's vice president of legal, regulatory and governmental affairs and her 16-year-old daughter Corey, as well as Bill Phillips Sr., a former Stevens aide and pilot Terry Smith. Four other passengers survived the crash, which happened in a remote area of the state about 325 miles from Anchorage.
"This accident claimed the lives of Alaska's great champion, Senator Ted Stevens and other individuals who distinguished themselves through public and private service to this state and our nation," Ronald Duncan, president-CEO and founder of GCI said in a statement posted on the company's website.
Tindall, the statement added, had worked at GCI for 24 years and has also served as an adjunct professor of regulatory economics at Alaska Pacific University.
Stevens was the former D.C. telecommunications power broker when he served as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. He put his imprint on such issues as digital TV and the push for network neutrality but lost his post and a subsequent election after he was convicted for failing to report work done on his house by an oil services company with business before the committee. The conviction was subsequently overturned, but by then Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator at the time, had lost his 2008 re-election bid.
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