Dave Rose had his wry smile even as he told me why we needed to finish up his book faster than we had planned. He was going to Texas for a heart operation, and he didn’t expect to survive.
We were sitting across a desk in an office, the setting of many other meetings when he had told me his life story, his ideas, and some thoughts he didn’t really want anyone to know, but that seemed important to say.
I had trouble believing he was dying. But I surely picked up the pace on the writing.
I’ve worked on books with four men who died of old age, two of whom were actively dying at the time. I don’t think my pen is the kiss of death—it’s just that nearing the end of life is a time to say something permanent.
For these men, egoism or fear played little part—or none at all. They believed life had taught them a lot, many lessons gained with great difficulty, and these stories could make the path easier for others to come.
Dave’s book was about his remarkable life, as a Jewish kid from modest means in Queens, New York, who overcame prejudice to become an important figure in Alaska history—as a founder of the Municipality of Anchorage, a key figure for equal rights, and the first director of one of the world’s first and most successful sovereign wealth funds, the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Half the book related the history of the fund and Dave’s wisdom about how to keep it safe. Today, the Board of Trustees and Alaska Legislature need to read those words again. They seem extraordinarily prescient in this time for peril for the $80 billion investment fund.
Fighters for LGBTQ rights also turned to Dave’s words. Here was a straight, Republican, military-and-finance guy who in the 1970s sacrificed his political career to stand for equality for people completely unlike himself.
The book made a difference and still does. Saving for the Future: My Life and the Alaska Permanent Fund.
But it almost didn’t exist. I worked hard over the Thanksgiving weekend and through the holidays. Fortunately, the writing always goes faster toward the end of a book. I had my last interview with Dave just before his departure for Texas. I still had to finish the ending.
Dave’s devoted wife, Fran, read the concluding pages to him after the surgery, in his final hours. He was pleased with the work we had done together. No changes on the final chapter.
I never saw him again.
Doing this work carries a lot of responsibility at times. These books are legacies to the world from wonderful minds and their eventful lives. I want to do them right.
We should all record our most important thoughts and memories as we age, in whatever form. We all have a deadline coming up.
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