Vic Fischer, co-sponsor of Alaska abolition bill, dies at 99

On October 22, 2023, Vic Fischer, the last sur­viv­ing sign­er of the Alaskan state con­sti­tu­tion, died at age 99. Mr. Fischer, along with Rep. Warren Taylor, spon­sored the death penal­ty abo­li­tion bill that passed in the Alaska territory’s leg­is­la­ture in 1957, two years before Alaska gained state­hood. The bill read: ​“The death penal­ty is and shall here­after be abol­ished as pun­ish­ment in Alaska for the com­mis­sion of any crime.”

Born in Berlin in 1924, Mr. Fischer grew up dur­ing Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, which influ­enced his anti-death penal­ty sen­ti­ment. In 2015, Mr. Fischer recalled his work to abol­ish the death penal­ty as his most impor­tant ​“based on my abhor­rence of the pow­er of the state to kill its cit­i­zens, as I had seen in Germany and in Russia.” 

Reflecting on his life, his wife of 42 years, Jane Angvik, told Alaska News Source, ​“he doesn’t believe the gov­ern­ment has the right to mur­der its cit­i­zens, and hav­ing watched Stalin mur­der mil­lions of peo­ple, hav­ing watched Hitler elim­i­nate thou­sands and thou­sands, hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple, he just said, ​‘We can’t do that.’” 

With the help of Eleanor Roosevelt, Mr. Fischer, his moth­er and broth­er were able to leave Stalin’s Soviet Union. In 1950, Mr. Fischer came to Alaska for his first job as a com­mu­ni­ty plan­ner, with the Bureau of Land Management. Mr. Fischer helped found the first grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion advo­cat­ing for Alaskan state­hood, called Operation Statehood, and in 1955, at age 31, he was elect­ed as a del­e­gate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention. He remained active in state affairs through­out his life, work­ing on rebuild­ing after the 1964 Good Friday earth­quake in Alaska to rep­re­sent­ing Anchorage in the state sen­ate for two terms in 1980. 

Recently, in 2019, Mr. Fischer co-chaired the unsuc­cess­ful recall peti­tion against Gov. Mike Dunleavy. ​“Vic was just out­raged that [Dunleavy] had gut­ted edu­ca­tion in an effort to have enough mon­ey to be able to pay a per­ma­nent fund div­i­dend, and that that was wrong,” Angvik said.