Chuck Sassara

Oct 19, 1930 -

Sep 25, 2020

Chuck Sassara - aviator, husband, father, grandfather, State Legislator, sailor, advocate, author, businessman, athlete, story teller and character known and loved by thousands around the globe - died Friday afternoon, Sept. 25, 2020, while refueling his Toyota van in preparation to go … somewhere.

Chuck loved life. He was always on the move. Be it driving the Alcan almost 50 times, ferrying aircraft across the continent, driving across North Africa with his young family at the end of the Algerian War or sailing the across the Atlantic. He believed in the best of human nature and was never cynical about the future. He was unafraid to try new things, but he didn't always succeed. Lately it was his repeated failures to master the "smart phone" with 89-year-old fingers.

Born to Charles Sr. "Pappy" and Kathleen Agnes "Nana," he along with brother Richard "Dick" Sassara grew up between Miami, the Panama Canal Zone and Los Angeles. Meeting his true love Ann at University H.S. in L.A., the couple married while Chuck attended UCLA. Upon graduation they had a discussion: go back to Panama or see Alaska. In the spring of 1955, they drove north in a VW bus to build a life and help bring a new state into being.

In the early '60s, Chuck ran for the State House and quickly became the Majority Leader and Finance Chair. In these roles he championed such important work as the 1964 Equal Rights Amendment, a Woman's Right to Choose and the creation of University of Alaska Anchorage. His peers, the likes of Nick Begich, Willie Hensley and Ted Stevens, were both his competitors and after session party animals bound together by circumstance, a common purpose and shared values. They loved each other.

As an aviator he flew commercial, multi-engine and was an IFR rated pilot that flew 175 different types of aircraft, logging over 25,000 hours in planes as small as the Breezy to as large as the four-engine Lockheed Constellation. As a sailor he crossed the Atlantic, made passages from Miami to Los Angeles, solo from Seattle to Whitter and made several dozen trips to the Bahamas and beyond, finishing with an offshore passage from Florida to the Carolina Outer Banks with son Charlie, nephew Rick and friend Michel Bourquin in 2015. As writer, his memoir "Propellers, Politics and People: Chuck Sassara's Alaska" is testament to his skill as a story teller and the craft of putting others first in narrative and in life.

He is survived by his proudest achievement: his sons, Charlie and Richard; grandchildren, Tyler, Rachael and Annalyssa; and his daughter-in-law Mary, Mimi Bourquin; his nephew, Rick and his wife Amy, their daughter Katy; niece, Lisa and her daughters Alexandria and Gabrielle; and his sister-in-law, Ellen.

Most of all, he will be survived by the raucous stories he told to friends over coffee and beer, the lives he saved, and the spirit of Alaska he imbued in everything he touched. We rest comfortably knowing he's somewhere on a broad reach steering by starlight reunited with his beloved Ann. We love you, Chuckles.