Victor Fischer

May 5, 1924 -

Oct 22, 2023

At the age of 80, Vic Fischer picked up a paintbrush for the first time. By the time he died on Oct. 22, 2023, at age 99, the walls of his home were adorned with his own richly-hued paintings of his beloved Alaska. He believed in always trying new things, never acting his age and always being optimistic. He also seriously believed in having fun under all circumstances.

Vic was born in 1924, in Berlin, Germany, to Markoosha Fischer, a linguist and pianist and Louis Fischer, a U.S. foreign correspondent and writer. Vic spent his childhood in Berlin and in Russia. As the Stalin terror spread through Russia, Vic's mother, a Soviet citizen, applied for permission to leave the country and join her American husband in the U.S., but the KGB turned her down.

Vic's father enlisted the help of Eleanor Roosevelt, and they got his wife and sons, Vic and George, out of Russia in 1939.

Vic arrived in New York at age 15, speaking only Russian and German. Thus, he set about learning English by taking English 1, 2 and 3 simultaneously. After graduating from high school, he went to the University of Wisconsin, where his first semester was interrupted by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Fischer enlisted in the U.S. Army in January 1943, and served in France, Germany and the Philippines, and was honorably discharged in 1946 with several medals to his name. While in the military with the combat engineers building bridges, he got to use his Russian language to assist Russian prisoners of war, who were freed from German camps.

After returning from the war, Victor completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin and then went on to complete his master's degree in community planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He then applied for and got the first planning job offered in Alaska.

He married his first wife, Gloria Rubenstein, and they made the cross-country trek to the Alaska Territory in 1950. Vic secured a job with the Bureau of Land Management as a town site planner, selling federal lots off the back of a pickup truck in outlying towns. Gloria worked for the Anchorage Times.

In 1953, Vic was hired as the first planning director for Anchorage and was able to identify a green belt along Chester Creek, preserve the old World War II air strip - now known as Delaney Park Strip - as public space and planned the development of Westchester Lagoon.

In 1955, Vic was elected to be a delegate to the AK Constitutional Convention. He was 31 years old, and served as a member of the local government committee. As such, he played a key role in creating the state's unique borough government systems. In later life, he reflected that the experience of writing the constitution to help create the new state of Alaska was the most formative and uplifting endeavor of his career.

Once the constitution was ratified by the voters of Alaska, Vic sought and was elected to the Alaska territorial legislature, serving from 1957 to 1959. There, he co-sponsored the legislation to abolish the death penalty. Having seen the Soviet state kill millions of its citizens, Fischer was committed to the belief that the state should not have the authority to kill its people. He believed dangerous individuals could be removed from others in prison, but not killed.

In an effort to better understand government finance structures, Vic returned to graduate school at Harvard in 1960, and while there was recruited by the Kennedy/Johnson administration to serve in the federal Housing and Urban Development Agency in Washington, D.C. For the next four years, Vic managed Regional Planning for Urban Centers across the nation. After the 1964 earthquake, Vic secured a seat on Air Force One from D.C. to Alaska to survey the damage and then report back to the president on what he saw. He ended up overseeing reconstruction of Southcentral Alaska after the earthquake and with the participation of geologist Lidia Selkgregg, he managed the federal finances of the reconstruction of Anchorage, Kodiak and Valdez.

In 1966, Vic accepted a position at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where the new Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) was being developed. At that point in Alaska, little was known about the vast new state and policy makers had little information when making decisions about the direction for the fledgling state. Vic set out to build a reputable institution within the university that could amass and provide such information. For 10 years, Vic did just that. He raised funds from the National Science Foundation and surrounded himself with young, brilliant researchers and writers. He established and oversaw an organization that, to this day, conducts credible, science-backed research and provides economic and social information about Alaska's people and communities on how to address changes in the economy and governance structures as oil development was initiated. Vic led ISER for a decade.

In the 1970s, Anchorage leaders worked to draft a charter to consolidate the borough and the City of Anchorage and draft a charter to form the Municipality of Anchorage. It was during this time Vic met Jane Angvik, an elected member of the Anchorage Charter Commission. They were married in 1981, and worked as a dynamic political duo on issues important to them and to the state. The Alaska flag has always flown outside the Fischer/Angvik household for the last four decades.

Vic was elected to the Alaska State Senate, where he served from 1981-1986. Vic's priorities were women's rights, reducing domestic violence and policies to support the poor and the vulnerable. His legislative work about which he was most proud included establishing Alaska's personal use fishery, the permanent fund dividend, mandatory car seats for children, establishing a statewide trails system and appropriated money from oil revenues to build women's shelters across the state.

Together, Vic and Jane raised their daughter Ruth Angvik (Fischer) Dinkins, ferrying her as a toddler, back and forth between Anchorage, where Jane served on the Anchorage Assembly, and Juneau, where Vic served in the Alaska State Senate.

In 1989, the Berlin wall fell, and the so called "Ice Wall" between Russia and Alaska melted. As requests from Russian academics and researchers in biology and marine sciences increased, the University of Alaska was inundated with requests for cooperative exchanges between Russian and American arctic experts.

The President of the University reached out to Vic to help with the requests because of his Russian language skills and his familiarity with the Alaska University system. So, at age 66, he started another decade-long job as the Director of the Alaska Russian Program. The effort expanded from cooperative academic research to educational efforts, economic development programs and humanitarian aid in the form of medical facilities and supplies, business training and community development.

He traveled back and forth across the Bering Sea 10 times a year to bring democracy and western economic concepts to people who had been under a closed economic and political system for 40 years. Russian people who visited Alaska were surprised by what the west looked like. Russian men wept at the sight of the food available in Anchorage grocery stores. It was so different than what they had been told.

Vic was on a mission that, for as long as communication was possible, we in Alaska were going to befriend our neighbors across the Bering Sea. He sent dozens of young, bright, fluent Russian-speaking Americans to set up business centers in the Russian Far East, and they stayed and worked with communities for a decade before Putin came to power and closed off communication between Alaska and our partners in the Russian Far East.

Vic was grateful that he had the opportunity to be useful in opening the dialogue. He came home and set about the task of writing his autobiography. With the able assistance of Charles Wohlforth, his book "To Russia with love: An Alaskan's Journey" was published in 2012.

Along with being a change maker, Vic was dedicated to his family. After their daughter Ruth married Master Sergeant Jonathan Dinkins in 2009, Vic and Jane fully supported them and their growing family as they moved around the U.S. and Hawaii to a variety of duty stations. From bowling and swimming, to doing homework and feeding them waffles, Vic was a loving, active grandfather to four grandchildren: Aiden, Aubrey, Addison and Avery Dinkins. He was proud of and often talked about the accomplishments of his older grandchildren: Grady Fischer, Mackenzie Fischer, Gavin Hage and Yana Fischer.

Vic and Jane hosted countless dinner parties during their decades together. Guests included artists, antiquities collectors, campaign volunteers, candidates, oligarchs, Alaska Native Leaders, coworkers, colleagues and friends. Their kitchen table was a gathering place where plans were thought out and hashed over always with a lot of laughter. Ballot measures were born, and policies made possible at that table where all were welcome and many returned.

Each spring Vic planted flowers by the hundreds and grew enviable geraniums, nasturtiums and marigolds. He had a way with raspberry plants and currents, and used plenty of garden diplomacy to make sure the moose did not eat them before he got to them.

Along with plants, flowers and Vic's paintings, the home of Vic and Jane is filled with books on history, democracy, leadership and Alaska. He read The Economist cover to cover each week, plus the New York Times and the MIT Technology Review. Photos of a life of travel and adventure fill the walls of their home including many trips to places including Russia, Venezuela, Turkey, Indonesia, China, Australia, Africa and Mexico to name a few. When longtime friend Steve Reeve gave Vic and Jane a hot air balloon ride across the Serengeti, he and Jane, of course, traveled to Kenya. When daughter Ruth asked to visit Egypt, since it was a topic she was studying in school, they did not hesitate.

Vic loved kayaking, and he and Jane shared countless adventures on the rivers and bays throughout Alaska. Some of Vic's favorite stories where of being eye to eye with humpback whales and of he and Jane hitting river sweepers and living to tell about it.

Classical music brought Vic happiness and was therefore a longtime patron of the Sitka Music Festival. He served as an usher for the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts for 20 years. He served on many boards and advised dozens of organizations and mentees over the decades, reveling in their success and supporting each new generation of activists and academics. He was a staunch supporter of Alaska Public Media and always reminded people to give during fund drives.

Vic regarded children, students and young professionals very highly. He knew they were the future and as the reason to have strong policies that would protect them so they could reach their full potential. He witnessed the devastation of the purges under Stalin and sought and fought to establish a democratic style government where those actions would not be possible.

He continued to travel to visit lifelong friends and family, host gatherings and be actively engaged in Alaska public policy, including ballot propositions about the oil tax structure in 2016, 2020, 2022, when he was well into his 90s. Vic fought to defend the constitution he drafted until his death.

The Fischer/Angvik Family wish to thank Greg and Sherry, Alaska state staff to U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski for their help when it mattered the most, as well as Anthony and the dedicated team at the Disabled American Veteran's Department of Alaska. Vic was continually impressed with the kind, professional help of the medical staff at the Alaska VA healthcare system, particularly Jill and Michael, and the family is filled with gratitude for the time and attention granted to Vic as well as all other veterans.

The family is grateful to the cast of in-home caregivers at Home Instead, as well as the teams at Providence Hospice Center, including Michael and Julie who helped throughout. Special thank you to all those friends who came to the house to sit with Vic, bring food and share their goodness these last few months.

Vic is survived by his wife, Jane Angvik; four children; eight grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

A Celebration of Vic's life will be held on Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023, at 4 p.m., at the Hotel Captain Cook. The event will also be available by Zoom. Register in advance to watch Vic's celebration online: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kZ1761IITuCN4AwiMUGSHw. Vic requested that a room full of stories be shared.

Donations in honor of Vic may be made in his name to the Vic Fischer Scholarship Program at the Institute of Social Economic Research at the University of Alaska, Alaska Public Media or the Sitka Music Festival.