page_title: Ted Stevens
section_title: Marriage and family
hierarchical_section_title: Ted Stevens / Early life and career / Marriage and family
caption_attribution_description: English: Senator Ted Stevens and his wife, Catherine Ann Chandler, at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.
context_page_description: Theodore Fulton Stevens Sr. was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Alaska from 1968 to 2009. He was the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senator in history at the time he left office; his record was surpassed in January 2017 by Orrin Hatch from Utah. He was the president pro tempore of the United States Senate in the 108th and 109th Congresses from January 3, 2003, to January 3, 2007, and was the third U.S. Senator to hold the title of president pro tempore emeritus.
  Stevens served for six decades in the American public sector, beginning with his service in World War II. In 1952, his law career took him to Fairbanks, Alaska, where he was appointed U.S. Attorney the following year. In 1956, he returned to Washington D.C. to work in the Eisenhower Interior Department, where he played an important role in bringing about statehood for Alaska. He was elected to the Alaska House of Representatives in 1964 and became House majority leader in his second term. In 1968, Stevens ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, but was appointed to Alaska's other Senate seat when it became vacant later that year.
context_section_description: Early in 1952, Stevens married Ann Mary Cherrington, a Democrat and the adopted daughter of University of Denver Chancellor Ben Mark Cherrington. She had graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and during Truman's administration had worked for the State Department.
  On December 4, 1978, the crash of a Learjet 25C on approach at Anchorage International Airport killed five of the seven aboard; Stevens survived (concussion, broken ribs), but his wife Ann did not. The building which houses the Alaska chapter of the American Red Cross at 235 East Eighth Avenue in Anchorage is named in her honor. There is also a reading room at the Loussac Library in Anchorage which is named for her.
  Stevens and Ann had three sons (Ben A. Stevens, Sr., Walter, and Ted Jr.) and two daughters (Susan Covich and Elizabeth "Beth" Harper Stevens). Democratic Governor Tony Knowles appointed Ben to the Alaska Senate in 2001, where he served as the president of the state senate until the fall of 2006.
  Ted Stevens remarried in 1980. He and his second wife, Catherine, had a daughter, Lily.
  Stevens spent many years living at the Knik Arms, a six-story residential building constructed in 1950 on the western edge of downtown Anchorage. In his earlier years in the Senate, he would often point to this residence when trying to drive home the point that he was not of means and had not achieved such through his Senate service.
  Stevens's last home was in Girdwood, a ski resort community located near the southern edge of Anchorage's city limits and about forty miles (65 km) by road from downtown. Originally purchased as a vacation home, Stevens later lived there full-time.
caption: Stevens and his wife, Catherine Ann Chandler.
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