The Alaska Contractor: Special 60th Anniversary Issue

First National Bank Alaska founder Warren Cuddy, left, and son Dan Cuddy.
how many stops it made to pick up canned salmon, it would
take a week to 10 days to get to Seattle.
“From Seattle my train to San Francisco was three days.
“I could not come home for Thanksgiving. I could not
come home for Christmas. I couldn’t come home for spring
vacation. There was no telephone. I couldn’t telephone
home.
“So when I left the last part of August, I would not be
back until sometime in June.
“Now you look at these computers. We had six bookkeeping
machines when this was a $25 million bank. We
would need this whole building today for just that function.
Without computers, it couldn’t be done.”
Cuddy then goes on to list a string of modern gadgets
and asks quite simply who could have imagined things like
these when he was young.
“What it’s going to be 50 years from now, I have no idea,”
he said.
Challenges ahead
While he won’t predict the future, Cuddy confi dently
assesses some of the challenges that lie ahead, both at the
state level and nationally. His fi rst worry for the construction
industry is, “what the law will do to you.”
His biggest worry, however, is more a national problem
than a strictly local concern. “The big challenge we have
right now,” he says, “is the devaluation of the dollar. At the
rate we’re going, we’re going to be equivalent to Germany
at the end of World War I when it took a bushel basket of
marks to buy a loaf of bread.”
In his view, the central problem lies with the Federal Reserve,
which he says has two things to look at: the economy
and infl ation.
“The Federal Reserve has chosen to look out for the
economy,” he said. “I personally think that’s a mistake.”
As he puts the problem together, his ultimate concern
is that the Fed will have to suddenly and sharply raise
interest rates to tame infl ation. “If you raise them hard,”
Cuddy said, “it causes a recession. That worries me more
than anything else.”
Getting it right
First National was founded in 1922 by people involved
in building the Alaska Railroad. Initially there were but two
employees and a single offi ce in Anchorage, the port city for
much of the material brought in for building the railroad.
Today there are more than 675 employees in 30 branch offi
ces around the state.
Cuddy’s father bought up controlling interest in the
bank in the late 1930s and the 1940s. Cuddy, as already
noted, took over in 1951, when his father died suddenly. In
the intervening years Dan Cuddy has steered his bank to
the prominent position that it enjoys today. It wasn’t always
easy, but Cuddy’s goals have served him well and will continue
to serve him well in the future.
Of all the banks that have come and gone in Alaska over
the past half century, “we’re the only one left,” Cuddy said.
“So we must be doing something right.”
18 The Alaska conTrAcTor 60th Anniversary Issue 1948–2008
PH O TO: CO U R T E SY O F FI R ST NAT I O N A L BA N K AL A S K A