Tom Snapp, Ex-Alaska Publisher

FAIRBANKS - Tom Snapp, a pioneer in Alaska journalism who published the gritty, free-swinging All-Alaska Weekly for 17 years, died Friday at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital of complications related to a pancreatic tumor. He was 66.

A Korean War veteran with a soft Virginia drawl, Mr. Snapp planned a short stay when he first came to Alaska to visit his sister in 1960. But his reporting experience in the military, at Stars and Stripes, landed him a job at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

It was the first of many journalistic efforts in a town Mr. Snapp rapidly made his own.

At the Tundra Times, Mr. Snapp broke the story of the federal government's slave-like treatment of Pribilof Islanders and exposed the dangers of Project Chariot, the proposal to use nuclear weapons to excavate a harbor near the Eskimo village of Point Hope.

"Tom is what Alaska was all about," said John Shively, the state's commissioner of natural resources. "Pre-oil Alaska, where people were struggling to make a living in a poor state."

Edgar Paul Boyko, an Anchorage attorney, knew Mr. Snapp best through the All-Alaska Weekly, which specialized in police and political coverage.

"Tom was never afraid of making a big splash if he thought something funny was going on," Boyko said.

Mr. Snapp's talent at prying loose information once caused a judge to send Alaska State Troopers to halt the newspaper's publication, which the jurist suspected of containing confidential material from a closed hearing.

Colleen Redman, Mr. Snapp's sister, recalls her brother's response to a pressman's worried call.

"Proceed with all possible haste," Mr. Snapp said.

He published the weekly from 1970 to 1987.

Fairbanks Mayor Jim Hayes, who served on a Human Rights Council with Mr. Snapp, praised his old friend's ability to bring the news home to his audience.

"I never will forget one time he covered a riot downtown," Hayes said. "Tom always carried a little tape recorder, and as it got more violent you could hear his footsteps, running away."

Colleen Redman remembers her brother as the man always running after another story. Diabetes, heart-bypass surgery and a series of strokes couldn't daunt his spirit.

"To see him going so slow," she said, describing the shuffling steps that followed her brother's leg surgery two years ago, "it was a real contrast with his whole life."

Besides his sister, Mr. Snapp leaves a brother, Woody Snapp, of Virginia.

Services have not been scheduled.