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He wrote columns for one of the smallest newspapers in the state - the Ketchikan Daily News - but Lew Williams Jr.'s reputation for a strong editorial voice commanded the respect of lawmakers in Juneau and Washington, D.C., and university leaders in Fairbanks.

A retired publisher who continued writing columns until a few weeks ago, Williams died Saturday of cancer at age 83, bequeathing an editorial voice so memorable that U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens planned to speak of his friend on the Senate floor Tuesday.

Williams' son, Lew Williams III, said his father had been feeling ill since fall but didn't get his diagnosis until a few weeks ago. He died while vacationing in Arizona a few days after he had been scheduled to go home to Ketchikan.

"I imagine he knew what was going on," Williams' son said. "He told the nurse that he's 83 years old, and he's had a good life."

The elder Williams had been involved in journalism and state affairs for nearly 60 years, his family said. He and his wife, Dorothy, published newspapers in Wrangell, Petersburg, Sitka and Ketchikan.

During that time, he built a reputation as a statesman while serving on numerous state boards and as a columnist versed on statewide issues, not those just affecting small towns in Southeast Alaska.

Known as a "Kennedy Democrat" for his conservative beliefs, Williams advocated developing the state's resources - oil, timber, fish - because that's how the state would grow as well as thrive.

"He really enjoyed writing and having an impact," said Lew Williams III, who, along with his sister, Tena, took over publishing duties in 1990 while his father still wrote.

"He liked being able to publish his opinions," the son said. "He was a big supporter of things like the (trans-Alaska oil) pipeline, which gave people a reason to come here and live."

Williams had hoped the timber industry would do the same as the oil business, but instead he watched logging languish at a time when he believed it should thrive in Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

His arguments to encourage logging weren't enough, Lew Williams III said. In the end, his own industry's national media let him down, the son said.

"The only thing he disliked was the outright lies about what's going on in the Tongass, especially from the newspaper industry," the son said. "When you're confronted by a national movement, and you're a small-town newspaper guy, it's tough to change people's minds."

Williams' voice still had the ear of those in Washington.

U.S. Rep. Don Young said he never passed up a chance to call Williams just to see what he thought about prevailing topics: energy; fishing; Native issues.

"I used him as a sounding board," Young said. "It was usually hot-button issues like what are we going to do about the energy problem. He looked at all the issues squarely, not just what sell newspapers."

Williams was born in Spokane, Wash., to parents who were journalists. The family moved 11 years later to Juneau, where his father worked for the Juneau Empire.

In 1939, the family purchased the Wrangell Sentinel, marking the Williams family's start in newspaper publishing that continues today.

After a stint in World War II, Lew Williams Jr. ran the Sentinel for the family. Eventually, he and his wife, Dorothy bought the Sentinel from his father and the Petersburg Press.

They later sold both of those papers and bought the Daily Sitka Sentinel and the Ketchikan Daily News. They also helped start the Petersburg Pilot.

Williams' civic duty went well past advocative columns.

He served on local school boards, state boards for every governor through 1999, and was on the University of Alaska's Board of Regents that appointed current president Mark Hamilton to his post 10 years ago.

Hamilton learned of Williams' death on Monday, calling his friend "straight forward and honest, the kind of qualities you'd find in a wise man."

"He was pretty fearless," Hamilton said. "He jumped out there and said what pretty well needed to be said.