Hollis: His Story
Hollis French moved to Alaska in 1978. He was 19 years old and came to the state looking for adventure. He soon found it in the waters of Cook Inlet. He got a job on an oil platform five miles offshore, riding a helicopter to and from work.
Hollis started from the absolute bottom in the oil industry, as a bullcook washing pots and pans. He soon got promoted to roustabout and began painting his way around the platform! He also learned his way around the cranes, and the drill rig.
The work ethic that Hollis learned and demonstrated on the rig helped get him promoted to production operator. As an operator he ran the platform: he monitored the compressors that handle the natural gas, the generators that make electricity and the separators that process the oil as it comes out of the wells.
In 1984, Hollis took his operator skills to work on the North Slope for ARCO at Kuparuk and spent the next eight years there. Kuparuk was and is the second largest oil field in North America. Hollis was there for peak production years, when 2 – 2.1 billion barrels of oil were moving down the pipeline everyday. Every single shift was a friendly competition with the other shifts to see who could run the plant harder with higher pressure and put up better numbers.
Hollis met the love of his life Peggy French in the North Slope. They soon learned they shared a love of outdoor adventure. They climbed Denali to the summit in 1987. They were married in 1988 and that year their son Chris was born.
During his Slope years Hollis was also earning a degree from UAA. He would work an 84 hour week on the Slope, fly to Anchorage and attend classes, and then go back to the Slope for another week of work.
Here’s what one of his professors, Tom Sexton, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Alaska, Anchorage and former Alaska Poet Laureate, had to this say about those years:
“I met Hollis French years ago when he was working one week on and one week off on the slope as a production operator and at the same time working toward a BA degree at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. I remember thinking that he would most likely drop out of my poetry class before the semester was over as other slope workers had done before him; however, Hollis not only finished the class, he excelled in it. Even with his schedule, he was always prepared and displayed a keen analytical mind and winning personality in that and subsequent courses. The other students always listened to what he had to say. I was delighted when Hollis entered public service. He will be an outstanding governor."
In 1992 Hollis left the oil industry for law school. In 1995 he graduated from Cornell Law School and returned to Alaska, taking a job at the Anchorage District Attorney’s Office where he spent the next six years prosecuting crime. Again he worked his way up through the ranks, beginning with DWI and domestic violence cases. He moved on to handle narcotics cases, burglaries, sex assaults, and finally homicides.
Hollis was elected as a State Senator in 2002.
He is currently the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hollis was instrumental in the 2007 rewrite of our oil tax laws. He is a member of the Bi-Partisan Working Group, made up of ten Democrats and six Republicans. In the legislature, he has consistently worked across party lines to get things accomplished. Hollis’ work as a legislator has been recognized by groups such as the Alaska Firefighters, the Anchorage Police Department, the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and the Alaska Democratic Party, which awarded him the prestigious Hugh Malone Award for his work on oil taxes. He is a fighter and will work tirelessly on the issue that effect all Alaskans.
Like many Alaskans, Hollis is an avid outdoorsman. He likes hiking, climbing and skiing. He enjoys spending time with his family and figuring out ways to make Alaska a great state.
