Burke Riley
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Burke Riley (April 2, 1914 – June 13, 2006) was an American state legislator, lawyer, and public official on territorial, state, and national levels. He was a delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention in 1955 and 1956, representing the city of Haines, Alaska, and he was a signer of the Alaska Constitution.
Burke Riley was born in Swan Lake, Montana and grew up in Yakima, Washington. He graduated from Yakima Valley Junior College and attended the University of Washington, but he ran out of money in 1937, and moved to Fairbanks, Alaska the next year. During World War II, he served in the United States Army Air Force as a courier in the Pacific Theater of Operations.
After leaving the armed forces, Riley moved to Juneau City and Borough, Alaska. He passed the then-Alaska Territory's bar examination, and was later appointed assistant to territorial Governor Ernest Gruening. Later in the Gruening administration, Riley became the Secretary of Alaska (now the Lieutenant Governor) from 1952 to 1953.
At the Alaska Constitutional Convention, Riley served as the Chair of the Committee on Rules, and a member of the Committee on Resources. After statehood in 1959, he worked for former governor William Egan, and served two terms in the Alaska House of Representatives. Riley later worked in the United States Bureau of Land Management and the Department of the Interior.
Riley died in a Kirkland, Washington hospice after developing Alzheimer's disease, aged 92.
