Thelma Garcia Buchholdt, 73; former Alaskan legislator

Thelma Garcia Buchholdt, 73, a lawyer and former member of the Alaska Legislature who wrote a book about the history of the state’s Filipino community, died Nov. 5 of pancreatic cancer at her home in Anchorage, according to the Filipino American National Historical Society.

Born in 1934 in the Philippines, Buchholdt “achieved a political first,” according to the 2004 edition of “Everything You Need to Know About Asian American History,” when she was elected in 1974 to represent a predominantly white district in the Alaska House of Representatives.

While in the legislature, Buchholdt won funding for a state commission on the status of women. The Democrat also helped allocate money for an underwater survey of Alaska’s bowhead whale population.

Dedicated to the preservation of Filipino culture and history, Buchholdt published the book “Filipinos in Alaska: 1788-1958” in 1996 and made a documentary on the subject. She had moved to Alaska in 1965 with her husband, Jon, whom she met while doing graduate work at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

She immigrated to the U.S. in 1951 and received her undergraduate degree from Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles. After their four children were grown, Buchholdt and her husband earned degrees from the District of Columbia School of Law in 1991 and practiced in Anchorage.