Young, Don, 1933-

Donald Edwin Young (born June 9, 1933) is an American politician and retired educator serving as the U.S. representative for Alaska's at-large congressional district since 1973. He is the Republican Party's longest-serving member of the House of Representatives and of Congress in history, having represented Alaska for 25 terms.

Young is currently the longest-serving member of Congress, as well as the last remaining member who has been in office since the Nixon Administration; he became the 45th dean of the House of Representatives on December 5, 2017, after John Conyers resigned. He is also the oldest current member of Congress. Before the special election following U.S. Representative Nick Begich's presumed death in a plane crash, Young was mayor of Fort Yukon from 1964 to 1967 and a member of the Alaska House of Representatives from 1967 to 1971 and the Alaska Senate from 1971 to 1973.

Young was born in Meridian, Sutter County, California. He earned an associate's degree in education from Yuba College in 1952 and a bachelor's degree from Chico State College in 1958. He served in the Army from 1955 to 1957.

Young moved to Alaska in 1959, not long after it became a state. He eventually settled in Fort Yukon, then a 700-person city on the Yukon River, seven miles above the Arctic Circle in Alaska's central interior region. He made a living in construction, fishing, trapping and gold mining. He captained a tugboat and ran a barge operation to deliver products and supplies to villages along the Yukon River. He still holds his mariner's license. During winters, he taught fifth grade at the local Bureau of Indian Affairs elementary school.

Young began his political career in 1964 when he was elected mayor of Fort Yukon, serving from 1964 to 1968. He ran for the Alaska House of Representatives in 1964, but finished tenth, with the top seven candidates being elected for the multi-member district. He was elected to the State House in 1966 and reelected in 1968. Young served in the Alaska House of Representatives from 1967 to 1971. He said he "loved" the job before he "got ambitious" and ran for the Alaska Senate in 1970. He served in the Alaska Senate from 1971 to 1973. He was elected to the two-member District I alongside long-serving Republican State Senator John Butrovich. He said he "hated" the state senate and, after encouragement from his first wife, ran for Congress in 1972.