Stewart Udall

Stewart Lee Udall (January 31, 1920 – March 20, 2010) was an American politician and later, a federal government official who belonged to the Democratic Party.

Stewart Udall was born on January 31, 1920, in Saint Johns, Arizona, to Louisa Lee Udall (1893–1974) and Levi Stewart Udall (1891–1960).

He had five siblings: Inez, Elma, Morris (Mo), Eloise, and David Burr.

As a young boy Stewart worked on the family farm in St. Johns.

He was remembered by his mother as a child with tremendous energy and an unquenchable curiosity.

Udall attended the University of Arizona for two years until World War II.

He served four years in the Air Force as an enlisted gunner on a B-24 Liberator, flying fifty missions over Western Europe from Italy with the 736th Bomb Squadron, 454th Bomb Group, for which he received the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters.

He returned to the University of Arizona in 1946, where he attended law school and played guard on a championship basketball team.

In 1947, Udall, along with his brother Mo, helped integrate the University of Arizona cafeteria.

Mo and Stewart were respected student athletes and Mo was student body president.

On their way to lunch at the Student Union one day, they saw a group of black students eating lunch outside the building.

Black students were allowed to buy food in the cafeteria but had to eat outside.

When Mo and Stewart invited Morgan Maxwell Jr., a black freshman, to share their table in the cafeteria, it helped to calm some long-simmering issues surrounding racial segregation at the university.

Udall received his law degree and was admitted to the Arizona bar in 1948.

He began his law practice in Tucson shortly thereafter.

Udall became increasingly active in public service, being elected to the School Board of Amphitheater Public Schools (District 10) in Tucson in June 1951.

As a school board member, he participated in desegregating the Amphitheater School District before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1954, Udall was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona's Second District.

He served with distinction in the House for three terms on the Interior and Education and Labor committees.

A pioneer of the environmental movement, Udall warned of a conservation crisis in the 1960s with his best-selling book on environmental attitudes in the United States, The Quiet Crisis (1963).

After serving three terms as a congressman from Arizona, he served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961 to 1969, under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

A staunch liberal, he is best known for enthusiastically promoting environmentalism while in the cabinet, with success primarily under President Johnson.

From 1961 to 1969 Udall served as Secretary of the Interior under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Under his leadership, the Interior Department aggressively promoted an expansion of federal public lands and assisted with the enactment of major environmental legislation.

Among his many accomplishments, Udall oversaw the addition of four national parks, six national monuments, eight national seashores and lakeshores, nine national recreation areas, twenty national historic sites, and fifty-six national wildlife refuges, including Canyonlands National Park in Utah, North Cascades National Park in Washington, Redwood National Park in California, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey, and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail stretching from Georgia to Maine.

In 1961, weeks after becoming the Secretary of Interior Udall told Washington Redskins owner, George Preston Marshall, that he had to integrate the football team as every other franchise in the NFL already had, as a condition of use of the newly built and federally owned District of Columbia Stadium.

Marshall integrated the team in 1962.

On July 27, 1962, Udall sent a letter to the United States Geological Survey's board chairman to discuss policy on the use of ethnic slurs on the organization's topographical maps product.

This led to a wider codified policy by the USGS against use of any ethnic slur in any map name.

In September 1962, Udall was summoned unexpectedly into a meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev while on a tour of the Soviet Union.

It was during this meeting that Khrushchev famously hinted at his secret deployment of nuclear missiles to Cuba by telling Udall: "It's been a long time since you could spank us like a little boy. Now we can swat your ass."

This was a prelude to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Udall supported a plan created by the US Army Corps of Engineers to construct the Tocks Island Dam for the purpose of creating a reservoir for the benefit of the New York City water supply.

After forcing homeowners out of their homes through buyouts and condemnation, the plan was abandoned.

The homes that had not been bulldozed were simply left to deteriorate.

Throughout the process, the federal government acted with impunity and a callous disregard for those who were displaced.

With the election of President Reagan, the Tocks Island Dam project was shelved.

Udall also helped spark a cultural renaissance in America by setting in motion initiatives that led to the Kennedy Center, Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the revived Ford's Theatre.

Upon Udall's recommendation President Kennedy asked former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Frost to read an original poem at his inauguration, establishing a tradition for that occasion.

Udall played a key role in the enactment of environmental laws such as the Clear Air, Water Quality and Clean Water Restoration Acts and Amendments, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966, the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965, the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965, the National Trail System Act of 1968, and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968.