Udall, Stewart

(Stewart Lee Udall 1920.01.31-    )  Secretary of Interior under Kennedy, Congressman, lawyer.

Born in St. Johns

Lived in St. Johns, Tucson, Phoenix

Graduate of University of Arizona

Stewart Udall was born and grew up in St. Johns, a rural Arizona community near the New Mexico border which was founded by a group of Mormons lead by his grandfather.  He attended the University of Arizona but his studies were interrupted for service first as a Mormon missionary in New York and Pennsylvania for two years, and then as a gunner in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II.

Stewart Udall celebrated his 83rd birthday by speaking at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe before autographing copies of his book, The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West..  1-03.

After the war Stewart returned to the University of Arizona.  He was on the school's first basketball team to play at the National Invitational Tournament at Madison Square Garden.  At the time he graduated with a law degree in 1948, his father, Levi S. Udall (1891-1960), who was also born in St. Johns and also attended the University of Arizona, was in his second year as judge on the Arizona Supreme Court.

Stewart started his own law practice in Tucson shortly after graduation.  His younger brother, Morris Udall (1922-1998), joined his firm two years later.

In 1954, Stewart was elected as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives.  He was serving his third consecutive term when he helped Senator John F. Kennedy gain the support of the Arizona delegates to the Democratic National Convention.  When Kennedy won the nomination and the presidency, Stewart was appointed as Secretary of the Interior.  He held the cabinet position through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (1961-1969).  Three decades later, another Arizonan, Bruce Babbitt, would hold the same cabinet position during the Clinton administration (1993-2001).

After leaving the cabinet, Stewart remained active in environmental concerns, teaching for a year at Yale University's School of Forestry, lecturing, writing, and practicing law.  His books include The Quiet Crisis (1963), National Parks of America (1966), Agenda for Tomorrow (1968), Majestic Journey: Coronado's Inland Empire (1995) and The Forgotten Founders: Rethinking the History of the Old West (2002).