As Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Stewart Udall facilitated the enactment of four major conservation laws. Before joining the cabinets, he had represented his home state of Arizona for four terms as a member of Congress. Around 1976, Udall left Washington to practice law in the Southwest, and stumbled into the cause that he would spend the rest of his life advocating. In 1978, he surveyed several communities that had suffered high and early death rates, and were situated just below the Nevada Nuclear test site. Udall brought a series of lawsuits against the government on behalf of hundreds of Nevada locals. In 1990, he helped create the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which works toward awareness of health effects of atomic testing and encourages compensation for affected individuals and families.
1920 January 31, Born, St. Johns, AZ
1944 U.S. Army Air force
1948 LL.B, University of Arizona
1948 Admitted to Arizona State Bar
1948-1954 Partner, Udall & Udall, Tucson, AZ
1955-1960 U.S. Representative from 2nd Arizona district
1961-1969 U.S. Secretary of the Interior
1969-- Chairman of the Board, Overview Co., Washington D.C.
1969-- Activist in New Mexico
1969-- Adjunct Professor, Yale University
Author
The Quiet Crisis, 1963
National Parks of America, (with others), 1966
1976: Agenda for Tomorrow, 1968
Natural Wonders of America, 1971
America’s Natural Treasures, 1971
The Energy Balloon, 1974
The National Parks, 1974
To the Inland Empire: Coronado and Our Spanish Legacy, 1987
The Quiet Crisis and the Next Generation, 1988
Arizona, Wild and Free, 1993
The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom, 1994
Source
Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group, 2003. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC