Obituary - Morris K. Udall

Monday, December 14, 1998
THE JUNEAU EMPIRE
Morris Udall dead at 76

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - Former Rep. Morris K. Udall, a 30-year congressman who championed environmental causes, set federal land policy in Alaska and wryly lamented he was too funny to be president, has died after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. He was 76.

Udall died late Saturday at the U.S. Veterans Medical Center in Washington, according to Chris Helms, head of a Udall family foundation in Tucson, Ariz.

Udall, who served as chairman of the House Interior Committee from 1976 until he left Congress in 1991, was one of the principal architects of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

ANILCA, which was passed into law and signed by President Carter in 1980, set aside more than 100 million acres of Alaska land as parks, refuges and wilderness areas. The act also gave rural residents a priority to the state's fish and game resources for subsistence use.

A Democrat and member of one of Arizona's best-known families, Udall, known as "Mo,'' remained one of the most consistent voices of liberalism in the House, whatever the political winds sweeping the country.

"Mo Udall was a leader whose uncommon wisdom, wit and dedication won the love of his colleagues and the respect of all Americans,'' President Clinton said in a statement Sunday. Clinton awarded Udall the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996.

During the 1970s, Udall failed in two tries to win election as House speaker, and he ran unsuccessfully in 1976 as an alternative to Jimmy Carter in the Democratic presidential primaries.

Mo Udall's health had deteriorated in recent years with the progressive worsening of Parkinson's disease, a degenerative neurological illness. His congressional career ended in January 1991, when he broke a shoulder and ribs and suffered a concussion falling down stairs at his Arlington, Va., home. He had not been able to talk since, Mark Udall said.

As Chairman of the Interior Committee, Udall shepherded passage of a measure to designate 8 million acres of federal lands as wilderness in 1984; strip-mining control legislation in 1977; and a nuclear waste management policy in 1982. He was also a leader in civil service reforms and worked to change campaign finance laws.

Udall practiced law with his brother, Stewart, after graduating from the University of Arizona law school in 1949. When Stewart, then a congressman, was tapped to serve as President Kennedy's interior secretary in 1961, Morris won the seat in a close special election.

He easily kept the seat in successive elections, winning his last in November 1990 with 66 percent of the vote.

He is survived by his wife, four brothers and sisters, six children, one stepson and seven grandchildren, the Morris K. Udall Foundation said. Memorial services are expected later in Tucson and Washington.