Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall passed away over the weekend. He did as much as Muir and Roosevelt to create the Myth of Wilderness that inspired so many Americans, helping to enact the Wilderness Act in 1964 and helping to create Redwood National Park, Cape Cod National Seashore, and Point Reyes National Seashore. He fought in WWII. He led a lawsuit in the late 1970s against the government on behalf of Navajo uranium miners. The Udalls are one of the great (perhaps unsung) political clans of the country. He was a Great American, and one of my heroes: “Over the long haul of life on this planet, it is the ecologists, and not the bookkeepers of business, who are the ultimate accountants.”

The University of Arizona houses his manuscript collection.

Bob Edwards remembers Steward Udall: “I have lived in Washington, DC far too long to have political heroes, but Stewart Udall was the model of what a public servant should be.”