LOGAN – A documentary film depicting the life of former Arizona congressman and U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall is free and open to the public Tuesday, April 11 at 6:30 p.m. on the Utah State University campus at the Edith Bowen Laboratory School Auditorium.
USU Professor Ross Peterson, a friend of the Udalls, said even as a young farm boy growing up in eastern Arizona, Udall knew the value of irrigation and as a young congressman in the 1950s he sponsored many major projects.
“He championed, for instance, the Flaming Gorge Dam, the Glen Canyon Dam, created Lake Powell as well as a project to get Colorado River water over not only to Phoenix but all the way to Tucson,” Peterson said. “The manipulation of water was one of his big things.”
Peterson said Udall worked on the Kennedy campaign but was surprised when President-elect Kennedy invited him, at the age of 40, to become United States Secretary of the Interior.
Peterson said working in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations Udall accomplished an amazing amount of legislation.
“The Wilderness Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act,” Peterson explained, “creation of four national parks — including Canyonlands in Utah — while also preparing Arches and Capital Reef to becoming national parks, along with national seashore legislation. It was an amazing time for that type of legislation.”
The film’s director, John DeGraff, who is known for the film Affluenza, will be on hand Tuesday night.
USU’s Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air is sponsoring the screening, titled “Stewart Udall and the Politics of Beauty.”