Udall Tucson Reunion: Memorial Day weekend

For Memorial Day weekend, we spent a few days in Tucson, meeting up with relatives. Most of the relatives I had never met before, or at least it had been at least a few decades since I had seen them last at the Deputy Knight Commander Club in Santa Fe. This club was created for the child relatives of my Uncle Stewart when he was knighted by Spain.
Interestingly, accompanying the invite to the reunion, there was attached the dissertation of a Stanford  PhD student, entitled, "Udall's: the Kennedy's of the West." I told my uncle the title, and he said, "the Kennedys didn't touch the breadth of our influence." He was joking...I think.
On Saturday morning we headed to the Udall Center for Public Policy on the UofA campus. They deal with water policy (water is the oil of the 21st century), Native American rights, and other issues that Mo and Stewart supported. It's housed in the buildings that were the dorms for the first female faculty at UofA.

Then we headed over to the UofA Special Collections Library where the Udall collection is always in the top 5 most used at the university. Mo Udall ran for president in 76 against Carter. More  importantly, when I ran for vice-president of my senior class, I wore his campaign shirt.
These are from the Udall Collection. I didn't get as many pictures of Stewart items. Stewart and Mo were my grandpa's cousins, but Stewart was also married to Sybil's sister.

The third stop of the day was at the Udall Foundation, which is a federal agency. Here I learned about a time when Mo and Stewart (who were big sports stars at UofA) integrated the university cafeteria. They invited a black man to sit with them, which was forbidden at the time, but everyone followed suit and welcomed blacks afterward.

This is Elma Udall. She is the oldest of the Mo/Stewart siblings: 100 years young. Or almost 100. She told everyone she would be 100 on Joseph Smith's birthday, which most thought was hilarious (most aren't Mormon, including Elma). She never married, but traveled the world working for the State Department. When the statute of limitations expired, she admitted that she had worked as a spy. She said when she was younger, her grandfather wanted to give all of his kids a patriarchal blessing. Hers said that she would be involved in genealogical work. She didn't know what that meant until she was working in England and was able to trace her line back to the time of Henry VIII. Udall was Uvedele, which came from the word "feudal" (which means "tied to the land"),  because that is the class to which they belonged. When she was asked her secret to long life, she said, "All things in moderation, including moderation."

San Xavier del Bac

Fry Bread

We enjoyed some fry bread before we went into the church.

She looks sweet, but

She was the loudest one in the chapel...sushing everyone, loudly.

Then she tried to blow out the prayer candles as if they were on top of her bday cake.

Dinner that night at El Charro. 

We were surrounded by Udall's.

On Sunday we went to church at the chapel I attended as a kid. Which brought up so many memories (Being the sad poinsettia in the Christmas play, playing in the pitch-black halls, being in the Relief Society fashion show, staring at the stained glass window of JS in the sacred grove, being jealous of Hunt taking donuts to his class).

I asked an old man where I could buy a bolo tie because I've been wanting to get one for David. At the end of church, he gave me his. David wore it proudly.

We drove by my old elementary school where I remembered bagged milk, losing a tooth in an apple, loving the Back Street Boys, going to a sleepover where we played spin the bottle (I was Claire's age!), and so much more.

Below is the kid table that night at dinner. Many people spoke and performed. I was sitting by my Uncle, who whispered under his breath that, "How could these people have PhD's when they say "I'm done" instead of "I'm finished." What is she, a turkey?" He inherited his fierce protection of the English language from his mother, Sybil. Tom Udall (Senator from New Mexico) spoke about hope in washington, which he admitted was an oxymoron. He did say though, that his office used to get 50 calls a day and now was getting 500-1000 per day. 

Af few funny stories from Burr Udall:

My grandpa got a call from a mass-murderer in DC who claimed to be related to the family through the 3rd wife of David Udall and he threatened to take the news public. My grandpa freaked out, but his aunt said, "Why are you worried about the news about the 3rd wife, when we have a mass-murderer in the family? I found out later that there was a semi-secret 3rd wife, but had children through a previous marriage only.

Also, Mo had a glass eye and every year that would get a few dozen glass eyes shipped in from Colorado. The kids would sit around and shove them into his socket, seeing which ones would fall out.

Claire and Sasha (my cousin's daughter) did a presentation.

 That's all for now. The 3 kids are at swim team. I fed them leftovers before they left and now I'm going to gear up for popcorn and milkshake (banana, ice, milk, vanilla: the recipe from my childhood) for the night snack while I read to them.
Summer is great!