WASHINGTON -- It is fitting that the last time Mark Udall saw his father, Mo, it was to tell him that he had just been elected to Congress.
Fitting, because public service has linked generations of Udalls, one of the most extraordinary families in American political history."You know," Morris (Mo) K. Udall said 27 years ago, "all of us are a product of our past. We're all what we are because of those who've gone before."
And this is what the Udalls have been: mayors, councilmen, congressmen, judges. There was a presidential candidate (Mo); a secretary of the Interior (Mo's brother Stewart); two Arizona chief justices (Mo's father, Levi, and uncle Jesse); a drafter of the Mesa charter (Mo's cousin David); and even a polygamist (David King Udall) who brought the Mormon pioneer family from Utah to St. Johns, Ariz., in the 1800s.
So rich is the family's history of civic involvement that Mo's children said Sunday that they can't help but feel its pull.
"There's something about Dad's death for me . . . that makes me realize that I have an incredible responsibility to carry on being a good person," said Mo's daughter Anne, an assistant schools superintendent in Charlotte, N.C.
"As long as he was living, you could kind of hide out a little bit and screw up occasionally. But there's something about his death. I carry this name and this history. It doesn't feel like a burden at all. It feels like . . . an opportunity."
Mo Udall, who died in his sleep Saturday, won 16 congressional elections in a row in Arizona before retiring in 1991 due to advanced Parkinson's disease and a fall that bruised his brain.
Sadly, Parkinson's has been almost as much a part of the Udall history as politics. Parkinson's, which hampers communication within the brain, struck Mo's sister, Inez, who died in 1992. It also afflicted one of his aunts, an uncle and a cousin. The Udalls weathered another tragedy when Mo's second wife, Ella, committed suicide in 1988. He remarried the following year.
Mo was so popular in Washington that several of his six children admitted they were just a little intimidated at the prospect of tapping into the family "business" by following their dad into politics. Above all, Mo was known for a charming, self-effacing wit.
Still, Anne Udall says she won't rule out seeking public office, perhaps in Arizona, where she was reared. Her cousin, Tom Udall, was elected to the U.S. House on Nov. 3 from New Mexico. And her brother, Mark, was also just elected to Congress from the Colorado seat vacated by the retiring David Skaggs. The two Udalls will be sworn in next month.
Mark visited Mo in his small, salmon-colored hospital room in Washington, D.C., last month to deliver a message that Udalls have been delivering to Udalls for years: "I was elected."
A clock in the room was set to Arizona time. Mo's friends set it that way because they knew Mo had always seen that one clock in his congressional office remained tuned to the home state's rhythms.
Although he was unable to speak or gesture, the elder Udall seemed to understand.
"He was paying attention to what I was saying, and I hadn't seen him be that way in a number of years," Mark said Sunday. "So I really believe that he knew at some level that Tom and I had been elected. That's a pretty special and powerful thing."
Anne said she couldn't help but notice the timing of her father's death.
"I can only speculate that with Mark's election, did he finally feel like there really was a passing of the torch and could he kind of rest? I do believe very, very much that when people die there is that sense that so often it is because they finally let go," she said.
In Udall's room had been pictures of his kids and grandkids, as well as campaign memorabilia that reminded visitors of the family's enormous political heritage.
It all began when David King Udall won a seat on the Arizona territorial Legislature after arriving in St. Johns. So many relatives followed his lead into politics -- more as Republicans than as Democrats -- that Udalls succeeded Udalls for some Arizona offices and ran against each other for others.
Mo's father, Levi S. Udall, a Democrat, was succeeded as Arizona chief justice upon his death in 1960 by his brother Jesse, a Republican.
Levi once said that the only race he ever lost was in the 1920s for clerk of the Superior Court. He was beaten by his brother, John.
"John was older, I think, and persuaded some of the voters that (if) you had to have a Udall on the ticket, maybe you ought to take the older brother and the one who was a Republican," Mo said in a 1971 speech.
John Udall later became Phoenix mayor. So did his son, Nicholas.
But it wasn't only political history that shaped Mo.
Mo was once asked by a reporter during the 1960s what makes a Udall tick.
"And I said, 'Well, you don't understand (my brother) Stew Udall, and I suspect you don't understand a lot of the Udalls, and you must understand two things. One, something about the Mormon Church and its history in Arizona; and secondly, something about St. Johns in Arizona," Mo said.
The Udalls were sent by Brigham Young to settle in Arizona.
"There was that whole sense of responsibility and adventure and settling new country and taking on a challenge," Anne Udall said. "And there was the individualism, and the Western pioneer mentality -- it's very much a part of what Dad had growing up."
Mo's sister, Elma, said their father "never called it politics, he called it public service. And he taught us that it was an honorable profession, and that if you want a better government, a better school system, a better church or anything, then go and do something about it."
Some of Mo's relatives speculate that his sense of Western individualism -- of not going along with the pack -- helped Mo to occasionally take risky stands.
He won admirers around the country when, in Congress just six years, he challenged Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's position on continuing the Vietnam War.
"I was wrong two years ago (in supporting the war), and I firmly believe President Johnson's advisers are wrong today," he said in 1967.
Among those in the audience that day were Mark, then 17, and Anne, then 13.
Mark remembers "my father walking down the aisle (at the University of Arizona) and standing up and delivering that very strong speech saying that there are times when you have to acknowledge you've made a mistake."