Richard ‘Dick’ Udall
Eagar - Apache County
Inducted in 2010
The Udall name figures prominently in state political circles and in the annals of Arizona agriculture. The family is descended from two brothers among a group of Mormon pioneers sent from Utah by their church in 1884 to help settle the Arizona Territory. David, the grandfather of Morris and Stewart Udall, put down roots in St. Johns, but Joseph and his bride of two years moved on to Round Valley, where the family became part of the growing community of Eagar. A rancher and farmer, Joseph served as a Bishop for the church for 20 years. His wife, Emma, was the first postmistress in Eagar. This strong sense of family and community service was instilled in Joseph's grandson, Dick, from an early age.
Joseph's grandson, Richard “Dick” Udall, was born in Eagar in 1934, the offspring of two of Arizona's agricultural families: the Udalls and Laytons. "My mother was a Layton from Thatcher," Dick said. "My great-grandfather, Christopher Layton, figured prominently in donating sites for Eastern Arizona Junior College and the Mormon Church. My grandfather, Oscar Layton, used to drive a stage like you see in the movies. He had the Wells Fargo guy on the stage. They would drive the stage from Bowie, where the railroad ended. They would load the passengers. They'd have the strong box and have the Wells Fargo guy ride along to protect it all. I have a book in my library where he told of being held up. The Wells Fargo guy made him throw his rifle down, and the guys had to disconnect the horses and take them down the road about half a mile, and then the guys took off with the strong box. It's pretty interesting stories."
"My father had several brothers, and they each ended up ranching," Dick said. "My father was pretty ambitious. He would buy a place and work his heart out until he got it paid, and then he'd buy something else. He put together a lovely ranch, and so did my uncles." Dick was one of six kids. Two died in accidents prematurely, one brother in a truck accident and one in an airplane crash.
Dick's mother, Blanche Layton Udall, was a school teacher for many years, and her love for education and the outdoors influenced Dick's early years. He went to elementary and high school in Eagar, moving on to Brigham Young University. "I only went a year. BYU is a church university, and they had so many requirements for first-year students that we didn't get any of the classes that we would have liked to have had. I had to take P.E., English, and two or three other classes. I was homesick, so I came home, and that's when I got into business. I ran a gas station, married my bride Myrna (he and Myrna eloped when he was 18), and started helping my brother. It wasn't a long time after that that my brother died in an airplane crash, and my father had to take over his business. Then he asked me to come in and manage the propane company, the fuel oil gasoline distributorship, the little cafe, and several little things. I got forced into that at a young age. It was quite a bit of work." He later leased those businesses and went into ranching, eventually buying the home ranch from his family.
"I was in the process of buying this ranch, and the five of us got coaxed into managing the whole thing when my parents passed on. The big problem was how you would split this up and how you would manage it. Maybe it was because of my business background, maybe something else. I suggested that we incorporate it, and so we did. We made a subchapterS, and with that corporation, the profits or the losses flow right on through," he said. "I didn't become a total loner until I bought my last sister out. She was like me. She helped my dad a lot. She liked riding."
Dick was so busy farming and ranching in addition to his community involvement that he finally bought an airplane to help him check his holdings. "I'd want to check these cattle, so I'd crank up the airplane, and I could check every gate and water tank on the ranch in about 30 to 45 minutes of flying, a job that would take two days for a cowboy to do. I still had a cowboy, an old timer to ride among the cattle and watch for problems, move them around and change pastures, all that sort of stuff."
The last few years have been dry in the high country. "When my father was young, five-foot snows were common around here. It's hard to believe, but right up here in the foothills, you'd get five feet of snow and considerably wetter country. They put up plots of hay, and that's what I was doing. I had this farm and the other one in Springerville. The other one's not as well watered as this one. We finally settled on farming this and would feed the entire crop to our cattle in the winter and spring months. We had two forest allotments up near Big Lake, kind of downstream about a mile from Big Lake. Our winter range was out northeast of Springerville, and largely state-leased land was on the Springerville part of it, with Forest Service largely on the mountain. One forest permit was for 618 heads and another for a couple hundred. We'd go up there in the middle of May or the first of June, and you'd pasture all summer and come off the first of October, ship the calves, and move the cattle out to the ranch. When you get done shipping, just put these cattle in these pastures, rotate them around, and start another calf crop in the spring. It's always been a lot of work, but it's satisfying. The ranch had about 40,000 acres, all told." Water has always been a concern. He and his sons laid miles of pipe on the ranch to deliver water to stock tanks. "We built a number of these 30,000-gallon tanks," he said. "They were about five feet deep, and they had a drinker on the south side, eliminating having to go out and chop ice. The cattle could come in there and get a drink any time of the day."
Dick was an active member of the Apache County Farm Bureau and the Arizona Cattle Growers Association, in addition to serving as president and on the board of the Round Valley Water Users Association, a board on which his father had served before him. He was involved in helping to develop the water delivery infrastructure from the Greer Lakes and Colorado to the users in the communities of Eagar and Springerville. "A lot of this infrastructure was in place when I came on the scene," he said. The board was responsible for hiring a water master. "He was charged with the filling of the lakes. That's River, Tunnel, and Bunch reservoirs up near Greer, known as the Greer lakes. Good fishing areas. And the White Mountain Reservoir up on top. In the spring and about the end of May when the growing season starts here, we'd turn out that water and bring it down to the valley, and the people all got their share according to the amount of stock they owned." He said, "I think the biggest thing I did was from my business background. I was able to deal with a lot of these organizations, and so we got on a program to improve the dams at Greer. In 1950, I believe it was, we rebuilt the Bunch Reservoir dam, and in about 1985, we started to rebuild the dam in stages, the River Reservoir dam, making them safe and more useful."
Always looking for ways to better help the community, he served as the Chairman of the local Apache Natural Resources Conservation District and was a member of the Farmers Home Administration. He also served as Chairman of the County Committee of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS). He was later appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture during the Reagan and Bush Administrations to the state ASCS committee.
Dick and Myrna have served for over 23 years as representatives of the University of Arizona's Council of Agriculture Research, Extension and Teaching (CARET), a national group of lay people that supports USDA's Science and Education budget in Congress. The federal money is used for the extension and research of land grant colleges of agriculture. "I used to go on those trips to Washington, and I'd speak up for Arizona agriculture," Dick said. "When the Dean and his associates saw Myrna perform, they appointed her, so she was equal with me on that Council," he added with pride. Although Dick minimized the role they played. Eugene G. Sander, Vice Provost and Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Arizona, said of the work they did, "Both Dick and his wife Myrna traveled to Washington, DC and tirelessly walked the halls of Congress advocating for these monies that are so important to rural Arizona and our college." Gene Sander, former president of the University of Arizona.
Dick and Myrna are the parents of five sons: Chris and Ted, who are twins, Jeff, Nolan, and Morgan.
Affiliations
Arizona Farm Bureau/Apache County Farm Bureau - member
Arizona Cattle Growers Association - Member
Round Valley Water Users Association - President and Board Member
Apache Natural Resources Conservation District - Chairman
Farmers Home Administration -County Committee
Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service - County Committee and Chairman
Appointed by Secretary of Agriculture, Reagan & Bush Administrations, to Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service - State Committee
University of Arizona's Council of Agriculture Research, Extension and Teaching (CARET)
Apache County Republican Party -- Chairman
Awards
Bear Down Award -the University of Arizona, Awarded to Dick and Myrna Udall for 23 years of service to the Arizona Council for Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching.
Conservationist of the Year - Apache Natural
Resource Conservation District
Goodyear Conservation Award of Merit
Administrators Award for service to agriculture - ASCS, 1992
