Legacies of Camelot: Stewart and Lee Udall, American Culture, and the Arts (review)

284Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober tion. The Spanish settlement of Revilla (now Guerrero Viejo) founded in 1 750, which became a bustling late nineteendi-century entrepôt, was for a long time almost totally underwater. As a result ofdroughts, a second dam built upriver, and greater demands on the water, the lake level receded to such a degree that by the 1980s, the central plaza and several blocks ofthe town were once again visible. But as if the water had not been enough, scavengers removed architectural elements from the exposed villa for personal use and gain. George is sensitive to the persistence of memory and of the families who have been bereft of dieir ancestral hometown. In the introduction, Ricardo Paz-Trevi ño, one of these descendants, writes poignandy, "Just as surely as the water crept up the sides of homes, church, school, and shops,just as certainly as the few possessions left behind floated away and were swept down the Rio Grande's winding course to the Gulf of Mexico, the soul of Revilla/Guerrero Viejo was relegated to the memories of those who had known it" (xi). In 1953, when I was a youngster, I recall visiting cousins who had fled the old county seat of Zapata, which had flooded unexpectedly due to extraordinary rains. With the naivete of youth, we happily went wading along a new shoreline at the end of an old paved highway. Even though we had to be careful not to cut ourselves on broken botdes, rusty botde caps, and barbed wire, we enjoyed the outing. Only much later would we realize the bruises diat we and our families would endure, since we had been cut off from our ancestral home. TL· University ofTexas at AustinAdán Benavides Legacies ofCamelot: Stewart and Lee Udall, American Culture, and tL· Arts. By L. Boyd Finch. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. Pp. 208. Illustrations, notes, index. ISBN: 9780806 i387g4, $24^5 cloth.) From poet Robert Frost's recitation at die inauguration to Jacqueline Kennedy 's wistful evocation of Camelot in die weeks following her husband's assassination , a public focus on the arts reached its zenith during the presidency ofJohn F. Kennedy. Yet unknown to die general public, much of the impetus for the promotion of die arts during those years came not from the East Coast intellectuals in die Kennedys near orbit but from a blunt-spoken Arizona Mormon named Stewart Udall. Udall's contributions to American arts and letters during the 1960s in the subject of Legades ofCamelot. The Udalls came to Washington in ig55 upon Stewart's election to the House of Representatives; their home in McLean, Virginia, quickly became known for its stunning collection of southwestern art and sculpture. An avid reader and amateur poet, Udall used his stature as a congressman to introduce himself to some of the living legends ofAmerican literature—among them Robert Frost, whom he suggested as a speaker for Kennedy's inauguration in ig6o. Udall was tagged by Kennedy to run the sprawling Department of the Interior , a position Udall dubbed "Secretary ofThings in General." Diving in with his customary gusto, in nine years in office he established four new national parks, six national monuments, eight seashores and lakeshores, nine recreational sites, 20ogBook Reviews285 twenty historic sites, and fifty-eight wildlife refuges. An early convert to the environmental movement, Udall published TL· Ç^uiet Crisis in ig63- Bodi a history of American attitudes towards the environment and a plea for future preservation, die book was one of the first of its kind and the first ever from an "official" government source. Finch (who was Udall's personal aide during his time in office) details the writing of TL· Quiet Crisis, including the input of Udall's in-house writing team, including his "literary aide-de-camp," Wallace Stegner. His experience in writing this book acted as a writing apprenticeship diat served him well in his post-Cabinet writing career. Udall also used his position to further his promotion of the arts. Quite apart from the marquee events like the performance of Pablo Casals in 1961, his Cabinet Artists Series highlighted luminaries like Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Marion Anderson, Hal Holbrook...