Rep. Udall, Battling Illness and Injury, Likely to Resign : Congress: Arizona Democrat, 68, has suffered a fall, Parkinson’s disease. He is revered for his wit and a legacy of landmark environmental legislation.

WASHINGTON —  Rep. Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.), disabled by injuries complicated by the effects of Parkinson’s disease, signaled Thursday that he may resign his seat this month after three decades as one of Congress’ most effective and revered legislators.

A letter from his wife to Speaker Thomas S. Foley said that Udall was making a “painfully slow” recovery from a bad fall at his home last Jan. 6 and may not be able to resume his duties as he had hoped.

“Because of this difficult situation, I have begun the complex task of putting his public and personal affairs in order,” she wrote the Speaker. “If discussions between physicians and our family indicate that a marked improvement in his condition is not forthcoming in the near future, we will ask for your assistance in making the necessary arrangements for his resignation and disability retirement from the House of Representatives.”

Friends of Udall, 68, said that he may leave office in about two weeks and described the letter to Foley as setting the stage for a dignified end to his 30-year career on Capitol Hill. One Phoenix newspaper, the Arizona Republic, already has called for Udall’s resignation on grounds he is no longer able to carry out his responsibilities in what he has said would be his final term.

When he departs, Udall will leave a legacy of landmark legislation--including the Alaska lands act, the strip mining reclamation act, the nuclear waste act and the federal wilderness act--that practically made him a saint to environmentalists. He also authored the campaign reform act of 1974, an early attempt to reduce the high cost of politics.

One of the wittiest and most productive lawmakers of the House, Udall wrote a book, “Too Funny to be President,” after his unsuccessful effort to win his party’s presidential nomination in 1976.

For example, campaigning in the Midwest during a period of economic troubles for farmers, the man invariably called “Mo” often asked rural audiences if they knew the difference between a pigeon and an Iowa farmer.

“The pigeon can still make a deposit on a tractor,” Udall would say, in the robust, earthy style that won him the laughs--if not necessarily the votes--of most of his listeners. He came in second in seven Democratic primary contests in 1976, losing the nomination to Jimmy Carter.

Udall has even joked about his glass eye, worn since he was 6 years old: “I’m a one-eyed Mormon Democrat from conservative Arizona and you can’t have a higher handicap than that.” It did not, however, prevent him from playing professional basketball nor from learning to fly.

His sense of humor has helped Udall overcome a series of political setbacks and personal tragedies, including his own afflictions. He recalled that in 1976, in addition to losing his quest for the presidency, he broke both arms in a fall from a ladder, caught viral pneumonia, burst his appendix, suffered peritonitis and contracted Parkinson’s disease--all in an eight-month period.

As for Parkinson’s, he once wrote: “I don’t feel lucky in having gotten the damn thing, but I do feel lucky that it is not as disabling for me as it is for many.”

Last January, he fell backward down a staircase in his suburban Washington home, breaking his right shoulder and several ribs and suffering a concussion.

As a result, Udall stepped aside temporarily as chairman of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, allowing Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) to run the panel in his absence.

“Mo Udall is one of the legends in Congress,” Miller said. “The guy’s a hero to all of us who came after him. If he leaves, it will be a major, major loss.”

Udall also tried, and failed, to rise in the ranks of the Democratic leadership. As a seven-term liberal maverick, he ran against aged Speaker John W. McCormack in 1969 as a preliminary to seeking the post of majority leader in 1971. But he lost to the late Rep. Hale Boggs of Louisiana, who posed no threat to an outmoded seniority system that was overhauled four years later.

Frustrated by House politics, Udall became its most prolific author of environmental legislation, especially after he became chairman of the Interior Committee in 1977. But even in that field, Udall ran into major obstacles and had to work for four years before Congress agreed to preserve a large part of Alaska as wilderness out of bounds to developers.

In his book, Udall said that the keystone of his philosophy was summed up by humorist Will Rogers when he said:

“We are here for just a spell and then pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are ahead.”