WASHINGTON — At 85, Stewart Udall has lost much of his eyesight but none of his passion for Western land causes nor his family's devotion to keeping humor and civility in politics.

Udall, who was an Arizona congressman and President Kennedy's Interior secretary, helped open a museum exhibit at the Interior Department on Tuesday on his career and that of his brother, the late Morris K. Udall. Mo Udall was a longtime Democratic congressman from Arizona who ran for president in 1976 and chaired the House Interior Committee, now the House Resources Committee.

"His humor was a tool that he used, and he used it very effectively, to quiet controversy,'' Stewart Udall, now living in New Mexico, said of his brother, who died in 1998 and whose humor was famously self-deprecating.

He recalled simpler, less partisan times focused on public service.

"We had one standard: Is it good for the country? ... Does it have merit?'' he said, rather than more overt political or parochial considerations.

The Udall family's political careers in the American West might have seemed at first an odd choice for Interior Secretary Gale Norton to honor.

But it was Norton, an energetic proponent of opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, who led the tributes for them.

"The Udall brothers understood what public service is supposed to be about,'' Norton said. "I have taken that approach to heart at the Interior Department.''

But she didn't shy from some of her differences with them, particularly regarding Alaska, where she said that "one of Mo's most important accomplishments was the Alaska Lands Act of 1980, which doubled the size of the national park system and tripled the size of the national wilderness system.''

She noted that in Mo Udall's 2001 career memoir, "Too Funny to be President,'' he had characteristically poked fun at himself by recalling that an Alaskan newspaper complained he was "trying to block all future development of energy resources in Alaska.''

The exhibit on the Udalls, called, "The Udall Brothers: Voices for the Environment,'' runs until July 29 and is on loan from the University of Arizona.

Also attending were Mo Udall's son, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., Stewart Udall's son, Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., other Udall clan members including their cousin, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who visited Mo Udall regularly at the hospital where he lived starting in 1991, beset by Parkinson's disease.

"The spirit in which Stewart and Mo Udall served was that you can disagree but you don't have to be disagreeable,'' Mark Udall said. "And there is in the Udall family a belief that the 11th Commandment is that thou shalt protect the environment.''

On the Net:

Morris K. Udall Foundation: http://www.udall.gov/index.htm

Stewart Udall papers: http://www.library.arizona.edu/branches/spc/sludall