Donald P Hodel

Early life

He was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of Philip E. Hodel and Theresia R. Brodt. He attended Harvard University. He married in 1957 the former Barbara Beecher Stockman, who was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She married Donald P. Hodel during her senior year.

They moved to Oregon after graduation and Hodel earned his J.D. at the University of Virginia. While living in Oregon, Donald and Barbara Hodel had two sons: Philip (died in 1974) and David. Mrs. Hodel was to become a full-time mother.

Following the suicide of their eldest son, the Hodels became evangelical Christians. They became active in church and other Christian ministries and began speaking at evangelical meetings and prayer breakfasts. The Hodels have appeared on The 700 Club with Pat Robertson, The Hour of Power with Robert Schuller and on Focus on the Family broadcasts with Dr. James Dobson, encouraging families that have also lost loved ones to suicide.

Government career

From 1972 to 1977 Hodel was the administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration. After leaving the Bonneville Power Administration he stated that eventually, the Pacific Northwest would need all the power that would be produced by the nuclear power plants proposed by the Washington Public Power Supply System.

Hodel served as United States Secretary of Energy from 1982 to 1985, and the Secretary of the Interior from 1985 to 1989 under President Ronald Reagan. He had been Undersecretary of the Interior under James Watt.

Critics disrupted his efforts to impose a new management policy on a large amount of federal land and blocked his efforts to create vast new wilderness areas. In spite of the criticisms, the Reagan Administration Secretaries added over two million acres (8,000 km²) to the national wilderness system. The Hodel policy was continued under Manuel Lujan Jr. (1989–93) in the Bush Administration. It was finally rescinded in 1997 by Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

In an article, Hodel wrote, "Throughout President Reagan's eight years, his secretaries of the Interior pursued these objectives within the framework of his and their conviction that America could have both an improving environment and an adequate energy supply. We did not and do not have to choose between them, as some have contended...."

While secretary, Hodel proposed to undertake a study on the removal of the O'Shaughnessy Dam in Yosemite National Park, and the restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley, a smaller, but inundated version of Yosemite Valley. Dianne Feinstein, former mayor of San Francisco, which owns the dam, opposed the study and had it quashed.

In March 1984, the Navajo Nation requested for the Secretary of the Interior, William Clark, to make a reasonable adjustment of the coal lease royalty rate paid by Peabody Coal, now Peabody Energy. In July 1985, newly appointed Hodel secretly met ex parte with Peabody’s representative ("a former aide and friend of Secretary Hodel."). After briefly reviewing the merits of the proposals, Hodel approved lease amendments with royalty rates well below the rate that had previously been determined appropriate by those agencies responsible for monitoring the federal government’s relations with Native Americans. In 2007, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined that those actions breached the government's duty of trust to the Nation and established a "cognizable money-mandating claim" against the government under the Indian Tucker Act.

Post-government career

Hodel moved to Colorado where he engaged in the energy consulting business, and served on various charitable and corporate boards of directors. He is the author of Crisis in the Oil Patch (Regnery, 1995).

From June 1997 to February 1999, Hodel served as President of the Christian Coalition, a nonprofit conservative political group founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.

From May 2003 to March 2005, Hodel served as President and CEO of Focus on the Family, a nonprofit evangelical Christian organization. He had stated that his job was to manage the transition from the founder, Dr. James Dobson, to his ultimate successor. Hodel had, several years prior to being named President, served on its board and remained on the board until October 2005.

Hodel was also Chairman of the company FreeEats.com/ccAdvertising, which has disseminated push polls for the Economic Freedom Fund.

Environmental efforts

As Secretary of the Interior, in 1985, Hodel ordered the acquisition of a ranch in southern Arizona which would become the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. Encompassing approximately 118,000 acres (480 km²) of savannah grassland in the Altar Valley, the wildlife refuge was created for the masked bobwhite quail. This refuge contains the only population of the masked bobwhite quail in the United States

Currently, Hodel serves as Chairman and Senior Vice President for Strategy and Policy at Summit Power Group, Inc., a Seattle-based developer of wind, solar and gas-fired power plants. In 1989, Hodel was the founder and managing director of Summit Power Group’s predecessor company.