My father, LtCol Jim Hudson, was one of the original squadron pilots of the Lockheed SR-71 Reconnaissance plane, also known as the Blackbird. Less than 100 men have flown this aircraft. It is believed to be responsible for many of the UFO sitings in the 60s and 70s.
Jim Hudson & Norb Budzinski, mid 1960s Crew Portrait
He was tragically killed in a freak T-38 crash at Beale Air Force Base back in 1971. I was 12 years old and worshiped my father in a big way. I had breakfast with him that morning and then was picked up at school by his commander, Col Jim Watkins and our minister, Pastor Adrian Olsen and told of his accident. I never saw him again. I wasn’t just a daughter idolizing her father, he was truly a really good guy. You would like him, ask his advice, respect him and enjoy hanging out with him. I have kept in touch or gotten reacquainted with his old pals all of my life. It has been a wonderful opportunity for me to get new experiences of my Dad through hearing their stories of their relationship with him. It is always fun for me to learn of new things about him or wonderful things he did for someone. I never tire of it. I often tell his friends that my memories end in 1971 when I was 12 and so I have to steal theirs to increase my experiences with him. They are wonderfully tolerant of me in that way. He wasn’t perfect, but he was close enough to being well loved, well rounded, bright, ethical, moral, a great Dad, a good son, brother, uncle, husband and friend. He was 37 years old. He came from rural Pennsylvania, a holstein dairy farm just north of Scranton (Kingsley address near Montrose), that my grandfather built from scratch (after it had been abandoned) on 200+ acres of beautiful rural Pennsylvania. He graduated from Penn State with a degree in Dairy Husbandry through an ROTC scholarship.
My mother decided to stay in N CA after his accident and so I graduated from high school in
Yuba City. I’m a Honker. I didn’t really understand what that was all about until I left. Our mascot was a goose. I remember the
Canada Goose in the purser’s office with a Marysville Indian (the neighboring town’s school mascot) dangling from a noose out of the goose’s beak, but why were we Honkers? I had no idea. I later learned its because we have so many rice patties (very agricultural area of California) that we have what is considered the best duck hunting in the entire world. Go figure. My world was SR’s, snow skiing in Tahoe, playing in
San Francisco, driving to the mountains to party, but duck hunting? Nope, had no clue.
So my adopted brother, Dan Powell (his Dad was also an SR pilot AND a U-2 pilot – Lt Col Bob Powell), and his wife Sarah, opened up their guest room to Dave to stay until I could join him in Cali.
Dave headed out January 2008 for the West Coast, while I stayed behind and got the house ready to go on the market and he looked for houses in the Sacramento area. Stressful? You bet. Doable? Of course.
Dave was busy learning and loving his new job, driving 1 hour each way to stay with Dan & Sarah, and looking for a house on the weekend. None of which we could buy mind you, because we hadn’t sold ours, in fact, ours wasn’t even listed yet. I knew we would be downsizing, or I hoped we would, and so I needed to sell things, get the house repainted for proper staging, eventually tell my boss I was leaving and help him find a replacement. I was getting the kids to spend some time going through their stuff, what to keep in College Park, what to send to their rooms in California, what, what, what! Also trying to turn over my other responsibilities in the community, etc. Oh yeah, and sell my house and not listen to everyone freaking out that I was 1) moving, 2) selling in this terrible market, 3) who would move into our court! Honestly, it was almost required that you get approval on who I could sell my house to! Now I love my neighbors and I’m seriously not bashing them. They were and are THE BEST! We had a good thing going in our cute little court and I was clearly upsetting the apple cart. Not too mention, they didn’t want to lose me, nor me them. It was sometimes comical though. Of course with the market being so bad, selling my house for less was not a fun thing either, but it was what it was and as it turned out, it didn’t get much better.
Time was not on my side. I was committed to finding not just a buyer, but the PERFECT FAMILY. And guess what? I did! I found the most wonderful family, or they found me, but it was my desire, my postulate, the minute I met them, that they were the ones that were going to buy my house. They were perfect, our house was perfect for them, and they would fit into our court and neighborhood perfectly. I know you aren’t supposed to care about who buys your house, just get a decent price and boogie. That’s just not me, I always want more than that, I’m more emotionally connected to things like that. You think I’m kidding? Let me tell you…I have a beautiful yellow lab, Kip. He is the littermate and brother of my next door neighbor’s dog, Maddie. Gail and I were both looking for dogs when we moved in. She came home with a puppy one day and I was out the next getting the brother! We put in an “invisible fence” around both of our yards so the dogs could run in both yards. I loved coming home and seeing two wagging labs greeting me on my porch, but only one was mine to take care of. Gail and I never kenneled our dogs, we took care of each other’s dog. I needed to find a nice family who had a dog or at least liked dogs. Just in case though, I did talk to the fence people to figure out what we would have to do to “pinch” off my yard. Well, when Lisa & Tom (my buyers) came over to look at the furniture I was selling and their girls were petting Kip, they told me they had a dog too. “YOU DO? What kind?” I asked. “A Chocolate Lab, Bosco, he’s 7.” “NO WAY!” I said. “Yes, and we want to get one of those invisible fences.” Smiling broadly, “Oh, you have one.” Lisa responded, “We do?” “Yes, you do, but here’s the deal…” A puppy play date was set and there is now a beautiful chocolate male lab named Bosco sitting on my old porch with an occasional visit from Maddie next door. Dave still shakes his head in disbelief.
Our house in Brookeville sold in about 5 weeks.
We did well, thanks in large part to our premier realtor, Marsha Crowley. She sold us our first house in ’81 before we had gotten married and every house since then while we lived in Maryland. She’s tough, but thorough and very well connected. We took a reasonable hit in a very bad market and Dave bought the house we wanted in Elk Grove, which surprisingly (haha) lowered their price about the same amount we lost on our house in Brookeville.
I wanted a realtor just like Marsha in California and I found one, by fluke on the Internet, Bob Watlatka. I knew immediately from talking with him that he was my man. He was very similar to Marsha and I spotted that quality right away. I was so lucky and very happy. He took Dave out weekend after weekend after weekend looking for houses in and around the Sacramento area, with me online looking at listings and photos. Sometimes I was on the phone with them looking online and sometimes they were sending me pictures. There were Saturdays where my eyes were just worn out. I went out to Cali once for a few days and Bob picked me up at the airport and we ran around Sacramento looking at neighborhoods I was interested in. It was on that trip that we found the house we eventually bought in Elk Grove. I wanted to move to Folsom and be a little more in the foothills vs. the flat valley, but Dave was tired of commuting and I couldn’t blame him for that. Funny how things work out for a reason. We live 2 miles from his office. Had we moved to Folsom as I had wanted, his subsequent illness and drive to the office would have been quite problematic.
With the house sold and a new one under contract, we were all set for our packing and our going away party and I get the phone call…
It was very surreal to moving back to California after more than 30 years. And back to an area very near where I grew up. But reconnecting with old childhood friends still in the area and colleagues and friends of my parents has been a joyful experience.
Tags: background, california, history
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