Morley A. Hudson

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Morley Alvin Hudson
In office
1964 – 1968
Born March 31, 1917(1917-03-31)
San Antonio, Texas
Died June 15, 2001 (aged 84)
Political party Republican
Spouse (1) Lucy North Hudson (deceased)

(2) Catherine Franks Hudson
Children Daughters Nancy Ketner, Courtney Hudson, Lucy North Hudson; Stepchildren Rob Franks, Susan Leake, Allen Franks
Occupation Industrialist
Religion Presbyterian

Morley Alvin Hudson (March 31, 1917 – June 15, 2001) was a Shreveport businessman, engineer, civic leader, and a pioneer of the modern Republican Party in Louisiana.

Hudson was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Oscar Hudson and the former Ruth Morley. His maternal grandfather, Stephen Kay Morley, was a prominent pharmacist in early Austin, Texas, and patented many old time remedies that were extremely popular in the late 1800's and early 1900's. He graduated cum laude from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, with a degree in mechanical engineering. From 1938 to 1940, he played football for the Green Bay Packers under Coach Curly Lambeau.

During World War II, he was a captain in the U.S. Army Infantry Reserves. When he relocated to Shreveport in 1945, Hudson became president of the Hudson-Rush Company of Shreveport and Dallas, which specialized in industrial process equipment. He also was one of the original partners of Pelican Supply Co. and McElroy Metals in Shreveport. In 1956, Hudson ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the Caddo Parish School Board.

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[edit] First Republicans in legislature (1964-1968)

He and Taylor W. O'Hearn (1907–1997) were the first two Republicans to have been elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives since Reconstruction. Hudson and O'Hearn were joined in the Caddo Parish delegation by Democrats Algie D. Brown, Frank Fulco, and newcomer J. Bennett Johnston, Jr., later a member of both the Louisiana State Senate and the U.S. Senate. Hudson was a Louisiana delegate to the Republican national conventions held in San Francisco in 1964 and in Miami Beach in 1968 and 1972.

Hudson was the self-proclaimed Louisiana House minority leader between 1964 and 1968 because he had outpolled O'Hearn in the balloting. In 1966, he obtained passage of a bill to grant in-state college students the same right to vote absentee as permitted to out-of-state students. His record was primarily focused on fiscal and management reform of state government.

Two other Republicans joined Hudson and O'Hearn in their only terms of service: Roderick L. "Rod" Miller of Lafayette in 1966 and Edward Clark Gaudin of Baton Rouge in 1967. Miller was defeated in a bid for the Louisiana State Senate on February 6, 1968. Gaudin was also defeated for reelection to the House in 1968 but returned to the legislature in 1972 and served for another twenty years.

[edit] Running for lieutenant governor, 1972

In 1972, Hudson was a candidate for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket with gubernatorial hopeful David C. Treen, then of Jefferson Parish. He polled 218,169 (20.5 percent) votes to 815,794 (76.8 percent) for the successful Democrat, James E. "Jimmy" Fitzmorris, Jr., of New Orleans, a former city councilman and an executive for Kansas City Southern Railroad. Hudson failed to win a single parish. He fared best in his home base of Caddo Parish, where he drew 43.6 percent. (A third candidate in the race, Gertrude L. Taylor, also of Shreveport, nominee of the American Independent Party, received 2.7 percent of the vote.) Treen, running for governor for the first time, polled 42.8 percent, more than twice the number of votes obtained by Hudson.

In the lieutenant governor's campaign, Hudson wore a friend's red-white-and-blue shoes. According to the Shreveport Times, Hudson repeated the patriotic color scheme in a 1976 visit to the White House, wearing a red-white-and-blue tie that made him stand out among dozens of other people in gray suits, prompting U.S. President Gerald R. Ford to remark, "It's so good to see someone here in Washington with the bicentennial spirit!"

[edit] Supporting the mentally retarded

Hudson and his first wife, Lucy North Hudson, were the parents of a mentally-retarded daughter, also named Lucy North Hudson. He became a founding member of both the Shreveport and the Louisiana Association for Retarded Children, and he was a director of the National Association for Retarded Citizens. He was vice chairman of the Louisiana Governor's Commission for Employment of the Handicapped, and was appointed by President Ford to the 24-member President's Committee on Mental Retardation. He delighted in playing Santa Claus in 1977 at the White House Christmas party for handicapped children of the Washington, D.C., area. He was a founder of the Evergreen Presbyterian Vocational School in Minden and the Evergreen House, the forerunner of what became Providence House in Shreveport. His favorite hobby was dancing.

Hudson was a Presbyterian. In his later years, he lived in Waskom, Texas in eastern Harrison County, west of the Louisiana border. He was preceded in death by his first wife; a son who died in infancy, Morley Alvin Hudson, Jr.; his parents, and two brothers.

Hudson died in Shreveport from the effects of a brain tumor. He was survived by his second wife, Catherine Franks Hudson of Shreveport; three daughters and a son-in-law, Nancy and Joe Ed Ketner, Courtney Morley Hudson and grandsons Max, Alex and Nicholas Hudson, all of Shreveport, and Lucy North Hudson of Pineville; stepchildren, Rob Franks and his wife, Vicki, of Shreveport, Susan Leake and her husband, Rucker, of St. Francisville, the seat of West Feliciana Parish, Allen Franks and his wife, Cathy, of Northfield, Michigan, and their children and grandchildren.

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