Sarah Hudson-Pierce
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sarah Rachel Hudson-Pierce | |
 |
|
| Born | February 22, 1948  Benton County, Arkansas, USA |
|---|---|
| Residence |  Shreveport, Caddo Parish, Louisiana |
| Occupation | Book publisher, author, journalist, television talk show host |
| Spouse | Divorced from Charles Edwin Pierce (born 1941, married 1967-1994) |
| Children | Robin Lynette Pierce (born 1969) of Shreveport, Perry Loyce Pierce (born 1970) of Boston, and Jeremy Winter Pierce (born 1976) of Searcy, Arkansas |
|
Notes
Her difficult childhood strengthened her for the challenges of future success.
|
|
Sarah Rachel Hudson-Pierce (born February 22, 1948) is an author of inspirational books, a publisher, a journalist, and a cable television host in Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish and the largest city in north Louisiana.
Contents |
[edit] Early years, family tragedy, education
She was born to Roy Earnest Hudson (1895-1958) and the former Marcella May Morris (1906-1986) near Sulphur Springs, a small community in Benton County in far northwestern Arkansas near the Missouri border. Her girlhood home, still in existence, was a house constructed in the 1840s.
Sarah's mother Marcella was born in an underground American Indian sod dwelling near tiny Fairvalley in Woods County in north central Oklahoma. Her grandparents had been among the pioneers who staked out 160 acres in the Oklahoma Land Rush. Sarah's great-grandfather, Dr. W.H. Morris, of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and later of Linn County, Iowa, where he attended Keokuk Medical School during the American Civil War, also came to Oklahoma in the land rush.
Before her third birthday, Marcella was playing on the soft dirt roof of her dwelling. She slipped, fell through the roof, sustained brain damage, and lapsed into a coma. Marcella's mother was dying of typhoid fever at the precise time of the accident. Marcella's six-year-old brother, Jimmy, had died of the fever some six weeks earlier. Marcella's father left his two daughters in the care of a kindly neighbor, Clara Knox, who became Marcella's foster mother. In 1914, Marcella's father remarried, and Marcella, at the age of eight, left the security of life with Clara. Marcella did not marry until she was in her late thirties and then only after her father, Sarah's grandfather, had died. Having lived into her nineties, Clara thereafter told Sarah of the tragic circumstances of Marcella's life.
Roy Hudson died, and Sarah lived with Marcella for four years. Marcella subsisted by taking odd jobs and became unable to care for Sarah. Hence, at the age of fourteen, Sarah went to live in the foster home of Cullen and Martha Adair of Grove in Delaware County in northeastern Oklahoma. Sarah was later placed in an orphanage, the Turley Children's Home, now known as Hope Harbor, in Claremore, near Tulsa. She resided at Turley from 1962-1966, where she witnessed and experienced abuse. She graduated from McLain High School in Tulsa. Marcella died nearly three decades later in the nursing home in Grove.
While she was in the eleventh grade at McLain, Sarah turned to creative writing and public speaking. From 1966-1967, she attended the conservative Church of Christ-affiliated Harding University (then College) in Searcy in White County north of Little Rock.
[edit] Hudson-Pierce the author
Her interest in creative writing paid off; over the years, Hudson-Pierce has written five books, three being free verse poetry:
Friendship Is A Journey (1987)
The Warming of Winter (1989)
To Soar Again! (1994)
Two others are inspirational pieces:
Southern Vignettes (1995)
Turning Points (1996), semi-autobiographical
Columnist Erma Bombeck dedicated her February 26, 1986, column to her friend Hudson-Pierce.
One of Hudson-Pierce's articles, "The Old Steamer Trunk", was published in Guideposts magazine in January 1998. Richard "Dick" Schneider, a senior staff editor at Guideposts, said that Hudson-Pierce's selection was particularly poignant and fitting for the publication. Stories about the article were written in numerous newspapers across the nation.
Since 1995, Hudson-Pierce has hosted her own television program in Shreveport through Time Warner. She interviews artists, authors, political figures, or anyone of interest. The program is carried at 2 p.m. on Sundays. She writes an occasional column for the Shreveport Times and the Bossier Tribune newspaper of Bossier City.
[edit] Ritz Publications of Shreveport
In 2002, Hudson-Pierce launched, on a shoestring budget, Ritz Publications, named for her maternal great grandfather Nicholas Ritz, who came to the United States in 1851 from Bern, Switzerland. Her first selection was the rejuvenation of a rare out-of-print book titled Poems by Julia Pleasants Creswell, the great-grandmother of former Shreveport Mayor James C. Gardner. Ritz also released two more of Julia Creswell's books: Aphelia and Other Poems and Callamura. She also published two volumes of Gardner's memoirs entitled Jim Gardner and Shreveport.
Successful Ritz books have included: Stone Justice by Debi King McMartin and Lyn Morgan, which details the life of Toni Jo Henry of Shreveport, who on November 28, 1942, became the only woman ever to have been executed in Louisiana's electric chair. The motion picture The Pardon, filmed in Shreveport, is adapted from Stone Justice.
Still another Ritz publication, Will Somebody Call the Coroner?, is an autobiography of the late Caddo Parish Coroner Dr. Willis P. Butler (1888-1963), with the preface by the Shreveport historian Eric J. Brock. Ritz also offers Sarah Dorsey's Recollections of Henry Watkins Allen, a study of Louisiana's Confederate States of America governor. Dorsey owned the Biloxi estate Beauvoir and was a benefactor of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Another Ritz release is Tinkerbelle, the story of Robert Manry (1918-1971), a Cleveland Plain Dealer copy editor who in 1965 solo-navigated the smallest sailboat ever across the Atlantic. Ritz offers a rare book, Our Baby's History (1898), by the American artist Frances Brundage (1854-1937), who was particularly known for her depictions of wide-eyed Victorian children.
[edit] Personal life
Sarah left college in 1967 to marry the Church of Christ minister Charles Edwin Pierce (born 1941), originally from Falcon in Nevada County in south Arkansas near Magnolia. The couple has three children: Robin Lynette Pierce (born 1969) of Shreveport, Perry Loyce Pierce (born 1970) of Boston, Massachusetts, and Jeremy Winter Pierce (born 1976) of Searcy, Arkansas. There are two grandchildren. Hudson-Pierce has an older sister, Alice H. Roberts of Bastrop, Texas, east of Austin.
The Pierces divorced in 1994, after Sarah refused to move again for the seventeenth time during the 27-year marriage. The pastor relocated regularly: the Pierces lived in various communities in Missouri, Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and in Vivian in northern Caddo Parish and Plain Dealing in northern Bossier Parish, Louisiana.
Quoting the late M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Travelled, Hudson-Pierce says that "Life is difficult. . . . It is in the attaining of goals that we blossom and grow. . . . I know that God is the source of my strength and that without Him, I am nothing. . . ."
[edit] References
http://www.geocities.com/sarahhudsonpierce1948/trunk.html
Erma Bombeck, "Slim $5 check is worth a million", syndicated column, February 25, 1986
Eric J. Brock, Shreveport historian, The Forum, November 10, 2004
www.ritzpublications.com
www.turleyhomehopeharbororphanspage.org (Hudson-Pierce requests that residents of the Turley (Hope Harbor) orphanage send in life stories for use in a forthcoming book.)
http://www.topix.com/forum/nyc/T8PPP5ONT76NQ5GH2
http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/sarahhudsonpierce/frames.html
Lenora Nazworth, "Women's Days Marked with Celebration and Challenge", Shreveport Times, March 8, 2002
Alexandyr Kent, "'The Pardon', a locally produced feature, begins shooting May 15", Shreveport Times, April 28, 2007
"Dedication to writing brings success", Harding College, Alumni News, Spring 1998
Sarah Hudson-Pierce, "Moves are a physical hassle, emotional drain," Shreveport Times, May 26, 2007
http://www.beauvoir.org/complete.html#sdorsey
Tim Morris, Review of "The Old Steamer Trunk" in Guideposts, Morganville, New Jersey News Transcript, March 27, 1998
Dave Morris, Sr., Review of "The Old Steamer Trunk", Cedar Rapids Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, March 1998
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=070519_1_A22_spanc62046
Tinkerbelle.pdf
