Some background on Mrs. Hudson, who inspired this poem.

Mrs. Hudson was the sister of W. Kerr Scott, who was Governor Of The State Of North Carolina during the late 1940's, and the aunt of Robert W. "Bob" Scott, who also became Governor Of The State Of North Carolina in the late 1960's. And Mrs. Hudson was a close family friend.

Her life-long devotion and dedication and tireless work for The Democrat Party in North Carolina made her the Grande Dame of it, and her house was filled with wall-to-wall framed autographed photos, letters of appreciation, etc., it was a virtual museum of living political history, and I'm proud to say she was like an aunt to me growing up, one of many "adopted" nephews she claimed. She lived as a Democrat Political Matriarch in the decades from the 1890's until the 1970's when literally the only seat a Republican could get elected to anywhere in North Carolina was the one with the leather straps on the arms in the State's gas chamber. She always lived and breathed her politics with a style and grace and steel magnolia charm, cliche' but true, the likes of which will never be seen again.

I wrote this short, seven-line poem for her and gave it to her as a gift when she was alive, and now I present it to you as a vain attempt at an appropriate epitaph, now that she's gone.

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In Memory
by
H. Kent Craig


Mrs. Hudson's memory room
embraces me in awe
correspondence from
FDR, HST, JFK, LBJ
written to her personally
project a lifetime of donkey loving
as does the hate note from Nixon

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