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Widowed Terri Hudson, center, with her signature hairstyle, is hugged by well-wisher.Photo, Diane Agate.
As one of the most remarkable memorial services in the modern history of Culver City drew toward its denouement, 19-year-old Travis Hudson unpretentiously stepped to the microphone and bared the deepest corner of his young heart to the crowd.
The scene, fittingly, was the uppermost plateau of Bill Botts Field, the Little League diamond where a much-loved Rick Hudson spent so many days and early evenings of his enormously crammed life that ended abruptly hundreds of miles away from here on Saturday, Aug. 9.
Travis Hudson opened with a confession.
“I didn’t write anything down,” he said modestly.
His next sentence told why it had not been necessary.
“I would rather have 19 years with a brilliant dad than 50 years with a so-so dad.”
Almost in eerily scripted unison, four hundred heads nodded wordless agreement – whether they had known Rick Hudson as an intimate friend, as a youth coach or one of 12 other dimensions to which Mr. Hudson fervently devoted his life.
Young Mr. Hudson’s single 17-word line of eloquence magnificently summarized the 2.5 million words of praise that had been spent – many tearfully — on his father in the first hour of a spectacular tribute for the community coach-business owner-civic volunteer model Rick Hudson, who died unexpectedly at 64 on Saturday, Aug. 9.
As if he were the family archer, Travis Hudson’s 17 words zinged like Cupid’s arrow into the hearts of the 400 Friends of Rick Hudson.
What made this evening of purely homespun, down-home memories a unique human scrapbook for Mr. Hudson’s widow Terri and three children was the sheer uniqueness of the moustachioed man’s man they love.
Rick Hudson’s name appeared in Culver City newspapers less often than a tourist who passed through here one time and stopped only long enough to gas up his car.
They Really Knew Him
The huge crowd that paid humorous and heart-splitting homage to Mr. Hudson poured into the standing-room-only sunset service not because they had read and admired stories about him. They had not. They knew Rick Hudson, and the stories they told – wildly funny, purringly poignant – were homemade, from face-to-face visits with Mr. Hudson.
Fellow coaches, current and former players from Mr. Hudson’s baseball, softball, football teams, boys’ and girls’ teams, were there to relate their colorful stories of Coach Hudson.
No one has counted how many teams or players he taught over the decades, but his family unearthed nearly two dozen variously colored jerseys and jackets he wore throughout his coaching and playing careers.
The haunting music and bygone era of Bob Dylan greeted early arrivers.
Friend John Cohn from the Exchange Club established an appropriate tone and served as a masterful masterful emcee, rotating and accommodating all who came to praise Mr. Hudson.
The Time Champion
Renowned florist Earl Eskridge, glancing over his shoulder at the shirts and jerseys draped on the backstop, was crowned the I Have Known Rick the Longest champion.
“I have known Rick for 55 years,” Mr. Eskridge said, recalling the time when he was Mr. Hudson’s Little League coach. “A nice young man. See that shirt in the middle? That is the one Rick wore.”
Mr.Hudson’s pastor, Ron Engen, who goes back almost as many years as Mr. Eskridge, donned Mr. Hudson’s dusty black cowboy hat before offering his first round of comfort for Mr. Hudson’s widow Terri, and their children, Cassie, Heather and Travis.
“Terri, know in advance, Rick is there with God,” he said.
Later, gesturing first to his head and then to his heart, Pastor Engen said that “God took Rick from here to here, and now he is here with us.”
Through the Years
Longtime coaching colleague Jerry Biernat, the first speaker, said he met Mr. Hudson 26 years ago, and through him met his wife-to-be.
Coaching colleague Jose Munoz emotionally related hilarious stories of their out-of-town travels together. He was so overcome, he broke down broke down at several junctures.
Police officer Randy Robertson spoke of Mr. Hudson’s civic loyalties and unswerving devotion to the department.
Early in the going, Mr. Hudson’s widow Terri huggingly, gratefully greeted scores of the mourners.
But when her children summoned her to the microphone, she was so overcome she was unable to deliver a public farewell.
At the end, while displaying a slide show of perhaps hundreds of scenes from Mr. Hudson’s family and coaching lives, Elvis’s mournful “Peace in the Valley,” captured a melodious farewell that rang across the entirety of the Little League field, just as Mr. Hudson’s coaching influence once had.
