Gerald Dean Hudson

Gerald Dean Hudson, the only son of Mirl and Ruth Hudson, was born on August 22, 1923, in Montebello, California. He graduated from Montebello High School in 1940, and attended Fullerton Junior College for one and a half years. On December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Gerry enlisted in the United States Coast Guard, and reported for duty on January 2, 1942. He took a train to Treasure Island, San Francisco, where he received boot camp training for several months. His first assignment lasted eighteen months as a radar operator aboard the U.S.S. Nourmahal, a gunboat for the Atlantic Convoy duty. He was initially one of only seven who received training in radar, a new technology at the time.

In September, 1943, while in New York at McGuinness's Bar, Sheepshead Bay, Gerry met Gloria Grant, and then saw her again at the same location the day after Christmas, three months later. This time he went home with her and her sister Peggy to meet her family. On April 14, 1944, they were married in the Bronx, New York.

Gerry continued to serve in the Coast Guard for five years, aboard various cutters such as the Woodrush, Taney, Sorrell, Dexter, and Winnebago. A good deal of his time during the war was spent in and around Greenland as part of the Greenland Patrol, guarding the important cryolite mine (cryolite was used in the processing of aluminum for building planes). He was discharged from the service on January 15, 1947 with the rank of Radarman, First Class.

Gerry and Gloria had six children between 1945 and 1961: Dennis Michael, Gerald Dean Jr., Margaret (Peggy) Rita, Robert Grant, David John, and Dorothy Marie. After his discharge, Gerry went to work for the Bankers Trust Company in New York, and then moved to Whittier, California in 1948. He has worked over the years as an insurance adjuster for such firms as Allstate, Orange Coast, and Carl Warren & Co. Gerry retired in 1990, and in February 2005, Gerry and Gloria moved from their Whittier home on Gunn Avenue to the Landmark Senior Community in La Mirada, California. On December 22, 2006, Gerald died in Whittier, California from heart failure, at the age of eighty-three.