Virgil Edward Hudson, 1937–2018

Virgil Edward Hudson was the seventh child born to Willie Miller Hudson and Velva Mae Morton Hudson in Bragg City, Pemiscot County, Missouri. He was born on 16 July 1937 and grew up in Bragg City and St. Louis County, Missouri. Virgil attended elementary school in Bragg City, St. Louis City and County and graduated from Douglass High School in Webster Groves, Missouri, on 8 June 1955.

Virgil and his brother Robert were very mischievous. I can recall our father telling them to be in by midnight and checking the odometer on the car for miles driven the night before. Daddy didn’t know they were disconnecting the mileage cable shortly after they left the house. The brothers would also have wrestling matches upstairs, which irritated Daddy. They would read comic books, which Daddy would confiscate as “foolishness,” whenever he could find the comic books. The brothers usually hid them under the bathtub or under their mattresses. Our mother would wake them with a splash of cold water or a wet washcloth in their faces nearly every morning as they did not like to get up. Both brothers enjoyed gambling and would play poker, bet on horses, dogs, you name it!

Virgil played football in high school and had a pink 1949 Ford convertible until he wrapped it around a telephone pole. He loved trucks and started working with his older brother, Frederick, as a driver in his trucking business after high school. Virgil acquired his own tractor trailer and began driving over the road at age twenty-two. He also drove trucks for some well-known trucking firms, had his own fleet of trucks, and managed a mail route for the U.S. Postal Service.

Virgil served in the Voluntary U.S. Army at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, for six months, from September 1960 to March 1961.

On 17 December 1960, Virgil married Lessie Jean Haulcy in the City of St. Louis. They celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on 14 December 1985 with a well-attended dinner and party at Heatherton Apartment Club House. They enjoyed casinos and traveling, taking many trips together in the United States and several to the Caribbean Islands.

Virgil was a strong-willed person but would go out of his way to do a favor and would give you his last dollar if you asked, without question. He was loved and admired by many.

Virgil has one daughter, three grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and one great-great grandson.

Virgil experienced a stroke on 6 March 2018. After a month of therapy, he was placed in an assisted living facility with 24-hour care and was later placed in hospice care. He expired on 8 September 2018, twelve days after his wife Lessie died. The couple had been married for fifty-eight years.

(Sources: Personal knowledge, family documents and photographs, census records, death certificates)

Written by Eloise B. Hudson Hunt
18 January 2019
© 2019, St. Louis Genealogical Society