What I learned from Viola Hudson

February 20, 1930 - March 28, 2020

The last time I saw Viola Hudson was at the funeral of Nevaida Reis.

Those two women shared common grandchildren from the Doug and Andrea Hudson family.

I am glad I got a chance to speak to Viola that day.

She taught me an important lesson.

Actually, it was Blaine who verbalized the lesson, but I always felt that Viola was the most important part of his story.

He told me that she and he had always had separate cars. He went to church earlier than she, and she came home earlier than he, so they needed two vehicles all of their lives. It wasn’t until they went on a mission to South Africa that they shared a vehicle. He told me that since they had never really driven with one another, that whomever was driving got a lot of help from the person in the passenger side of the vehicle. They decided that they would agree about a way to solve that problem. When advice was given, the person who was driving would, instead of saying “I’ve already got that”, or whatever it was that could be said, that instead, the driver would always just say thank you. Now I don’t know how close I have come to recounting the story correctly, but I have taken that story to heart and tried to live by that principle. Whenever I do, I think of Vi (and Blaine).

Arta