Getting to know Gladys

  LET'S GET TO KNOW GLADYS HUDSON

By Barbara Palmer 27-Aug-22

I spent several pleasant hours with Gladys. When she was 75 she took some creative writing classes and started writing about her life. She wanted to leave something for her family. Now she has a bound book about an inch thick which she shared with me. She has had quite a life!

Glad was born in June in 1927 in Chicago. She was Gladys Novak then. Her beautiful blonde, blue-eyed mother was sixteen years old. The day after Glad was born her mother had her seventeenth birthday. Her father was twenty-one years old, a young man who had left home at twelve and made his own way. Of course, Glad's parents had eloped but as soon as they returned home they were marched to church and re-married.

Glad's mom worked hard as a waitress. Her father was out of work but spent his days looking. Grandma took care of Glad. She was told that Grandma took her to church on a pillow. 

The family was poor and it was always tough to pay the rent on their first floor apartment at 2657 W. Walton. However, Glad and her brother, who was a year younger, never knew they were poor. They roller skated in the halls of the building and played outside until it got dark. Glad was told that her most important task was to take care of her brother. She was more scared of her mother than of any of the other kids. If anyone messed with her brother (who delighted in taunting others because he knew he was safe ) Glad would just start punching until the other child dropped. Everyone in the neighborhood was afraid of her. She was the boss of her neighborhood from the beginning! 

Glad thrived in school. Every grading period the top scholar got to sit in the front seat in the first row of the classroom. The runner-up sat in the second seat. Gladys and one other girl kept trading off these two seats. She can still tell you the name of that other little girl. Ask her.

Glad was not always the perfect little girl in school. For example, once she got caught shooting spit balls! She begged the teacher not to give her a check in deportment on her report card. She was more fearful of disappointing her mother than anything else. The teacher told Glad that she would have to think up her own project for punishment. Well, our intrepid student looked around and found the perfect plan. She joined a group of birdwatchers who would go to Lincoln Park to record bird sightings every Saturday. Gladys joined this group of adults and got a bird book. She went birdwatching every week and kept a record of all the birds she saw. Her teacher thought it was a great project. Gladys has not looked at a bird since. Imagine an elementary school student joining a group of adult bird watchers nowadays.

The beginning of high school was tough. Glad was not with any of her friends from elementary school. It was hard to fit in somewhere. Gradually it changed as she started to roller skate and learned to jitterbug and became part of a gregarious group. She also started finding part-time jobs to earn some spending money.

At the end of her sophomore year she wanted to quit school and work full time but her mom would not allow that. She graduated from Steinmetz High School with no plans for her future. One of her best friends was determined to be a nurse. Glad tagged along when her friend applied. She also filled out the application just for the heck of it.

In October 1948 Gladys was accepted into nursing school. With no other plans in mind, she went along with her friend to nursing school. This was in spite of having had only one science class in high school!

 

The school was called St. Mary of Nazareth. She suddenly had several floors of girl friends, but she was in a very strict atmosphere. Student nurses were the lowest of the low. They had to stand in the back of an elevator if a doctor or nun got on. They were not allowed to go home for six months and had only one phone call a week. The future nurses had to maintain an average of above 80% in their grades. Gladys said they all adapted but bitched about it a lot. Sometimes circumstances like that bring you closer to your fellow sufferers. The class started with thirty-seven women. Half were gone in six months.

After one year Gladys's friend quit to get married. Gladys continued. However, she was not always following the rules. She and another girl would leave after bed check and meet their boy friends to ride on their motorcycles to the lake. Walter, the school security guard, got cartons of cigarettes for being quiet.

In her final year she had several choices to continue her studies in another location to experience some variety. She chose the Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. While there she became interested in one of the patients. He also became interested in her He was a handsome and charismatic young soldier with kidney disease. One day she went to check on him and the bed was empty. That was when she realized that young people can also die.

When Glad graduated she got a job in a doctor's office. She was tired of hospital administrators and nuns who were head nurses. No more standing at the back of the elevator! She assisted Dr. Salberg and developed x-rays for a dentist in a storefront office at Diversey and Cicero Avenues. Then Dr. S and his wife both were diagnosed with TB and had to go to a sanitarium. The practice was sold and Gladys was part of the package. The new doctor immediately gave Glad a raise. She worked eight-hour weekdays and three hours on Saturday. She even had her own patients who were regulars. 

Gladys continued her social life. At the Paradise Ballroom she met the love of her life. Jim Hudson was a veteran who was discharged on the west coast. I have seen pictures of him and he was movie star adorable. He was making his way back home to Boston when he stopped in Chicago. He had heard that if you can't get a job in Chicago, you'd never get a job anywhere. He was a Journeyman carpenter like his father. Jim never made it back to Boston. He found good work in Chicago and soon he and Gladys married on May 6, 1950. By October Gladys was pregnant. She developed a taste for pickled pig's feet while pregnant. She has no idea how that happened. She can't figure out how they even got into her house!

Little Jimmy was born on May 2, 1951. Gladys had left work by then and did not go back until after her third child. In the meantime, Jim got a city job (which was always a goal in Chicago) and Gladys started pushing for a house of their own.

 

They bought a lot in Westchester for $1200. They put in a foundation and got the house "under roof" to get a construction loan. A good friend lent them $3000. Gladys helped put in the forms for the basement pour. In the meantime Jim, on the job, was replacing the wooden lockers at Harrison High School with metal ones. He brought the old lockers home and that was the sub floor of their house. Gladys pounded all the nails out of the used wood. They moved in March 1954 with only a sub-floor, a Coca-Cola cooler as a refrigerator and no doors except for the bathrooms. They also had a second child, Patti. Life was good!

In 1956 Gladys had her third and last child, a boy they named Jeffery. However, Patti could not say Jeffery. What she said sounded like Duffy. So Jeffery became Duffy from then on!

The family had many pets. They had a rabbit, two ducks, three hamsters and two dogs. Then there was the monkey, Daisy. Daisy was not too popular after she got loose and scribbled on the bathroom walls with lipstick. She did not stay long.

They enjoyed their life in Westchester. Gladys went back to work when Duffy started school. She did hospital nursing except for one year. That year there were two children in college and they really needed some extra money. Gladys went to work for Mars candy as the overnight nurse. Mars was in a beautiful building on Oak Park Avenue. 

Gladys was amazed at what went on during the night shift. Two couples divorced so they could switch partners with each other. It was like Peyton Place. There was much hanky panky. There were also accidents in operating the machinery.

There was no way Glad would doze off on her overnight shift. It was great money besides being very entertaining. I lived several blocks from there and I always wondered why so many neighbors loved to work the night shift.

The children finished college. Jimmy got his Ph.D. and is a consultant in Colorado. Patti also became a nurse and lives in Winfield. Duffy became a metallurgic engineer and lived in Indiana.

By 1980 Gladys was tired of the Chicago winters. They had once visited Florida and she fell in love with palm trees. She got a hospital job and the house in Westchester was sold. Glad worked for the Veterans Administration Hospitals in Florida until she retired in on December 31, 1999. Then she did home health care until she was seventy.

She became president of her condominium association. She learned to answer questions from homeowners by giving them an assignment. Do the research which will uncover the answer. She became an expert bridge player. She met with other retired V.A. nurses monthly She went to all the Home Depot demonstrations. She learned to do many things in her home but the only thing she actually did was rescreen the windows. In Florida, Steinmetz High School alumni met every March. Each graduation year has its own table. (What a great idea!) Glad also did five years of water aerobics.

Here are some Gladisms. Early in her marriage she baked an angel food cake which did not rise. It was a doorstop for many years. Her favorite car was a '68 Mustang convertible. She received her very first kiss from Eddie Gortz. Being in Nursing School was the lowest form of animal life. Her favorite food is a Chicago hot dog. She loves bridge and Bible study. 

Gladys favorite saying is that "Sometimes life gives you chicken. Sometimes it gives you feathers." I hope Gladys always got which ever she wanted.

Jim Hudson died in 2000 at the age of eighty. The greatest loss for Gladys was when her youngest son, Duffy, was killed in a multi car crash on an expressway in Indiana. After that life changed. With it came some of the maladies of growing older. 

Now Gladys is with us at Avenida. If you have more questions about her life she will be happy to chat with you. However, do not ask her when she is playing bridge or mahjong!

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