OBIT: Sue Hudson

Sue Hudson, an honored LISD teacher for over 35 years and community member passed on March 5th, 2025. She was laid to rest in a private family interment ceremony in Dallas Texas next to her beloved daughter Amy.

Our family will be hosting a Remembrance Reception of Sue Hudson on Saturday April 5th, 2025. The reception will be held at Leander Church of Christ located at 300 Crystal Falls Parkway from 10:30am -1:00pm. We loved for anyone with a Sue story to stop by and share.

Paula “Sue” Valentine Hudson, born on August 14, 1939, was the first of four children, all born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Glenn G. Valentine Sr. and Monnie Wilma Sutton Valentine. The family would soon settle in the Pleasant Grove area of Dallas, where Sue spent her entire childhood attending Pleasant Grove Elementary, Pleasant Grove Middle School, and W.W. Samuel High School. Pleasant Grove would be the home to which she would return through every stage of her parents’ lives, and where she felt she had an incredibly blessed childhood, loving and respecting her wonderful parents and appreciating the Christian values in which they surrounded their children.

Ascribing to the adage “good women never make history”, she launched her adult adventures as she was one of the few women of her generation to leave home and attend college. She spent her first two years at Oklahoma Christian University in Edmond, Oklahoma. She took one year off to work in the Dallas area for a temporary staffing agency, and finally headed off to Searcy, Arkansas. There, she attended Harding University and obtained a degree in education. In 1962, during her Senior year, recruiters came to campus looking for students interested in teaching jobs. Sue and three of her friends signed up to take teaching positions in Bakersfield, California, and hit the wide-open highway.

In 1964, on a cross-country trek back to Bakersfield from a visit home to Dallas, Sue and three friends found themselves close to running out of gas. A group of Army soldiers heading the same way stopped to help the girls. They all drove to the closest gas station, and a dashingly handsome soldier told his friends, “the redhead is for me”. Sue Valentine and Ronald Kress Hudson married soon after he dropped to one knee on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.

During their active-duty years, they traveled extensively while stationed overseas, spending time in Germany, Japan, and France. Amidst those adventures, Sue had three daughters: Ronda Sue, Veronica Lynn, and Amy Beth. After leaving the military, the family moved to Gorman, Texas, where Sue taught at Gorman High School for a few years. They ultimately moved to the Austin area in 1973.

Settled in Austin, Sue began teaching for Leander ISD at the Leander High School and attended Leander Church of Christ. She transitioned to teaching at beloved Faubion Elementary in 1976. Here she would teach for close to 30 years, watching all three of her girls pass through the halls where she taught. Sue finished her final years of teaching in LISD at Deer Park Elementary and retired at the age of 74. Retirement did not slow Sue down. She invested her time volunteering, spending countless hours with friends, traveling, helping her family, and rejoined Leander Church of Christ after many years at Round Rock Church of Christ.

After living 83 years at full throttle, Sue finally started to slow down, allowing the rest of us to catch up. With her daughters at her side, she passed peacefully on March 5, 2025, at the age of 85, and reunited with her beloved youngest daughter Amy, who passed in 1989. Sue’s welcoming committee at the gates of heaven included her father, mother, brother John, sister-in-law Hwi, Ron Hudson, her daughter Amy Beth, great-nephew Ephraim, and an entire host of extended family and friends who’ve gone before.

Her family will remain here to work on living the large and adventurous lives she wished for us all, including her brother Glenn, sister Kathleen, brother-in law Nate, sister-in-law Debra, daughters, Ronda and Lynn, sons-in-law Kevin and Jacob, grandchildren, Cameron, Carrine, Clara and Michaela, their spouses Maria, Bo, Scott and Charlie, great grandchildren, Kylee, Amy, Brooks, Daisy, Bradly and Violet, Niece Cara, nephews, Bart, Michael, Glenn and James, their wives Elizabeth, Dawn, Sara and Megan, all their children and grandchildren Silas, Sarah, Randal, Noah, Asher, Luke, Peyton, John and Emma.

“It’s not the easy or convenient life for which I search, but rather life lived to the edge of all my possibility.” ~ Mary Anne Radamacher-Hershey