The state is a janitor poorer this week.Representative Cola Hudson of Lyndonville died Saturday.The life-long Republican who swept school hallways, chaired a House committee, and listened to school kids as if they were his constituents died at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital in Lebanon, New Hampshire.He was 81.
First elected in 1972, he went to the House as a Republican and stayed there with his politics intact until Friday, when illness overtook him and landed him in the hospital.To say that politics was his life would be akin to saying the air is what we breathe.A bachelor, he courted no greater love than the people he served.
“His greatest pride was in serving the people of the state of Vermont,” said Representative Dick Lawrence of Lyndonville.“Only unlike the rest of us, he took it from the heart.”
Since 2004 the two men have served the same district of Lyndonville, Burke, and Sutton.Mr. Lawrence’s father, Harry, served with Mr. Hudson during an earlier time, and from the son’s perspective the die was cast when he came to the State House in 2005.
“My father trained Cola, and it was up to Cola to train me,” he said Tuesday, speaking from Montpelier.
Representative Hudson was a familiar figure in the State House — ramrod straight, even with a cane, with his hair combed straight back and wearing a sports coat that could have come straight out of the pages of a Sears and Roebuck catalogue.
“How were things up your way this morning?” he would say to someone he recognized from the Kingdom who had come down for the day.“Kind of white and frosty?”
Often seen as more a cultural entity than a political one, the Northeast Kingdom had a watchdog in Montpelier when Representative Hudson was on the scene.No other legislator did more than he to keep its representation intact when reapportionment came around.He knew it, too.
A few days before his death, he told Representative Bill Johnson of Canaan that he hoped his political legacy would be seen in the number of lawmakers still representing the Northeast Kingdom.Many thought in 2001 that with the changing demographics in the state, the Kingdom might lose a senator or a representative.But as chairman of the House Committee on Government Operations — the committee where the map of reapportionment is first drawn — Representative Hudson started at the northeast corner of the state and worked his way down.As little as it may be, the Kingdom’s political clout was not going to shrink on his watch.Even if it meant giving Mr. Johnson two more towns.
“He knew what he loved,” said Mr. Johnson, who was Mr. Hudson’s Montpelier housemate for 11 years.
“He loved his family, his farm, his dog, and the state of Vermont.”
With the passing of Representative Hudson, the state loses a lawmaker who came from a time when most Vermonters saw the Republican Party as the Grand Old Party, and when lawmakers often formed a bond and looked out for one anther.
Amos Colby of Lunenburg had been in the House for three years when Mr. Hudson arrived as a freshman.He recalled that Mr. Hudson was feeling nervous and unsure of himself as the members gathered in the well of the House and waited for their seat assignment.The seat beside Mr. Colby was empty, and he promptly took Mr. Hudson under his wing.And there along a back row of Kingdom lawmakers, Representative Hudson became a member of what was called the “granite block of six.”
Despite the inference that the group voted as a block, Mr. Colby said he and his seatmates were known for their independence.He recalled the time a couple of Democrats from Rutland who sat in the row ahead of them turned around day and said, “We wish we could vote like you.”
Cola Hudson is remembered as a legislator who would “speak his mind” but take the time to listen to an opposing view.
“He was respected because he was willing to listen to you,” recalled Mr. Colby, speaking of how Mr. Hudson gained influence and power as a legislator.
He was also something of a throwback.A legislator who appeared as he was; a man with “simple values and dedicated to those values,” said Mr. Johnson.
“His ideology was not complex.Family first and love of state.Everything flowed from those simple values.”
Those who talked with Representative Hudson over lunch came to know him as a man who believed that the government that governed least, governed best; that an individual was responsible for his own actions; and that local control should not be surrendered to the state.He was an avid reader of Emerson and a stout believer in the doctrine of self-reliance.
As a lawmaker, Representative Hudson could be gruff and coarse, and he wasn’t above cutting someone off at the knees whom he mistrusted or believed wasn’t being straight with him.He could be impatient, and downright mean-spirited towards those he thought were taking advantage of the system.And he could sternly put a person on notice.
But in private company and in quiet times, recalled Mr. Johnson, he was “easy to shed a tear.”
The funeral for Representative Hudson will take place Friday in Lyndonville.And in the days ahead, a committee from the district he served will present the Governor with a choice of three candidates to fill out his term.
Among political circles it was widely suspected that Mr. Hudson would not have run for re-election in 2008.And now that he has passed from the fray, many think an era has gone with him.
“He was a traditional Vermont Yankee,” said Mr. Lawrence.“But more than that, a man of his word.”
