Mr. Hudson, where were you born and raised?
I was born in Chicago, but I didn't live there any more. I was raised in Washington, grew up there until I went to college in New York and then Harvard.
Looking back. How did you think your parents shaped your character?
Well, it's hard to estimate entirely. I was quite fond of my parents and considered them very good people. My mother was a kind of very feminist and a well-known Jewish poet. She became internationally known. My father was a lawyer. And though it's hard to say how much they influenced me, I liked them, I respected them and I'm sure I was influenced to some degree by them.
You were educated in the public schools?
We moved almost every year, so I went to a different public school each year.
So you would have been in high school and what years... approximately?
Oh, I was in high school when... 26 or 27? I forgot. I graduated from high school in 32.
What did you study in university?
Well, that's a difficult question. I started out thinking I'd be an economist, and then I got disappointed with that. And after an odd experience in my junior year, I decided that I'd go out and study agriculture or management, but I enrolled in both for a whole year and tried to learn the required courses. I lasted a year, and then I came back to the main campus and finished up as an economics major specializing in labor economics.
Did you go right graduate school or join the army after you graduated from the university?
Well, I went to Harvard as a graduate student in philosophy in 1936, and stayed there until the war broke out. I was drafted after I took my PhD exams in the early part of 1941. So I went into the army before Pearl Harbor.