Prof. Jewel E. Hudgins

Professor Jewel E. Hudgins, age 91, of Tuscaloosa, died Dec. 4, 2010, at Northport Medical Center-DCH. Services will be 2 p.m. Thursday at Heritage Chapel Funeral Home with Dr. Chris Denson and Dr. Hal Noble officiating. Burial will follow in Union Chapel Cemetery in Pickens County with Heritage Chapel Funeral Home & Cremations, a Dignity Memorial Provider, directing. Visitation will be one hour prior to services at the funeral home.

Professor Hudgins is survived by her family of choice, Dr. Elaine S. Katz of Northport, Teddy S. Katz of Tuscaloosa, Caroline Katz Pearlstein, Esq. of Atlanta, Ga., and Jonathan S. Katz of Atlanta, Ga.

Honorary pallbearers are Buddy Burton, Teddy Katz, Jonathan Katz, Cynthia Meggs, and Pam Buck.

Professor Emeritus Jewel E. Hudgins, who lived her 91 years independently and fully, will long be remembered by generations of students whom she profoundly affected during her four decades of teaching at the University of Alabama.

Highly intelligent, as well as learned, she worked for Army intelligence during World War II, interrogating POWs who came through Alabama.

During the early ‘60s, she fulfilled a dream by taking flying lessons and passing all of the exams that led to her pilot's license. She became an enthusiastic member of the Ninety-Niners, a famous women's pilot organization that sponsors the national “Powder Puff Derby” races annually. Jewel spent days in Huntsville for the Derby each year helping the ground crew with hospitality for the participants making stopovers.

Professor Hudgins was born during the Great Depression, reared by a hard-working, divorced single mother during a time when such was not yet conventional. The two formed a life long team. Jewel will be laid to rest beside her mother Eula Mae Hudgins in Pickens County near Aliceville, where her mother was born.

Although a talented and creative writer who studied under the legendary Hudson Strode and August Mason, Jewel considered her crowning achievement to have been her ability late in her mother's life to buy her mother a house. Today the structure is part of the historical preservation.

For many years, Professor Hudgins served on the Board of Directors of a nonprofit organization here in Tuscaloosa County called C-FIDS Emergency Services. This 501 (c)(3) charity exists to make financial grants to folks in dire straits due to severe, chronic long term illness. If one wishes to honor Jewel Hudgins' memory by making a contribution, please see the website, www.cfidsers.net