Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories

 

 

Dana College in Blair, Neb. unexpectedly closed its doors this month, bringing an end to a small but proud institution. One chapter in the school’s history concerns an almost mythic-like figure named Marion Hudson.  The following article tells the remarkable story of this gifted, multi-sport athlete who seemingly came out of nowhere to leave his mark behind at Dana.  It was the early 1950s and he was a black student-athlete of legendary ability on Omaha‘s north side. Circumstances prevented him from ever demonstrating his talents in sanctioned high school competition, but the word got out and when all white Dana was looking to integrate its campus school officials asked around who might be a good candidate and they were referred to Hudson.  He went there and immediately made an impact as a student-athlete.  As you’ll read, his athletic exploits read like something out of fiction, but they were quite real.  The reason you’ve never heard of Hudson is he never tried out for the Olympics in track and field and he never turned pro in football, levels of competition many felt he was capable of.  Hudson’s life after college revolved around work and family, and then a series of health problems began breaking down his body.  When I met him at the nursing home he resided in he was but a shell of his former self physically, but he still retained a fighting spirit and a sense of humor.  He’s since passed.

 

  

Marion Hudson

 

My story was part of a series I wrote on Omaha’s Black Sports Legends entitled Out to Win: The Roots of Greatness.  It appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com) during 2004-2005.  I hope to turn the series into a book.  Dana College and Marion Hudson are both gone now, but they’ve left behind a rich legacy, and this is my small tribute to them.

In the coming days I will be adding more stories from the series on this site, including profiles of legends Bob Gibson, Bob Boozer, Gale Sayers, Ron Boone, and Johnny Rodgers, and profiles of other great athletes who, like Marion Hudson, you may not have heard of but deserve your attention.

 

Dana College Legend Marion Hudson, Tte greatest athlete you’ve never heard of before (From my Omaha Black Sports Legends series, Out to Win: The Roots of Greatness)

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally published in The Reader (www.thereader.com) as part of my series Out to Win: The Roots of Greatness

 

You may think you know a lot about Omaha’s rich inner city athletic heritage. Sure, you know Bob Gibson, Bob Boozer, Gale Sayers, Ron Boone, Marlin Briscoe, Johnny Rodgers, Mike McGee, Ahman Green. But chances are you’ve never even heard of Marion Hudson, which doesn’t change the fact he’s arguably the greatest athlete to ever come out of Omaha or, for that matter, Nebraska, and consequently among the finest athletes in American history.

Outside the small circle of survivors who competed with him or watched his athletic brilliance unfold in sport after sport, this little-known giant from the 1950s is rarely mentioned. He remains obscure today because he competed for a tiny private school, Dana College near Blair, Neb., and never went pro. But, as you will see, he should be known alongside those others, both for the unique circumstances that brought him there and for his possessing such phenomenal all-around skills that some of his football and track records still stand 50 years later.

Choose any measure or cliche of athletic prowess and it can be accurately applied to Hudson. He could run like the wind. He was as strong as a bull. He could swing a bat with power. Throw a ball a mile. Jump out of the gym. “Yeah, they called me the Boy with Springs in His Legs,” he said from the Sorensen Rehabilitation and Assisted Living Facility in north Omaha he now calls home. Words are a struggle. What’s left of his body contorts from the strain, his gnarled fingers twitching and his wide face screwing up in a grimace. His once strapping body ravaged by the affects of diabetes and a series of strokes.

Hudson navigates his power wheelchair in the center’s dining hall to greet a rare visitor. His legs above his knees were amputated years ago and his left side is partially paralyzed. He wears a T-shirt and his sweat pants are knotted at the nubs of his stumps. An ever-present cap reads Pilgrim Baptist Church, where he was married and still worships today. He flashes the winning smile that made him the big man on campus at Dana long ago, and where he’s been recently rediscovered. In 2003, Dana hosted a Marion Hudson Day and dedicated a scholarship in his name. Friends take him up to the school to catch an occasional athletic event.

There, he is a symbol for possibilities. Before he enrolled in 1952, the school never had a black student. Like his boyhood hero, Jackie Robinson, Hudson endured indignities in breaking down barriers. He couldn’t stay or eat with the team on road trips. He absorbed name calling. His character and achievement set an example. Within a year of his arrival, more blacks followed. A quiet man, he let his performances on the field, the cinder track and the court speak loudest for him.

He dominated whatever sport was in season. But it was in track and field he showed the full range of his abilities. For proof of his extraordinary gifts, one only has to look at the numbers. A versatile competitor in college, Hudson would routinely enter as many as seven or eight individual events in a single meet. There was the javelin, the discus and shot put, the 120 high hurdles, the 220 low hurdles, the 100 and 220-yard dashes, the broad jump, hop-step-and-jump and high jump and the 880-yard relay. On average, he’d win four or five, placing highly in others, often going up against big school foes. At his last college meet, he won seven events and placed second in another. He was among the nation’s leaders in his specialities. All the more remarkable considering he had a bad throwing hand, a collapsed lung and chronic asthma. It was difficult for him to recover from one event to the next.

 

 

But, as usual, Hudson found a way. “He was built so good, he was able to compensate,” said Rodney Wead, a former Omaha social services director who grew up with Hudson and competed with him at Central High School and at Dana, where Wead, a year younger, followed him. “I can’t tell you the number of times he would run a 9-point something 100-yard-dash and come back and jump 23-8 or 24-feet and then run over and throw the javelin 200-feet and then anchor our relay team.”

“He could do so many things,” said Richard Nared, a cousin and former fine athlete himself at Central High. Don Benning, the UNO wrestling coaching legend who played one season in the same backfield with Hudson at Dana, said, “He had tremendous speed and strength. He could do a lot of things really well. He was ahead of his time in terms of his ability in track. He was a great all-around athlete.” Benning said any conversation about Omaha’s athletic greats must include Hudson.

The Dana community has even come to refer to Hudson as “our own Jim Thorpe,” a comparison not without merit.

Nebraska (R) Congressman Tom Osborne’s superb athletic career at Hastings College roughly coincided with Hudson’s Dana glory years. In a fax sent to Hudson on the eve of his special day at Dana, Osborne described him as “one of the best athletes in Nebraska’s history.” Wead said Osborne has told him Hudson “was probably the most gifted individual in track and field he had ever seen.”

The points Hudson earned all by himself outpaced entire teams and accounted for most of Dana’s totals, helping the Vikings become a track powerhouse. He was a champion at major events like the Kansas Relays. He once outscored the combined Big 7 at the Drake Relays. His career personal record marks in his three best events — 9.9 in the 100-yard-dash, 24-6 in the broad jump, 46-2 1/4 in the hop-step-and- jump and 208-8 1/2 in the javelin — ranked near the top in the country, regardless of division. His broad jump and javelin bests were near 1952 Olympic-winning marks. His school long jump and javelin records have yet to be broken.

But, as usual with Hudson, there’s a story behind these numbers that puts in perspective what he did and offers tantalizing speculation about how much more he may have achieved. For example, Hudson never competed in organized track and field before college. He can’t recall using starting blocks early in his college sprinting career. He taught himself how to high jump. The javelin he threw was an awkward, unstable wood model that wobbled.

“Of all his events, I think the javelin was his best,” Wead said. “If only there’d been a coach to teach him how to really throw it. The good javelin throwers hold the javelin behind them as they approach their mark and they use a crossover step for momentum and balance in their release. Well, he would hold it out front and kind of juggle it as he was running, and then he’d almost come to a complete stop before throwing it. Can you imagine if someone taught him the proper footwork and mechanics, how much farther he would have thrown that darn thing?”

Hudson said his most enduring memory from his track days is the 202-foot missile he launched to win the 1954 Drake Relays.

“I threw it, and it sang. It vibrated as it left my hand. Yeah, any time I got a good one off, it would whistle in the air,” he said, breaking into a big smile and laugh.

How he even came to throw the javelin is a tale befitting his legend. The story goes that Hudson was walking across the track infield, where a teammate, Lynn Farrens, let loose some javelin tosses. His interest peaked, Hudson asked if he could give it a try. Using an unorthodox grip, Hudson let one fly far beyond Farrens’ marks. His teammates recount a similar Paul Bunyan moment in the long jump. Hudson was just messing around in the pit at practice one day when he uncorked a series of jumps that landed clear outside the pit, some 24 feet from the take-off board.

Observers feel Hudson may have had a shot at the Olympics as a decathlete, but the opportunity never presented itself. He did not fare well one of the few times he competed in the decathlon — finishing 10th at the 1955 Kansas Relays. Wead said Hudson was at a distinct disadvantage due to his asthma and impaired lung.

 

Dana College Pioneer Memorial

 

On the gridiron, Hudson was an explosive runner who, despite missing much of his junior year due to injury and playing in a Split-T formation offense that spread the ball around, he still racked up 2,383 rushing yards, on an eye-popping 7.78 yards per carry, and 30 touchdowns for his career. His rushing average has never been approached. He broke off dozens of long runs from scrimmage, displaying a combination of speed and power rarely found then.

“All I needed was a crack in the line, and I was gone,” Hudson said.

Nared, who made the pilgrimage up to Dana to see his cuz play, said, “They didn’t even see him coming because he’d either run by you or he’d run over you. He was awesome. They couldn’t really touch him. He had the speed of a Marshal Faulk. The moves of a Gale Sayers. The power of a Walter Payton. They hated to see him come through the line.” Hudson was, by all accounts, also a dangerous receiver and kick returner and played a mean defensive back.

He was a star from the start for Dana, showcasing his big play capabilities right away with a 75-yard touchdown reception versus Tarkio and an 87-yard scoring scamper against Iowa Central his freshman season. He also had a flair for the dramatic — tearing free for that 87-yarder on the first play from scrimmage. “The very first time I took a handoff, I squeezed between the line and I took off running and 100 yards later I was in the end zone. I remember that just like it was yesterday,” he said. The very next year he burned Iowa Central on another 87-yard scoring jaunt, this time to open the second half in wet and muddy conditions. “People from Dana still talk about that run,” said Wead, who has served on the school’s board of trustees.

Nared said Hudson developed a following from Omaha. “People would come to see Marion play. Even the older guys. They all knew about him. They knew he was a tremendous athlete. You’d have 60-70 cars full of people come up and see him play on a Friday night. They wanted to see something different, and they saw it.” “Yeah, they’d come out to see Hudson run,” Marion confirmed with pride. “He was so awesome in college he would literally have crowds of people follow him,” recalled Wead, who ran track with him. “They knew he was coming. Sometimes it was hard for him to get his jumps together for all the fans milling about. They loved to watch him throw the javelin. Then or now it’s rare to see a black javelin thrower. And here was this handsome, strong black man throwing it 200-odd feet.”

In basketball, Hudson played a different game from the rest. His was an air-born artist of swooping, soaring drives and slam dunks in an era of set shooters and backdoor cutters. The 6-0 Hudson, able to dunk from a standing jump under the basket, was a solid contributor, averaging about 9 points a game for the Vikings, although he did go-off some nights, like the career-high 31 he had versus Luther College. “Everything I threw up at the basket that game went in,” he said.

Multi-sport phenom Jim Thorpe was often a point of comparison for Marion Hudson and his athletic versatility

 

Like any bigger-than-life figure, Hudson’s legend began in childhood. A Floridian by birth, he did part of his early growing up in Omaha, where his family moved just prior to the start of World War II. The packing houses drew them and other blacks who migrated here from the deep south. The newcomer quickly earned a rep as a great natural athlete. He competed for the High Y Monarchs, a select North Omaha YMCA-based basketball team coached by Josh Gibson, an older brother of pitching great Bob Gibson. He ran roughshod over older players in the infamous Cold Bowl, an annual no-holds-barred football contest at Burdette Field. He outran and outkicked everybody in soccer, a sport once hugely popular in the inner city. In softball, he swatted balls so far they broke windows in the school across the way.

Whatever the action was, he was in the thick of it. “He was always exceptional. Always gifted,” Wead said. “Every time the guys would see Marion coming, they wanted him for their team,” Nared said. “Whatever team got him, they would always win.” Like any great athlete, Hudson worked at it. He mastered any sport he attempted and developed his own innovative training methods. As Wead recalled, obstacles, like fences, became hurdles Hudson cleared with ease.

At the cramped old Y Hudson would sky “higher than the rim on dunks and almost bump his head on the ceiling,” Nared said. Hudson’s hops were so explosive that when jumping center, Nared said, “the refs would blow their whistles and have them re-jump, telling him, ‘You’re jumping too soon.’ You know what Marion would say ‘Throw the ball higher.’ And he’d go up and get it again.”

Hudson improvised homemade pole vaults from sticks or branches for negotiating taller structures. He built himself up physically by shoveling loads of coal and lugging blocks of ice. He’s credited with introducing weight training at Dana, where dumbbells and barbells became the rage

“Marion was a good 195-pounds. All muscle. Quite dangerous and intimidating if you were in his way,” Wead said.

Just before starting high school, Hudson left with his family for Alaska, where his father was stationed with the Navy Air Corps during the war. Living in Kodiak, Hudson played some prep hoops and, in true mythic tradition, once had a run-in with a bear. He was delivering newspapers on his bicycle when, he said, “I came around a bend and there HE stood. I scared him. I took off down the hill and he was running behind me. But I made it back to the car. I got there, and there were bears all around it. Sniffing at it. I scared them, too.”

The family moved back here in 1951, just in time for his senior year at Central, but too late for him to compete athletically. Already a legend in The Hood for his remarkable running, jumping, throwing skills in area youth leagues and pickup games, he sat on the sidelines the entire term. Well, not quite. Football coach Frank Smagacz let him practice with the team even though he was ineligible to play. The coach knew he had a gem who loved the game. By virtue of never officially competing at the prep level in Nebraska, Hudson never had a chance to earn a letter, much less add his name to any state high school boys record books.

Still, his athletic and academic props were enough that when Dana College sought to integrate its student ranks, officials put out feelers for a suitable candidate and Hudson was recommended by Central coaches and faculty. This was 1952, only a few years since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball and still years before the Freedom Fighter marches of Martin Luther King.

Dana students raised the funds to establish the scholarship Hudson received. The rest is history. His record-breaking athletic feats stand out, but he was more than just a jock. “He’s a bright and able guy,” Wead said. “He was a good biologist. He put his skills to work after college. He had a great baritone and toured with the Dana chorus.” Then there was how he dealt with the burden of his pioneering role.

Hudson has always said he felt welcomed and supported by his mostly white teammates, Wead said, “He had his buddies protecting him.” As black student-athletes, Wead and Hudson avoided trouble by staying away from Blair, where racial epithets were known to fly. Hudson was denied service and rooms on road trips to Kansas and Texas. As his rep grew, he was a targeted athlete. “They tried to hurt him a few times with dirty shots. Once, he lay there on the field for awhile and then he finally got up. It was scary,” Nared said. “I limped off,” Hudson said.

Wead said Hudson weathered the discrimination the same way he’s responded to the devastation of his body: “It was hard, but he handled it with grace.”

Beyond the glory, Hudson’s post-Dana life has been bittersweet. He lived in Minnesota after college, working for Honeywell 3M. Hard times forced him to change jobs. He went through two marriages. By the ‘70s, he moved back to Omaha, where he met and married Ella, with whom he raised a family, including foster children. He lent his singing voice to various choirs. He moved from job to job. His health problems then surfaced. “I began to see things happen to his body when he was in his early 40s,” Wead said. Complications from asthma and diabetes debilitated him and after the strokes and amputations he was placed in the professional care setting. “Hudson’s had a tough life. He just didn’t get a good shot in life. He’s kind of become a forgotten guy,” Wead said.

That ignoble fate prompted retired Scribner, Neb. schoolteacher Alex Meyer, a former track athlete who grew up idolizing Hudson, to befriend his idol. Meyer convinced Dana to hold its Marion Hudson Day, which Hudson attended with his family. Meyer visits Hudson often and takes him back to Dana for events. “Marion needed some attention. He deserves it. I was concerned that one of the great legends of Nebraska was wasting away with hardly anybody coming to see him,” Meyer said. “He did some superhuman things. He inspired me. I just try to keep Marion and others focused on his accomplishments. It’s my magnificent obsession.”

The humble Hudson called the new found attention “very nice. It seems like everything I went through was all worthwhile now.” His only regrets are not giving pro football a try. He has no doubt he could have played at the next level.

If nothing else, Hudson’s tale reveals how the story of Omaha’s inner city athletic greats is bigger than you imagined and remains incomplete without his legacy being included with that of his more famous counterparts. Hail, hail Marion Hudson.

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