Ed Hudson joined the Navy because he “wanted to be somebody,” he told the Herald during an early morning interview at V.F.W. Post 386 in Cape May, just a few blocks from his childhood vacation home on North Street.
Hudson’s father fought against the Axis in the Second World War, and patriotism in Hudson’s early life was dense in the air like static. “All my friends were going in, too. A lot of us joined together,” he said.
Hudson now lives full-time in Cape May. He remembers chatting with sailors docked at Cape May Harbor as WWII raged – he bugged them for war stories and would sneak into Naval Air Station Wildwood to chat with the German prisoners of war held there before the end of the war.
He enlisted in May 1954 at age 18. He took a bus to Millville from Barrington, Camden County, where he grew up, and caught a train to Providence, Rhode Island, on assignment to nearby Naval Station Newport. Hudson remembers exiting the train at a dead hour of the night, snow whipping his face. Despite the weather, he hiked a mile up the road before a luxury car, with a mysterious well-to-do couple inside, stopped to offer him a ride.
He spent the early years of his Navy career aboard the USS Dennis J. Buckley, which briefly patrolled Taiwan and the Matsu Islands as tensions between the communist Chinese government and those fleeing communist governance began to boil.
Hudson said that he was part of a mission to help “fleeing Chinese who were trying to get to Taiwan, providing air and naval support as they tried to go through the Taiwan Strait.”
He remembers a brief stop in Hong Kong aboard the Buckley, just days after a typhoon swept the area. He saw wrecked boats washed ashore, littering the streets and sitting smashed up against nearby cliffsides.
“The harbor was littered with bodies. The smell – I’ll never forget that,” he said.
The mysterious couple who helped Hudson through that first snowy night were later identified as
Adm. Arleigh A. Burke, chief of naval operations at the time of Hudson’s service, and his wife, Roberta Gorsuch. Burke and Hudson met again at a brief moment late in Hudson’s career – Burke, the highest-ranking person on the boat, approached Hudson in a lineup and said: “I can finally tell my wife you’re doing fine.”
The temperature would get so hot on destroyers like the Buckley that Hudson remembers the soles of his shoes sometimes melting off. Such a thing was more prone to happen when sailors stood at attention for prolonged periods to salute a visiting higher-up.
He left the Navy in 1963 and spent years trying to find another stable career for himself. He bartended at the Shore Bar on Washington Street in Cape May before joining the Hajoca Corp., a plumbing and HVAC company based in Pennsylvania.
“Unfortunately my first gig was as a truck driver for them in Philly. That was a nightmare,” he said. “Can you imagine?”
He got the job thanks to his father, who before becoming a bigshot at Hajoca worked a series of strange jobs in Philadelphia. Hudson’s family as a whole was full of risk-takers and workers in uncommon professions.
His mother and his aunts were dancers for the USO during WWII – they traveled Europe putting on performances for American soldiers. His grandmother founded and operated Jimmy’s Seafood in Villas, where Gaiss Meat Market stands now. She also ran a rooming house at 111 North Street in Cape May, a spot where Hudson spent many summer days and nights.
His father was a puppeteer and entertainer who helped put on “The Bertie the Bunyip Show,” a children’s variety show that aired on KYW-TV in Philadelphia. Back then, Hudson explained, entertainers were required to produce original advertisements for their sponsors. There was no cutaway to a prerecorded ad; the sponsorships came directly from the cast.
So it was that Hudson’s father found himself dressed in costume, ready to sip Sylvan Seal Milk and tell his audience how delicious it was. One problem: The milk fridge had been unplugged, its contents soured.
“My Dad took a sip and nearly vomited onstage in front of the kids in the audience. He rushed offstage and threw up there instead,” he said.
Hudson worked at Hajoca for years before finally moving to Cape May full time in 1975. He briefly worked at Seashore Supply in Wildwood and spent 14 years at Swain’s Hardware in Cape May.
Now 88, he says that living by the shore has helped him live a longer life. His first wife died, and he re-married and moved to what he calls a “bungalow” in West Cape May.
He said: “All my friends are dead, all the ones I was in the service with, all the ones in Barrington, New Jersey, where I lived with my grandparents for years. I haven’t been an angel, I’ve drank, smoked, done all the good stuff. But the salt air keeps me young.”
Contact the author, Collin Hall, at chall@cmcherald.com by phone at 609-886-8600, ext. 156.
