Mary Reginato Hudson. >Mary Reginato Hudson was born in 1923. Her parents, Pietro and Rina Reginato were Italian immigrants who raised their 7 children in the historic and magical town of Dunsmuir, California. Mary married Herbert Hudson in 1947. He was a decorated and honored World War II Army pilot. Mary and Herb and daughter, Christine settled in Mountain View, California when Herb became a commercial airline pilot. But, shortly thereafter, Herb was killed in a plane crash over the Pacific Ocean, leaving Mary, now pregnant with her second daughter, Laurie, a widow. Mary never remarried. Instead, she devoted herself to raising her two daughters. Trying to be a single mother in the 1950's, with very little money, and living in a neighborhood of married couples that did not welcome a single woman back into their circle, was an eye opener about life. So, she started to write. She wrote about everything. She believed the only way to save her soul and her sanity was to write. Today, it's called journaling. So, she sat down at her typewriter with her onionskin paper, and she wrote stories, and she wrote how she felt, and she expressed her anger and frustration...and fear. And she was very creative. Mary wrote for her entire life, and she loved to write. Complaint letters, short stories, editorials, books, just her feelings, everything. She just put it on paper. During her lifetime, Mary had many different jobs. She worked for Bank of America, Motherhood Maternity Shop, Stanford University, and was the favorite employee of Manpower Temporary Services. Through the temporary services, Mary worked for many many companies in Silicon Valley. Her last job was at Sears Roebuck where she was their top salesman in furniture. But Mary's true talent was her writing abilities. As a young widow, she began writing children's stories. Mary's children's stories were very creative and beautifully written. Mary was an exceptionally creative and intuitive writer with a great imagination. Later, she wrote a beautiful memoir of her parents called Paintings of Mama and Papa. After her parents died, Mary was sad and she was grieving, but she did not let it overwhelm her. Instead, she chose to deal with grief by remembering what was good; by remembering cherished moments in her life that brought her joy. And so, she put these memories on paper. It seems my Mary truly had a special lens through which she saw the world of her childhood and youth with amazing sensitivity to the deeper layers of life. The result is a beautiful series of precious thoughts and memories that are not dark and isolating, but wondrous and uniting. She also wrote many articles and stories honoring the Italian immigrants, like her parents who came over in the early 1900s from Italy to help make this country what it is today. Her father worked 47 years for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Many of her articles were published in local Italian heritage magazines. She also loved, more than anything else, to attend an Italian American Heritage function because Mary really loved being an "Italian woman." Mary was an extremely spiritual woman and wrote many stories on spirituality. Although raised as a Catholic, she believed that all religions were good and true. Mary had many friends and many interests including Greek dancing, cooking, Lawrence Welk, and socializing. But her favorite activity was working outside in the garden. She called her garden "the garden of no money" because everything just came back in the spring without a lot of expense. >
