End of an Era as Roger Hudson Completes Half Century of Service
Roger Hudson was honored for a half-century of service to DMPS.
Roger Hudson came on the job as the Controller for the Des Moines Public Schools in 1965. Things were different then. There was no school aid formula for state education funding. Roger got into the middle of that. There really weren’t any computers. While he grappled with the district’s budget every year by counting beans he also collaborated with students at the old Tech High School to usher DMPS into the cyber age. A genuinely nice guy, he sat across negotiating tables for many years, somehow hammering out agreements without making enemies.
In 1998 he retired at the age of 65 after 30+ years of faithful service. His mother had been a teacher and his father the treasurer for a school district so once he cut his CPA teeth in the private sector Roger knew he wanted to work on behalf of the public schools. He wanted to be a public servant. And so he was. One with a very personal touch, as it turned out.
Post-formal retirement Roger continued to work as the Chief Administrator for the Des Moines Teachers Retirement System. There really was no one else at the time. Now there is. The district is absorbing the oversight of DMTRS into its Business and Finance Department, thereby enabling Roger to finally eat the cake of full retirement from the school district he’s faithfully served for nearly half a century.
Friends, family, colleagues and old adversaries served it up and shared it with him Thursday in a ceremony in the multipurpose room at Central Campus that was as businesslike and understated as the man it honored. The first order of business was the DMTRS annual meeting. Once those formalities were over and done it was time for a series of testimonials.
Don Prine characterized Roger as unfailingly patient and organized in the midst of “spirited, bare-fisted negotiations.”
Paul Sloan noted that, given all the overtime Roger logged over the years, he ought to be credited for 75 years of service, not 50; you know, time-and-a-half.
Walt Galvin, in a spirit of marveling at Roger’s attention to detail, recalled how Roger came knocking at his door to ask for his parking card at what’s now Central Campus. After all, Walt was being transferred and wouldn’t need it any longer.
“When we were negotiating contracts and Roger and Don (Prine) were across the table, cheek by jowl,” Galvin told the small crowd, “Don did most of the talking but I always knew that Roger was doing the thinking.”
But the most telling anecdote was shared by Donna Britt who started with DMPS in 1975 when she was 21 and currently teaches first grade at Jackson Elementary.
“My father had started with the district in 1942 at old Washington Irving Junior High,” she said. “He died very suddenly of a heart attack just as I was starting out and I will never forget Roger coming to our house personally to help my mother deal with all the things she was unprepared for and didn’t understand. Thank you, Roger.”
That fiduciary house call wasn’t an isolated case. It wasn’t long ago that Roger was notified by the bank that handles DMTRS accounts about a member who hadn’t been cashing her pension checks. He went to the woman’s home and discovered that she is a shut-in in her nineties. So Roger arranged direct deposit of her DMTRS checks for her and while at that he noticed that she was working on her taxes using forms several years out of date. So he prepared her taxes for her, too.
Yes, a lot has changed since Roger Hudson started working here in 1965. Just about everything except Roger Hudson.
