C.W. Hudgins was 5½ years old in the summer of 1950, playing barefoot at his grandfather’s house in Mathews County, when “suddenly I couldn’t walk.”

The family went into a panic, naturally, and everyone suspected tetanus, and he got a shot; but other relatives said C.W. should be taken to the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. He was examined there, and “they diagnosed me with polio.”

Polio, also called infantile paralysis, was a dreaded disease for generations, and in 1950, a vaccine had not yet been developed. Some children ended up completely paralyzed, some partially paralyzed, and some affected for the rest of their lives.

“The whole family went ballistic and I was scared too,” Hudgins recalled. His uncle Coles Hudgins linked the family with Dr. Lee Sutton, a Richmond pediatrician, who treated young C.W.

“They put me in a ward with about 25 children and about 10 of them, mostly girls, were in iron lungs. They could talk, and they could eat, and they had a mirror to see, but they couldn’t move,” said Hudgins. He asked Dr. Sutton if he could end up in an iron lung and the doctor was honest with him—the answer was yes. He told his young patient—who had started driving a tractor on the family farm that year—that his recovery depended on his immune system and his attitude.

The reality of his disease was frightening. C.W. had daily treatments of hot water soaks and placement of hot pads, much like heating pads, on his legs, but he still couldn’t walk.

His family visited, but could only see him through the thick wire-reinforced glass on the door because he was still contagious. Tears were shed on both sides of the glass.

Hudgins said he was a spoiled child, and the family brought him toy tractors purchased at the L.M. Callis & Son store on Main Street in Mathews. He had so many that the MCV staff distributed them to the “pitiful kids that had nothing,” a bittersweet memory. “They were the only joy I had,” he recalled.

Confined to bed, young C.W. drew on his childhood experiences in Sunday school at St. Paul Methodist Church in Susan, and decided to pray, remembering, he said, that to pray he had to approach through Jesus.

He could roll over, but could not pull himself up on his knees. He uttered a simple prayer: “God, I know you are real. I’ve lived a wonderful life. If you get me out of this, one of these days I will serve you.”

About two weeks later, and after a month of treatment and improvement in the hospital, “they said it was gone and I could go home,” Hudgins recalled. “I was okay, not contagious. They said my legs might be weak. My left leg is weak to this day.”

But he was home and getting on with his life. The polio chapter was over, but that experience and another strong childhood memory influenced the years to come.

A love story

Hudgins says frankly that he “did all kinds of stuff” in the years that followed, especially in his teenage years, driving, drinking, racing, and wrecking cars. “My dad gave me some advice … drive on up the road and search out a very, very nice girl.”

He digresses into the memory of a Tom Thumb wedding at New Point School when he was eight years old, cast as father of the bride “because I always looked older.” Five-year-old Mary Alice Armistead was cast as a bridesmaid. “I saw her and thought she was beautiful, with her brown eyes. She said ‘Come here, boy,’ and I said ‘Me?’ and she said ‘yes’ and pulled me behind the curtain and kissed me on the cheek.”

He went home, told his mother about it, learned that Mary Alice came from a fine family, and, “I said when I grow up, I’m going to marry that little girl.”

So as a teen, in his new 1964 black two-door Ford Galaxie with a red interior, young C.W. was considering his father’s advice and “driving real slow. I will never forget it.” He saw Jeannie Hudgins pulling into Mary Alice Armistead’s driveway, Mary Alice getting out in a bikini (they had been to the beach) and walking to the porch, where her mother was waiting. He pulled in, asked Mary Alice out, agreed to go to church with her that night, and they were married three years later.

Hudgins continued to love fast cars and fast boats and parties, and his wife stuck by him with “unconditional love. She prayed for me for 20 years.” One day in 1988 they were driving up I-95, C.W. smoking, going 70 mph on cruise control, and Mary Alice put in a tape of a preacher. That was a fateful choice.

“All of a sudden he got to the sinner’s prayer,” he said. “Something happened to me. I said it too, and started crying, and accepted the Lord” and began to serve God, as he had promised so many years ago as a polio patient on the children’s ward at MCV.

He threw the pack of cigarettes out of the window and “from that point on I have really tried” to be the person that God expects him to be. He said he is happy to tell this part of his life story as “it might help some wild guy settle down” and is happy to tell about his frightening experience with polio 70 years ago as it might help someone now facing the fears and uncertainties of a diagnosis of COVID-19.