Mark has over 11,000 kids.

Two of whom he lives with.

Like a good father, Mark makes sure they have a safe place to live, are well fed and do well in school.

Mark, or “Mark the Spark” as his parents Edna Mae and Harold, lovingly called him as a child, is better known around Eastern as Mark Hudson, director of Housing and Dining.

Mark’s history with Eastern does not begin, however, in 2001 when he got the call for the job from former Eastern President Lou Hencken, but rather in the spring of 1976 when he spent his first days on campus as a freshman in Weller Hall.

He laughs as he remembers those days.

“I was the same scared ‘Oh my God what am I going to do with myself’ freshmen,” he said.

Mark’s mother, 82-year-old Edna Mae, said her youngest of four, always enjoyed school even before college.

“He’s always been a very busy boy,” she said. “I used to sit and wait for him to come home; he’d always be doing something at the school.”

College was no different for Mark.

At the end of his freshmen year, he applied to be a resident assistant for the following year and received a “No” letter. Frustrated, Mark went to see his hall director, Jean Ritchie.

Ritchie told Mark he needed to get more involved and invited him to the hall meeting that night where Mark took the advice to heart.

Mark ran for hall president and won.

Being involved with hall council and the Residence Hall Association introduced Mark to Henken, director of Housing and Dining at the time.

Mark continued his involvement the following year.

“It was a really fun year,” Mark remembers with a smile.

With a position as hall president and serving as a member of student senate, Mark once again applied to be an RA.

This time Mark made the alternate list, still not achieving the coveted RA position.

A phone call from Hencken

“It was a week before the RA’s were supposed to come back in August when Lou called me. ‘Are you still interested in being an RA?’ he said.”

Mark remembers being so surprised and excited he had to call back and ask which building he was assigned to.

“My first hall director was Keith Kohanzo, Eastern’s former director of Judicial Affairs who retired last year,” Mark said. “He was an awesome mentor, great supervisor and funny guy.”

Mark spent the next three years finishing his undergrad in business and being an RA in Stevenson Hall.

“It was a fabulous experience,” Mark said. “I always think I was within one week of never having been the director of housing here. If I hadn’t gotten the call to be an RA, would I have gone out a third time?”

That phone call from Hencken was to be the first in a series of three with the same purpose.

The next would come in 1981 when Mark, a graduate student of education, was hired as the associate resident director for Weller Hall.

“Lou hired me for all three of my jobs [at Eastern]. He hired me to be an RA, hired me to be a graduate student and he was the vice president of Student Affairs when he hired me to be the director of housing. So I owe a lot to Lou.”

The longest internship ever

Much has changed for Mark since 1983, when he graduated from Eastern.

After graduation Mark found himself at the Oshkosh Placement Exchange in Oshkosh, Wis. then was recruited to the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.

“I was hired as the complex director and began what people like to call the longest internship in history,” Mark said jokingly.

He spent 18 years in Grand Forks working his way up through various administrative positions.

After two years in Grand Forks, Mark was back in Oshkosh interviewing candidates for the complex director position.

That is when he met Donna, a graduate of Missouri Columbia with her masters in psychology.

Mark returned to Grand Forks with a new complex director and, although he didn’t know at the time, his future wife.

“We started dating three weeks after I got there,” said Donna.

“We always say I was her boss for three weeks,” Mark said. “She’s been my boss ever since.”

The third call

“We had kind of been looking for opportunities to come back closer to home,” Donna remembers. “And then Mark got a call.”

Edna Mae, Mark’s 82-year-old mother remembers that time well too.

“I had just had heart surgery and Mark had made the 14-hour trip many times to be by my side,” she said.

She said when he found out he joked to her, “How would you like to have us just a couple hours away?”

“We didn’t want to monopolize his time, but we were very happy to have them close,” Edna Mae said. “He’s so upbeat. He’s such a comfort to have around.”

In summer of 2001, Mark left his associate director of residence services position and headed back to Charleston as the director of Housing and Dinning with his wife and young sons.

Hencken recalls the decision was easy.

“He’s very student oriented and that was obvious when he was an RA. Everything he did when in RHA, as an RA and as a hall director, ect. He was always doing the best for the students and that impressed me.”

Dad

Mark and Donna’s two sons, Danny, 17, and Andy, 12, also have a close relationship with Eastern through their father’s dedication.

“Some weeks Eastern is here,” said Andy. “It just sort of depends what it’s like at Eastern.”

Danny gives an example:

“This last week we were driving to Mattoon and we were going to get something, and we get to the mall and Dad gets a phone call and goes through the whole transaction while talking to this kid about mold on the phone.”

“Off campus!” Mark interrupted. “There is no mold on campus!”

Danny corrected himself, “Yes, he [the kid on the phone] wanted to move to campus because of mold where he was currently living,” Danny said.

Danny will graduate from Charleston High School this spring and having the housing director as a father has made for some enlightening college visits.

“I told my boss Dan (Nadler, vice president for Student Affairs), this is like a field trip.” Mark said. “I took notes!”

Danny said his father knows all the questions to ask. He mocks his father’s voice, “What is your freshmen-sophomore retention rate? Tell us your 3, 4 and 5 year retention rates?”

He remembers at Boys State this summer living in Thomas Hall, there was a picture of Mark up on the wall in the bathrooms.

“Do I want to go to a school where my dad’s picture is in the bathroom?” he jokes.

Donna interrupted her son to share Mark’s most admirable quality.

“You could call Mark up at 3 o’clock in the morning and he could answer the phone and sound like he’s been awake for hours. He’s been doing this for so long, it’s perfect for him. If you need help, at home, at church, wherever, he’s always super willing to assist in whatever needs to be done.”

Director of Housing and Dining Services Mark Hudson plays Crazy Eights with his wife Donna and two sons Andy (left) and Danny at his home Tuesday evening.

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