The endowed scholarship supports nursing students from Chicago Public Schools.
Walter (Bud) Hodgkinson C’48’s first date with his beloved late wife, Audrey, involved a submarine.
Specifically, the German U-505 submarine on display at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, which was being moved from Lake Michigan to the South Side museum one chilly spring day in 1954.
“We met at a sunrise service at Isaacson Chapel,” he recalled. “And afterward, I asked her if she wanted to go watch the sub cross Lake Shore Drive. And she said ‘Sure.’”
It was just the beginning of a whirlwind romance that spanned more than 65 years. To honor his late wife, Bud and his family have endowed North Park with the Audrey G. Hodgkinson Endowed Nursing Scholarship, to be awarded annually to a nursing student who enrolls from a Chicago Public School. The fund has increased more than 2.5 times the $25,000 minimum needed to endow a scholarship. Audrey, who graduated with a nursing degree, and worked on the first open heart surgery at Swedish Covenant Hospital in the late 1950s, loved being a nurse and seeing others pursue the career.
One of the greatest parts of Audrey’s legacy, Bud said, was her advocacy for teenage mothers. She helped establish a day care for single mothers at Ravenswood Covenant Church, where Bud and Audrey worshipped (Bud has been a member for 93 years), so the young women could attend high school.
Audrey and Bud got engaged after just four months of dating, when Audrey’s roommate moved out and she suddenly found herself without an apartment.
“I said, ‘well, we might as well just get married then, and you can live with me,’” Bud said. “And she said ‘yes.’”
Audrey and Bud went on to lead a life of service to God, with Audrey serving as a nurse at Covenant Harbor Bible Camp and on the Women’s Board of Swedish Covenant Hospital. Along the way, they had three children, Lisa C’ 78, Donald C’83, and Philip; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.