Mary Ellen Henderson

Mrs. Henderson starts by talking about job sources in Hudson which have disappeared including places where she worked such as the Pocketbook Factory, Mount Merino Resort, NYS Training School for Girls, the Hudson School District and more recently the Hudson Public Library and the Parents in Partnership program that she helped start in the Hudson School District. She describes her her role in transferring the girls at the NYS Training School for Juvenile Delinquent Girls (now the Minimum Security Prison), and tells stories about different aspects of life there for the inmates.

She also tells about several entrepreneurial activities she undertook with her husband including BagelBurgers, a food truck in her traveling motorhome, a cafe on Front Street, and a fish fry in their barber shop on Columbia Street. She lists businesses on Warren Street in the 1950s and 60s and recalls when Harry Belafonte and Shelly Winters came to town during that time to be in the movie, Odds Against Tomorrow. She relates how residents served as extras in the film and some ways the cast interacted with the residents. A theme of communication, community activity and caring runs through her narrative as she tells about various ways she has interacted with and advocated for people.