Homer E. Dudley 1920-2002

DUDELY, MCFADON, BRUNS

Posted By: Lori Clark (email)
Date: 10/14/2002 at 09:09:52

Homer E. Dudley, age 81 of 5 Glendale Terrace, died, Tuesday, March 12, 2002 at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City following an extended illness.

Memorial services will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 17, 2002 at the Congregational United Church of Christ in Iowa City, with the Reverend Bruce Fischer officiating along with the family’s longtime friend, The Reverend Scott Libbey, of Des Moines. There will be no formal visitation prior to the service, but friends are warmly invited to gather immediately afterwards with Mr. Dudley’s family for an afternoon reception in the Fellowship Hall at the church. Inurnment will be later at Oakland Cemetery, Iowa City. The Gay & Ciha Funeral and Cremation Service of Iowa City are caring for Mr. Dudley’s services and family.

Memorials may be made to Hancher Auditorium (for educational programming), University of Iowa Foundation, Levitt Center for University Advancement, Iowa City, Iowa 52242; or to the Congregational United Church of Christ at 30 N. Clinton St., Iowa City, Iowa 52245.

Mr. Dudley was born July 30, 1920 in Des Moines, to John and Ethel (MacFadon) Dudley. He attended Hanawalt Grade School there and was a 1938 graduate of Roosevelt High School. With a first year of college at Oberlin, he transferred then to Iowa State University from which he ultimately graduated in 1947 with a B.S. Degree in Animal Husbandry-his academic years there having been interrupted by service in the United States Navy. While at ISU, he was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity. As an ensign in the U.S. Navy, he was stationed at the Navy’s Japanese Language School, Oklahoma A. & M. College, Stillwater, Oklahoma, for wartime training as an interpreter.

On May 27, 1945, he married Genevieve “Denny” Bruns Dudley in Davenport, Iowa. Their early years together, wartime through Iowa State graduations, were necessarily transient ones, but in 1949, Mr. Dudley, freshly graduated from ISU, began his agrarelated career, teaching framing practices in Fairfax, MO to returning veterans. With partners, he next established RADCO, a chemical fertilizer business in NW Missouri/SW Iowa. The Dudley children were born during that period: Deborah-1949, Joseph-1952, and John in 1954. In 1956, Mr. Dudley joined Allied Chemical Corp, South Omaha, as sales representative and the family moved to Red Oak, Iowa. He advanced at the Omaha site to regional sales manager, and then was transferred in 1963 to the company’s New York City office where he later became director of sales with broad sales responsibility. With the transfer, the family moved to Summit, NJ, where they remained for 27 years. In 1975, he earned an M.B.A. at Fairleigh Dickenson University, Madison, NJ. And in retirement, he acted as business manager of the Wilson School, Mountain Lakes, NJ.

In August 1990, the Dudley’s retired in Iowa City where Mr. Dudley was active in the Hancher Guild and was a member of the Congregational Church. He was known by friends as a gourmet cook “The Soup King”, as an accomplished cartoonist all of his life, and as an artist, painting portraits of friends and family. Perhaps most of all he was known as boon companion. And a great beach walker.

Mr. Dudley is survived by his wife, Denny; sons, Joseph of Temple, NH, and John and his wife, Carol Dudley of Florham Park, NJ; and grandsons, Ryland and Christopher Page of Sterling, MA.

Homer was preceded in death by his daughter, Deborah Dudley page, his parents, his brothers, John and Joe Dudley, and his sister, Phyllis Maloney.