Elizabeth Hope Freeman Hudner

Elizabeth Hope Freeman Hudner
Remarks at a Celebration of Her Life

Chas W. Freeman , Jr.
4 June 2016, Little Compton, Rhode Island

I am Chas Freeman, the eldest and most substantial of Hope’s two older brothers.

I would like to thank Mike and Bay Hudner for convening us to celebrate the life of Elizabeth Hope Freeman Hudner, my little sister.

I was at the hospital with a broken leg when Hope popped into the world.  So I was one of the first to meet her.  She was born with the gift of laughter, especially about farts, which she consistently found hilarious.  And from her first moments, she applied a quiet but formidable determination to life.

When Hope was just 20 months old, our mother died.  Although Hope had no chance to get to know her mother, she inherited her artistic talents and aspirations as well as her genius for staging parties.  For his part, our father imparted to Hope his well-tried operating principle that, if something’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.  From her grandmother Freeman, Hope learned how to guide a husband with a strong personality and how to manage a large household.  And from her grandmother Park, she acquired a whimsical appreciation of the spiritual that helped her cope with the tragic death of her brilliant and charming son, Rip, when he was only twenty-three.

Hope was raised by many people, all of whom in their own way loved her.  Her Freeman grandparents stood in as parents at crucial moments of her development.  But Hope was also passed from housekeeper to housekeeper and  to a series of stepmothers, each in her own way unkind, perhaps without meaning to be.  She was sometimes alone but also experienced the casual sadism of same-aged stepsisters.  To our pleasure at the time and our shame now, my brother Robert and I relentlessly exploited Hope’s natural kindness and desire to ingratiate herself with us.  Her childhood was a bit like Cinderella’s, minus the mop, scrub brush, soot, and tattered dress.  Like Cinderella, she was found and saved by a handsome prince – Mike Hudner, though I don’t recall rats or a shoe being involved.

By the time Mike got to know her, Hope had grown from a winsome pixie through a phase in which she was able to impersonate a beach ball.  She had become a stunningly beautiful young woman.  Mike knew a good thing when he saw one.  As someone who was fond of both of them observed at the rehearsal dinner before their wedding.  “Where there’s Hope, there’s Mike, and where there’s Mike, there’s hope.”

The many uncertainties of her childhood made Hope cling to people and things that she could rely upon.  She was fiercely devoted to her husband, her son, and her daughter.  And she collected objects in prodigious quantities.  We all feared that, if we were to be at Hope’s home in an earthquake, we might perish in an avalanche of bric-à-brac.  But my children and grandchildren called her “Glinda,” because, like the Good Witch of the South in the Oz books, she had a habit of turning up at opportune moments with a shower of gifts and party favors that lifted all spirits.

The cruel disease that slowly stripped Hope of her personality revealed the underlying serenity of her nature.  As Hope faded, Mike and Bay kept hope alive.  And Bay showed us all what a daughter should be.  I can never thank Mike and Bay enough, not just for their selfless care of my sister, but also for demonstrating how inspiring true love and devotion can be.

Thank you all.