Jim Hudson is the “webmaster” for both St. Mary’s Parish website and St. Mary’s School website. The websites are Jim’s main hobby, and also two of the ways that he gives his ``time and talent’’ back to the Lord. Jim and his wife, Sandy (a first grade teacher at St. Mary’s School) have lived in Shrewsbury since 1977. They joined St. Mary’s Parish in 1983 when Jim converted to Catholicism and their daughter Sarah was baptized. Both Sarah and their son Jeff attended St. Mary’s School before going on to Catholic high schools and then college.
Jim grew up in Los Angeles and Denver, but came east in 1970 to attend MIT – he graduated in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. He has worked for various computer software vendors here in Massachusetts over the years, as part of teams that have built database management systems, source-code control systems, and most recently a dataanalysis and application prototyping system. As Jim says: “‘computing’ has evolved completely since I got into the business – back then I used punch-cards and paper-tape to create my programs and the computer occupied an entire floor of a large building.” These days, Jim’s job has him designing enhancements to a large Windows/UNIX application, and managing a team of developers located in Yerevan, Armenia.
Jim (Santa Claus) Hudson and wife Sandy (Mrs. Claus?) spread some cheer.
Jim and Sandy have been actively involved in St. Mary’s School since Sarah began as a first grader in 1989. Jim did a term on the School Advisory Board, and was then treasurer of the Parents’ Association for four years. In 1993, the School Advisory Board formed a ``Technology Working Group’’ as part of the strategic planning process, headed by Jim. He continued to work on the “Technology Committee” as it became known, from 1994 to 2005. During that time, the level of technology in the school rose dramatically – from a few individual computers to the present situation: over 80 computers in the school, all networked and Internet-ready, a ``mobile lab’’ consisting of 32 wireless-network laptops, a Smart- Board, plus TV/VCR/DVD in every room.
When the school got Internet access and its first ``server’’ computer, in 1997, Jim immediately proposed that a website be established. The domain name of the parish, ``stmarysparish.org,’’ was registered in that same year. By 1998, Jim had created two websites: one for the school, and another for the parish at large. Jim has been the primary developer for the parish website (ably assisted, over the years, by other parishioners). From 1998 until 2005, the school website was actually maintained by the St. Mary’s student web team, with Jim as their coach. Jim has been maintaining the school website by himself for the last two years, but hopes to re-build the web team this year.
He said the time is nearing for the next step in the evolution of St. Mary’s websites. ``Once or twice a year, someone within the parish comes up with a great idea for the website, for instance: an online registry that would match parishioners with the needs of the various ministries. However, we’ll have to move our website to a new hosting service to allow us to build that sort of facility. That move, and the new things that we’ll be able to add to the website, are the next steps to be taken,’’ he said.
In the meantime, Jim urges parishioners and school families to take advantage of all the information on their respective websites.
