In Memoriam: Dan Udell

The news was shared on Facebook that Dan Udell died earlier this month in a memory care facility in Orlando, Florida. He was 91.

Dan and his wife Mary, who passed away in 2024, lived in Taghkanic but were familiar faces in Hudson. The Udells generously devoted their energy and talent to the community of Hudson. Dan taught videography to students at Hudson High School. Dan and Mary published an annual catalog of summer events and activities called Hudson Is a Summer Festival. For more than a decade, whenever something of interest and significance happened in Hudson, Dan, usually accompanied by Mary, was there to videotape it. His documentation of Hudson in the first two decades of the 21st century survives at udellcommunityaction. In 2017, the Udells were the recipients of the Ellen Award for exceptional public service.

Dan and Mary Udell, with Ellen Thurston, for whom the award was named

Hudson's legislative body, the Common Council was the subject of many of Dan's videos. Before the pandemic and the introduction of hybrid meetings, Dan videotaped every Common Council meeting and posted them on YouTube. He stopped doing this briefly in 2014, in protest over a decision made by the Council. Dan and Mary were great dog lovers, and when, in March 2014, the Council voted to continue the ban on dogs in Henry Hudson Riverfront Park, Mary declared the decision "insane" and left the room. Dan said he was disgusted by the majority opinion of the Council and would no longer volunteer his time to document their proceedings. (Gossips' account of that meeting can be found here.) In time, however, Dan's sense of civic duty overcame his personal outrage, and he returned to documenting Council meetings, which he continued until the pandemic brought a halt to public meetings.

Dan Udell's obituary can be found here. Amusingly, it refers to Columbia County as "Hudson County" and calls the City of Hudson "Hudson Town."

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