Adele Pudrowski Hudson, 82, longtime teacher

Adele Pudrowski Hudson, 82, a charismatic teacher in Philadelphia public schools for 45 years, died Saturday of pneumonia at the University Medical Center at Princeton. A former longtime resident of Bensalem, Mrs. Hudson had lived in Meadow Lakes, a retirement community in Hightstown, N.J., for the last three years.

In 1998, when she retired as a science teacher at Hackett Elementary School in Kensington, she was honored with a front-page profile in The Inquirer. A reporter described how she mesmerized 10-year-olds by adding sugar to a gooey substance bubbling over onto her desk for a lesson about yeast.

Mrs. Hudson often took to class her Russian wolfhound, a dog she adopted after finding it with a broken leg and a severe case of malnutrition. "The one thing that I want is that the children who leave this school have a deep respect for life, whether it be a tree or a plant or human being," she said.

An advocate for smaller classes, she said: "Children are children, and they need almost a 1-1 ratio with an adult or caring person."

Mrs. Hudson retired from Hackett 32 years to the day after joining the faculty as a fifth-grade teacher. Previously she was a substitute teacher in the Philadelphia public schools for 13 years while raising two daughters. In the early 1970s she was appointed science coordinator at Hackett.

A native of Fishtown, Mrs. Hudson graduated from John W. Hallahan High School in Philadelphia. After earning a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Chestnut Hill College, she became a chemist at Rohm & Haas.

In 1948 she married Robert G. Hudson. They had met when she had a college summer job at the Philadelphia Zoo. She sold tickets to the pony rides he gave youngsters.

He was a high school dropout, their daughter Angela Klinkner said. His wife encouraged him to earn his GED and a bachelor's degree and a master's degree, and he became a teacher and later a humane-society administrator. In 1983 he retired after 14 years as director of the Women's SPCA in Philadelphia. When he died in 1989, Mrs. Hudson took over his position as vice president of United Humanitarians, an organization dedicated to spaying and neutering pets.

Angela Klinkner said she and her sister had a "wonderful childhood" growing up in their parent's house with a big garden, three or four dogs, seven cats, and a rotating menagerie of smaller mammals.

Klinkner taught with her mother at Hackett Elementary for 25 years. Her sister, Joan Faust Lindenau, is a chemical engineer and a former teacher. Besides her daughters, Mrs. Hudson is survived by five grandchildren.

The funeral will begin at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow at Fitzgerald Sommer Funeral Home, 17 S. Delaware Ave., Yardley. Friends may call at 9:30 a.m. Burial will be in Resurrection Cemetery, Bensalem.

Memorial donations may be made to Cabrini College, Office of Institutional Advancement, 610 King of Prussia Rd., Radnor, Pa. 19087. Mrs. Hudson received an honorary doctor of science degree from Cabrini when she gave the commencement speech there in 1998.