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Armed with this information, Morley set about to interest others in the problem of mentally retarded children and to dispel the old wives' tales concerning its causes. He first attempted to call forth other parents of mentally retarded children, many of whom kept their youngsters hidden as a result of combined guilt-shame reactions. Some, when approached, even denied having mentally retarded children, while others refused to discuss the matter from acknowledged embarrassment and fear of public ridicule. It was only after Hudson aired the problem publicly, through a newspaper interview, that others decided they, too, would align themselves with him in an effort to work for the betterment of their children.

On Sunday, January 24, 1954, a group of 14 parents met at the home of one couple to seek reassurance from each other and to discuss ways of obtaining help for their children. After six successive Sunday-night meetings at various there were 15 local organizations represented, and applications from eight others were presented for admission to the State group.

The Caddo-Bossier Association was chartered June 26, 1954. Almost from the date of its conception, members of the Association rallied behind Morley Hudson, well known in Shreveport as a successful businessman, as the natural leader of the group. At first a member of the board of directors, he later served as executive director of the Association. All his work has been done on a voluntary basis and without thought of remuneration.

From the start, Hudson leaned heavily upon his fellow Rotarians for assistance in obtaining a place in the sun for mentally retarded children. Harry A. Johnson, Jr., an attorney, prepared the charter for the State organization and set up its constitution and by-laws. He and another Rotarian, the Reverend John J. Rasmussen, a clergyman, served on the initial board of directors.

Doug Attaway, Jr., and George Shannon, managing editor and editor, respectively, threw the weight of the Shreveport Journal behind the movement, and stories about mentally retarded children began appearing for the first time in the daily newspaper. Fellow Rotarian Charles A. Hazen, managing editor of Shreveport's other daily, the Times, also lent support to the Association through its columns.

Rotarians Tom McElroy, E. Newton Wray, and T. B. Langford lent the facilities of their motion-picture, television, and radio firms, respectively, in support of the movement. Residents of Caddo and Bossier Parishes, long accustomed to a hush-hush attitude toward those who were "not quite right," began receiving matter-of-fact information on the subject of mental retardation from all news-disseminating mediums.

By September of that first year, Rotarian Hudson had prevailed upon the Caddo Parish School Board to open three special classes in the public schools for white mentally retarded children and two classes for Negro youngsters. Heretofore, there had been no facilities for the training and education of these children save in private homes, which few of the parents could afford.

Hudson appeared before civic, fraternal, church, and social groups at every opportunity to explain the aims of the Association and to plead for assistance. At times he made as many as eight or ten addresses a week on behalf of mentally retarded children. When his commitments became impossibly heavy, Dr. W. L. McLeod, also a clergyman member of the Shreveport Rotary Club, filled in for him on radio, television, and speaker's platform. Dr. McLeod also rallied the clergy behind the movement.

Despite the special classes operating under the school board's jurisdiction, there still remained the problem of those mentally retarded children who either were not educable or who had to receive social training before qualifying for admission to the special classes. Rotarian Hudson decided a workshop for mentally retarded children was the answer to the needs of these youngsters, some 24 of them in Shreveport alone.

However, the organization, still in its infancy, had no funds for the establishment of such a workshop. Hudson, with characteristic directness, went to Jesuit priests of St. John's Catholic Church in Shreveport and placed the problem before them. They offered him the use of an old residence, owned by the church, for establishment of the workshop.

This house was converted into five classrooms and a handicraft shop, with parents of the youngsters doing much of the remodelling work themselves. Rotarians donated equipment and supplies and, where this was impossible, saw to it that the organization received the necessary articles at cost.

Meanwhile, the Most Reverend Charles P. Greco, bishop of the Catholic diocese of Alexandria, became interested in the movement through reports reaching him through the priests of St. John's parish. The bishop and Rotarian Hudson had several long and earnest conferences. Soon Bishop Greco announced plans for the conversion of a lovely old estate in Clarks, Louisiana, into St. Mary's Residential Training School under auspices of the Catholic prelates of the diocese. Lucy Hudson was among the first of the children to be entered in the training school, the first of its kind in Louisiana.