Thomas Lawrence Hudgins

Thomas Lawrence Hudgins, 80, passed away peacefully Wednesday 10 June in Winston-Salem.

Tom was born 29 August 1945 in McAdams, MS to the late Brian Melvin Hudgins and Hazel Wilkerson Hudgins. He was also preceded in death by his first wife Sandra Kay Sander and wife Mary Ruth Walker Hudgins, and his siblings Robert Hudgins, Dorcas Sinclair, Lois Best, Joe Melvin Hudgins and Lucille Anthony. He is survived by his sister Esther Hendrick of Harlingen, TX, his children Thomas Clifford Hudgins (Kathy) of Roaring Gap, Darren Lynn Hudgins of High Point, and Leslie Dana Hudgins of Winston-Salem, and his grandchildren Thomas Derek Hudgins of Baltimore, MD and Julia Katherine Hudgins of Atlanta, GA.

Tom grew up on a cotton farm in Mississippi, where he managed the team horses and drove the field truck from when he was eight years old. In second grade he found fishing preferable to school and hid his fishing pole near the bus stop so he could slip away to the river rather than to class, but his teacher was also his aunt and she quickly put a stop to that.

The family moved to Gastonia, NC during his teen years after fire destroyed the family home and half of that year's crop. He married Sandy at age 17 while still in high school. After an explosion in a textile dye room blew him through an open door into the hallway, he decided he'd had enough of cotton and cotton mills and apprenticed at a local machine shop. Only then did he realize that he had a gift for math, tooling design and machine manufacturing. He was soon hired by AMP, Incorporated as a tool and die maker and worked there for the next 29 years, despite being recruited heavily by other manufacturers in the Gastonia/Charlotte area.

He was granted the title of manufacturing engineer and transferred to Winston-Salem in 1982 to work in AMP's facilities in the Triad area. While there he built a tire business from scratch on the side, and then took early retirement to focus the remainder of his working days there, finally selling the business and retiring for good in 2020.

While cotton nearly killed him, it taught him the value of hard work and dedication, which allowed him to rise up from poverty and provide opportunity and good lives for his family.

Thanks in part to his mother's influence (who was the daughter of a Baptist preacher) he was a man of deep faith and lived his life accordingly. After his divorce, he met Mary, also a preacher's daughter from Grayson County, VA and married her in 1996. He will be buried beside her at her home church in Independence.

Graveside services to honor the life of Tom will be held at 11:00 am Tuesday, June 16th, 2026 at Rock Creek Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery, 1105 Rock Creek Rd., Independence, VA 24348.

Thomas Family Funeral Service is honored to be serving the Hudgins family. If you wish, online tributes may be extended to the family at www.thomasfamilyfs.com.

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