Services for Colonel Russell O. Fudge, age 100, of Brownwood, will be held Saturday February 19 at 10 am at the First Baptist Church, with Commander (CH) Looby officiating. Family will receive friends and family from 6-7 p.m. February 18, 2011 at Davis-Morris Funeral Home. Internment will follow at Wichita Falls.
He died in Brownwood, February 15, 2011.
Colonel Fudge was born on December 22, 1910 in Sulphur, Oklahoma and married Betty Ann Morrison in Wichita Falls in 1936. He had lived in Brownwood since 1962 and was a member of the First Baptist Church.
Colonel Fudge was the first director and the creator of the academic curricula of the Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom of Howard Payne University. His work in establishing the Academy’s honors program in the social sciences and in originating and conducting the Academy’s Traveling Seminars to colonial America and to Europe earned two honor medals from Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.
He was the general chairman of the 1976 American Revolution Bicentennial Committee of Brown County and was instrumental in securing Bicentennial national recognition and the Bicentennial flags for both the city of Brownwood and for Howard Payne University. He was the 1971 grand marshall for the Brown County Rodeo.
Colonel Fudge was a U.S. Regular army officer who retired in the grade of full colonel of infantry in 1962. During World War II he saw action in the Pacific Theatre, eventually becoming Chief of Staff and Military Governor of the island of Anguar in the Palau Group. He was the senior army officer to negotiate the Japanese surrender of the Bonin Islands. He was a member of the first staff of the post-war Secretary of Defense and twice was assigned to the Army General Staff in the Pentagon. He was the commander of the first American military advisory team to the Turkish Army stationed on the Russian frontier, and he also served overseas on theater staffs in Hawaii and Japan. At one time he commanded Combat Command “B” of the 4th Armored Division at Fort Hood. At retirement he was the chief of the International Relations Division of the faculty of the U.S. Army War College. During his service he earned two Bronze Star medals; three Army Commendation medals and an Air Force Commendation medal.
Colonel Fudge was a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Infantry School, the Command and General Staff College, the Overseas Staff Officers’ Course, and the U.S. Army War College. He served on the faculties of the U.S. Armored School, the U.S. Army War College, and the Tokyo branch of the University of Maryland.
He was a graduate of Forest High in Dallas, of Wichita Falls Junior College, of the University of Missouri, and of George Washington University in Washington, D.C. In 1980 at the 50th reunion of his class he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Ex-Students Association of Midwestern State University.
At the age of 85, Colonel Fudge retired for the second time as emeritus professor of political science from Howard Payne University where he held the Carr P. Collins, Jr. chair of international politics. He had been awarded the Freedom Medal in 1965 from the Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom, and in 1986 he received Howard Payne’s Medal of Service.
Colonel Fudge was a popular and state wide after-dinner speaker on foreign affairs. He had traveled in over thirty countries. A member of numerous professional military, social science, and journalistic fraternities and associations, he was a prolific writer for military journals. He authored booklets on the Foreign Policy Process, the Nation-State System, the official Pocket Guide to Turkey, and the Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom. At age 92 he completed a four volume autobiographical social history covering the eight decades of the nation’s growth to Super Power: Another Civilian Soldier—Anguar to Chichi Jima; Another Civilian Soldier Book Two—The Cold War; Another Civilian Soldier Book Three—Retirement and the Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom; and Another Civilian Soldier Book Four—Prologue—The Greatest Generation.
Colonel Fudge is preceded in death by his mother, Ruth Holloway of Wichita Falls, daughters Wilma Lynn and Ruth Bernice and wife of 41 years, Betty Ann. He is survived by a son, Staff Sergeant John D. Fudge, USAR, retired and his wife Shirley; daughter Ann Fudge of Ft. Worth; daughter Major Jane Masters, USAR, retired and her husband Lt. Colonel James Masters, USA, retired; grandson Jason Rinehart and his two children; grand daughters Jan Masters and Jennifer Brown and her husband Army Specialist William Brown, now stationed in Ft. Hood.
The family request that in lieu of floral memorials the memorial be sent to Howard Payne University for the Colonel Russell Fudge Academy Scholarship Fund.
