Part of what makes a company like Frontier Airlines a good corporate neighbor is its willingness to encourage employees to volunteer in their respective communities. As Frontier’s senior director of sales, marketing and corporate communications, Andrew Hudson has contributed personal leadership – and steered corporate dollars – to such worthwhile causes as Hospice of Metro Denver, Samaritan House, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, radio station KUVO, Concerts for Kids, and Volunteers of America.
Frontier made seats available to evacuate individuals displaced by Hurricane Katrina, but Hudson worked on his own when he co-founded Rocky Mountain Relief, which provides financial assistance, health care, job placement and training for Katrina evacuees, and helped 50 of the survivors relocate to Denver. He also spearheaded local efforts to raise money to help residents of Chennai, India, recover from the tsunami that ravaged much of southeast Asia in 2004. Chennai has been a Denver sister city since 1984.
For these efforts and others, Denver Sister Cities International gave Hudson its Friendship Award, presented bi-annually to one who “has demonstrated great compassion and humanity in both the local and international community.”
The award was presented by the 2002 recipient, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb – Hudson was Webb’s press secretary for eight years – at A Night in Vieux Carre, a dinner chaired by Robyn and Mike Dino, Heather and Mike Miller and Wendy and Steve Weil, at the Walnut Foundry. It featured a New Orleans-style buffet and music by Mistura Fina, a jazz band in which Hudson plays bass.
The 270 well-wishers included tribute committee members Robin and Cole Finegan, Christie and Walter Isenberg, and Megan and Mariner Kemper; Wilma Webb; CBS4 anchorwoman Molly Hughes, the dinner’s emcee; Sister Cities president Dan Sundaresan; Beryl Brasch; Esther Luben; Mary Lee Chin and hubby Jim Wagenlander; Polly Cox; Meg Armstrong; John Imbergamo; Michael and Molly Frank; Anita Becky; Terry and Dr. John Biddinger; Rosy Griffiths; Gretchen Bunn; Susan Kiely; Don Bain and Liz Orr; Colleen Colarelli, president and CEO of Girls, Inc. of Metro Denver; newly engaged Wendy Aiello and CBS4 GM Walt DeHaven; Roz Duman of the Colorado Coalition for Genocide Awareness; Volunteers of America honchos Dianna Kunz and Jim White; Paul Jacobson, vice president of Adelphia Communications; Denver City Councilwomen Elbra Wegeworth and Marcia Johnson; and such Denver Sister Cities board members as Nancy Blevins, Caroline Corkey, Linda Dee, Gayle Stallings, Tom Migaki and Jamie Torres.
Society editor Joanne Davidson can be reached at 303-809-1314 or jmdpost@aol.com.
More online: Additional pictures from A Night in Vieux Carre denverpost.com/society.
