Fred Hudson was one of 31 to graduate at the third Commencement from The Loomis Institute in 1920. More than 100 years later, at the 108th Commencement in 2024, his great-grandson, Alexander Hudson Lydecker, received his own diploma. In between were Alexander’s mom, Elizabeth “Libby” Hudson ’90, and Elizabeth’s father, Howard Hudson ’55, and uncle, Fred Hudson Jr. ’47.  

Four generations.  

“Loomis has been such a blessing for our family,” Elizabeth said by phone from California recently. “Loomis is a big part of who we are in the Hudson family, is a source of pride, and we have great love and affection for the Island.”  

Elizabeth had come back to the Island in June for her 35th reunion, taking part in the various activities and helping lead a yoga session with Cory Wickwire Halaby ’90 and Larry Milburn ’90. She is a certified transformational life coach and a Kriya yoga and meditation teacher.  

“I’m still very connected to my classmates,” Elizabeth said. And to the school. She remembers “family-style dinners in the dining hall, the beauty of the campus in different seasons, socializing in the quad, and playing sports.”  

Elizabeth was a swimmer, and she was searching for a strong program when she looked at boarding schools. “My dad wanted me to make my own decision,” she said. The choice came down to Loomis Chaffee or the Peddie School in New Jersey. “I visited Loomis Chaffee and fell in love with it,” she remembered. “My father was happy I chose it on my own accord.”  

Loomis had back-to-back undefeated seasons and won two New England girls swimming titles in a row when Elizabeth was a junior and senior. She also was a captain of the coed, predominantly male water polo team as a senior. She seemingly got her sports genes from her grandfather and father.   

Fred Sr. lettered in baseball, basketball, and football, and he hit .346 in baseball his senior season. Howard lettered in football as a junior and senior and in baseball as a senior, when the team went 21-1. He received the Evelyn Longman Batchelder Art Prize at commencement in 1955. He then attended Princeton University, where he majored in sociology and economics, played varsity football, and graduated with cum laude honors in 1959. “While at Princeton,” noted his obituary in 2024, “he met professor Joe Brown who became his mentor, first in boxing and then in sculpting, a pursuit he followed avidly the rest of his life.” Brown was a renowned sports sculptor. Howard’s work was modeled in clay and then he cast the piece in bronze, according to the obituary. 

 

“He was able to immerse himself in that work when he retired [as a bond portfolio manager], and I think people were blown away by how talented he was,” Elizabeth said. “He really loved it, and it was so nice to get to see him live out that part of himself and get recognition for it.”  

A copy of Howard’s work, “Warrior Game,” is exhibited in Princeton’s lacrosse facility and called “the Cookie” in honor of his friend, lacrosse Hall of Fame member “Cookie” Krongard.  

Elizabeth gravitated toward the performing arts after high school, spending the better part of two decades as an actor. She had concentrated on sports but did a one-act play in the spring of her senior year at Loomis Chaffee. “One of my dormmates said, ‘There is a casting director coming to campus. Do you want to meet them?’ So kind of on a whim I said I’ll go,” Elizabeth said. “I sat down with [the casting director], and she said, ‘You’re exactly what we’re looking for. We want you to audition.’” In the fall of her freshman year at the University of Vermont she was flown to Paramount Studios in California, “screen testing with Matt Damon and Chris O’Donnell and other young actors from the East Coast, and that was the start of my acting career.”  

The screen test was for the 1992 movie School Ties, which was about antisemitism at a 1950s boarding school and starred Damon, O’Donnell, Ben Affleck, and Brendan Fraser. Elizabeth did not get the part in the film and went back to the University of Vermont, from which she graduated in 1994. She did get a number of roles in the 2000s, from TV shows such as Scrubs and Las Vegas to films such as Moving Targets and Hanging Up.  

When Alexander, who goes by Zander, was born in 2005, Elizabeth decided to quit acting. Daughter Thira was born two years later. “I enjoyed acting,” Elizabeth said, “and it certainly was challenging. I came close to some very big roles but ultimately did not get them, which would have changed the course of my career. At one point I was told I had a big part opposite Robert Downey Jr. and celebrated all weekend, and then found out on Monday, ‘Sorry, we gave it to someone else.’ So I had those moments of elation and devastation, which is part of the game. It's gambling in a lot of ways because there are such low odds of ultimate success. I enjoyed it. It challenged me to be brave. It challenged me to get past my comfort zone. Once my son was born, I realized I didn’t want to do it anymore. I wanted to be present.”  

Zander is a sophomore at Northeastern University. He is coming off a summer marketing internship in Dubai for The First Group, a hospitality real estate developer.  

After leaving acting, Elizabeth moved to what she described as the “healing arts,” beginning training as a teacher of yoga and meditation and becoming a spiritual life coach, retreat leader, guest speaker, and host of a podcast, Sacred Alchemy with Elizabeth Hudson. 

The role of spiritual life coach is fulfilling, she said. She said her clients are in a place “where they want to shift or grow from the connection to whatever your relationship is with a higher power. It is not specifically religious; it is more spiritual. I can work with any faith-based ideology, but ideally it is coming into that connection through such things as breath work and chanting mantras and different meditation techniques and using that as a tool for coaching and helping people transform into the vision they hold for themselves.”   

Part of her vision for herself was developed at Loomis Chaffee. “A lot of what I studied at Loomis Chaffee was enormously transformative in terms of my philosophy, and I credit the school for much of the person I am.”  

She mentioned Dom Failla, who taught for 32 years in the Philosophy, Psychology and Religion Department, and she recalled in particular Dom’s Seminar on Freud and Jung. Elizabeth also said Ruthanne Marchetti, who was a dean of students, helped her “hold a broader vision for my life.”   

Although she is no longer an actor, Elizabeth has hosted the Satellite Awards show for film and television on behalf of the International Press Academy the past few years. When she was acting, she had presented on the show. She was asked to emcee the event in 2022.    

“I’ve always been big on when something scares me, I have to lean into it,” Elizabeth said.  

Lean in, she did.  “One of my biggest compliments was when Rhea Pearlman said to me, ‘Honey, you did such a good job.’ I don’t know if I could get better praise than from Carla on Cheers. That’s a tough audience.”