Gertrude Theresa “Trudy” Hodges was fair-skinned, and her hair was mostly straight, so sometimes her patients would mistake her for Italian.

She always quickly corrected them, even though it meant some then refused to let her care for them. She was proud to be a Black woman, proud to be a Black nurse and proud to serve her community. She lived by the motto: “To whom much is given, much is expected,” said her daughter, Lisa Hodges-Hiken. “You have a duty to take care of others.”

Nursing was in Hodges’ blood. She was named after two of her aunts, both nurses, and decided at a young age to go into the field. She set her sights on Johns Hopkins University, which had the best nursing program. And when her high school counselor told her she didn’t think the university accepted “colored students,” Hodges wrote a personal letter to them to find out for herself.

The counselor, thankfully, was wrong. In 1959, Hodges became the first Black graduate of Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses.

“At every step of the way, there was racism that she encountered, but she just didn’t let it be a barrier and never thought that it would be the reason why she wouldn’t achieve something,” her daughter said.

Indeed, Hodges lived a full and accomplished life in her 88 years. The supportive mother and grandmother died March 28 of stroke complications.

Hodges was born Aug. 3, 1936, to James and Elizabeth Jones. The youngest of four children was raised on a farm in upstate New York in the years following the Great Depression. The experience gave her a “different sense of purpose,” her daughter said, and she learned to work hard and rely on herself. She knew how to drive a tractor. Later, she worked summers at a resort in the Catskill Mountains.

Hodges’ mother was insistent that her children take education seriously, and she would often bring home library books for them to read. Still, Hodges faced some difficulty in school, later telling her own children that teachers underestimated her and declined to put her in advanced sections. She and her siblings were taught in a one-room schoolhouse until high school, and they grew up attending the Hamptonburgh Presbyterian Church.

Her largest inspiration came from her aunts, but Hodges’ faith was also a big factor in her decision to become a nurse. She took seriously the religion’s lessons of helping others and offering grace where possible.

She went off to Hopkins in the mid-1950s, trading acres of open land for city life in Baltimore. It was a big shift and “completely unknown territory,” her daughter said, but Hodges wanted to learn from the best institution in the country. She had the same curriculum and assignments as her white classmates, though she was sometimes excluded from social events.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. There weren’t many Black families in upstate New York, either. She found ways to keep herself busy and happy, her daughter said, and had the enduring support of her family. Her oldest brother regularly sent her money.

“Books were her companions,” Hodges-Hiken said. “She read so much and was an academic at heart.”

After graduating from nursing school, Hodges stayed at Hopkins to launch her teaching career. She then went off to Columbia Teachers College in New York and earned a master’s degree in nursing from New York University before coming back to Baltimore to teach at St. Agnes Hospital.

She worked in many hospitals across Baltimore throughout her career, including Provident, Bon Secours and Mercy. She also later worked at the Community College of Baltimore, rising from faculty member to associate professor to nursing department chair within six years. Bon Secours was a particularly fruitful assignment, because it’s where she met her husband, James Hodges Jr., who was working in the pharmacy.

The couple met through a mutual friend. They shared an experience of breaking barriers — James Hodges was also the first Black graduate of the University of Maryland’s pharmacy school. They went on coffee dates, fell hard for each other and married in a courthouse.

James Hodges had a son of the same name from a previous relationship, whom Trudy Hodges treated as her own. The couple later welcomed two additional children, Lisa and Victor.

“They acted as a team,” Victor Hodges said. “So whatever one was going through, they discussed it, and then they came up with a solution together, and then it was enacted. That made it tough for us as kids, because if we got in trouble, we got in trouble by both really quickly.”

The children grew up in a loving household, and their parents always encouraged them to try new experiences and do their best. Victor dabbled in gymnastics, and Lisa took art classes. Trudy Hodges often took her kids to educational and cultural events in the area, especially those about Black history.

“I think her hobby, really, was watching us grow and do things,” Victor Hodges said.

She was also a trusted adviser to her children, because “she would tell you the truth about what she thought … but she would be kind enough,” her son said. “So it wasn’t like, ‘You’re totally wrong,’ but, ‘Let’s rethink what you’re doing.’”

Hodges retired in 1997, and a year later, her husband died. Afterward, she volunteered with the Parent and Community Advisory Board through Baltimore City Public Schools and the Dunbar High School nursing program. In 2009, she received a distinguished alumna award from Johns Hopkins, and she was a longtime member of the nursing honors sorority Chi Eta Phi.

In her personal life, Hodges loved spending time with friends and laughing with her family, even when, sometimes, it was at her expense. Hodges had a somewhat unfortunate reputation for occasionally setting accidental fires. Her daughter chuckled when recalling the time Trudy Hodges unknowingly bought trick candles for her mother’s 90th birthday and nearly set a table on fire at her nursing home trying to put them out.

Hodges enjoyed making Sunday dinners for her family, and, when she had grandchildren, continued the tradition of visiting museums and other educational institutions. She once took her granddaughters to a tea house to learn proper etiquette. Another time, she brought the grandkids to Gettysburg National Military Park.

She also loved traveling across the world, including to France and Ghana.

In all contexts, Trudy Hodges “was someone who persevered, who really just took life’s obstacles and just overcame them without bitterness,” her daughter said.

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