Hazel Murray

December 5, 2015

Columbia Street, Hudson, NY

Interviewer: 

Alanna Medlock

Alanna Medlock
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Summary

This interview was conducted with Hazel Murray at her home on Columbia Street in Hudson, where she has lived for almost 60 years. In the interview she talks about how she came to Hudson as a single woman from Charleston, South Carolina in her late 30s and got a job teaching cooking at the New York Training School for Girls where she worked for 37 years. She discusses meeting her husband there, and an injury that forced her to leave the job and fight the state to get disability benefits. She describes Hudson as a quiet town, and talks about her family, her pets and the homes she and her husband owned as landlords. She describes her busy catering business, Hazel’s Kitchen, providing meals for street fairs, weddings and other events, and her time singing with the choir and helping in the kitchen of Shiloh Baptist Church, where she has been a member of the congregation since her arrival in Hudson. She also comments on how her life in Hudson is different now that many of her friends have died, she doesn’t know most of her neighbors, and she is no longer able to work.

Interviewer Bio:

Alanna Medlock

Alanna Medlock was born in New Haven, CT in 1971 and raised in Chicago, IL. After spending college and her early 20s in Philadelphia, and a year in London, she lived in New York City for 15 years and moved to the Hudson Valley in 2011. She has a background as a theater actor and copy editor, and has been learning about audio production and editing. She studied Oral History & Radio at Oral History Winter School in Hudson and has volunteered for Wave Farm’s transmission arts residency program in Greene County and community radio station, WGXC. She is interested in improving her interviewing skills and exploring ways oral history can be incorporated into narrative & documentary performance and radio stories.

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