Longtime auto supply store owner dies

Jim Hudson, part-owner of Hudson’s Auto Supply store along Route 66 in Tucumcari for three decades, died Wednesday.

Riverside Funeral Home in Albuquerque is in charge of arrangements, and he will be buried at Tucumcari Memorial Park cemetery. Arrangements were incomplete as of Monday morning.

His wife and the business’ co-owner, Lynn Hudson, said in a telephone interview Friday that a memorial service will be held in Tucumcari within four to six weeks.

She declined to disclose the cause of his death.

Jim and Lynn Hudson owned the Big A auto parts store in Tucumcari starting in 1989. It became a Carquest store from 1998 to 2014, then a NAPA affiliate after that.

“In the early years, he was there six days a week,” Lynn said. “The last couple of years, we had been trying to semi-retire, and we were there only two to three days a week.”

Lynn confirmed the Tucumcari store is about to be sold to an owner of other NAPA stores.

“The timeline on that I am not 100% sure on, but I believe that will happen,” she said.

As far as hobbies, Lynn said her husband was interested in “anything related to cars,” including building a 1932 Ford hot rod.

“That was his retirement project,” she said.

Jim Hudson was a native of Muskegon, Michigan. He met his future wife, a Tucumcari native, when he was stationed at Cannon Air Force Base.