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The Adams County legal community gave well-deserved and overdue honors to former Adams County and Youth Court Judge John N. “Johnny” Hudson last week.

They installed Hudson’s official portrait, taken in 2009, next to that of long-time former county judge, the late Robert A. Bonds, in the county courtroom of the courthouse.

Hudson is credited with developing and modernizing the youth court here and elsewhere in Mississippi into one that better serves the state’s children. He and his staff led the way in creating and implementing programs, like the adolescent offender program and CASA, the child-advocate program, which have in leaps and bounds improved the lives of Adams County and Natchez children and worked to improve families and keep them together.

In fact, attorneys and judges gathered in the courthouse last week said the Juvenile Detention Center and the Youth Court facility, located at the corner of State and South Pearl Streets, came about because of the dogged determination of Hudson.

While Hudson is retired from that job, he was appointed by the Mississippi Supreme Court to be its Jurist in Residence. He acts as the liaison between the state’s highest court and the youth court judges and referees in all of the state’s 82 counties.

Members of the state’s Supreme Court called Hudson a leader and innovator of youth court reform in Mississippi. On a state level, they said he played a significant role in he expansion of community services to meet the educational, emotional and physical needs of delinquent, abused and neglected children in the community and in the juvenile justice system.

Let us add our thanks, too, to Hudson, for the work he has done to better the lives of our children and their families.