Since the Hudson High School Wall of Fame was established, the idea has been to recognize graduates who are a credit to the school they attended, whether they left Hudson or stayed right here. This year’s Distinguished Alumni both chose to live and work in the Hudson area, and the community is the richer for it.

Mike Wakeling, Class of 1964

Mike Wakeling thinks his place on the Wall of Fame at Hudson High School just might have caused the late E.P. Rock, the formidable school superintendent at the time, “to turn over in his grave.” But it is also likely that he was smiling while doing it.

Wakeling describes himself back then as “one of those kids on edge — I could have gone either way, but because of Mr. Rock and teachers like Florian Cassutt, Noel Schumacher and my English teacher Elizabeth Gilbertson I got through it and it turned out OK.”

He recalled the night before his graduation when he was writing out the “dagger speech” from Shakespeare’s Macbeth for Gilbertson. Reciting from memory, “Is this the handle I see before me…” Wakeling remembered completing the task in her office and every word of the speech.

He also recalled being physically thrown from the school and suspended by Rock after he was caught using a shot put as a bowling ball in a study hall. Years later, when he was applying to become a member of the sheriff’s department, it was Rock who headed the interview committee. “I thought this could be bad but he just smiled and told me to take a chair and I got the job.”

Wakeling retired in 2005 after 32 years with the sheriff’s department. He joined the department as a jailer and rose through the ranks to become the chief investigator of domestic, child and sexual abuse crimes in the county. He recalled his first serious child abuse case reading a medical report and coming across a term he didn’t recognize.

“I called Willis (Miller, then publisher of the Star-Observer) and asked him what it meant. He told me to hold a minute he would look it up in his medical dictionary. Two days later, he dropped off a medical dictionary for me. He said he paid 50 cents for it at a garage sale and thought I would put it to good use. I still have it.”

During those initial years, Wakeling has seen the role of law enforcement change. In the 1970s, many of the abuse cases were handled by human services as “family matters,” but when the abuse laws changed in the 1980s, the role of officers like Wakeling was more hands-on and the crime of abuse was taken far more seriously by everyone. He believes the mandatory arrest policy in abuse cases is a good thing. “Without it, nothing happened and nothing changed.”

Wakeling said investigating abuse cases, especially in families, is always difficult. “You learn to expect it. Blood is thicker than water. Kids will protect their parents no matter what. You just have to find other avenues to get at the issue with them and help them get help.”

Wakeling estimates that over the years, he was in every school in the county at least once a week on a case of child abuse. He doesn’t keep track of the cases he has handled but some stick out in his memory. Like the young girl around 13 who suffered long-term sexual abuse by her father. She came forward to report him because she feared he would do the same to her 8-year-old sister. When the case was over and the father had been convicted, the girl told Wakeling she wanted to be a lawyer.

“I was pleased but didn’t think too much about it. But about 10 years later here comes an invitation to her law school graduation in the mail. That felt pretty good.”

Another case, that of a young boy who died as a result of abuse, was the one that ended it for Wakeling. “I was at the autopsy of this little kid and when I walked out of there I knew it was enough, that I’d had enough.”

Wakeling has been asked to consult on abuse and other criminal cases but he has no interest in that. He misses many of the people he worked with and being in the know when it comes to what’s going on in the county. “Now, I’m just Joe Blow who has to read about it in the newspaper.”

With him at next week’s award ceremony will be his wife, Bertie, and their children, Shannon Wakeling of Eagan, Minn., and Michael Jr. of Glenwood City, as well as two grandsons.

His advice to HHS students today — “Stay in school. If I hadn’t, I’d be living in a different world. Take advantage of what you can learn from the people there and then make up your mind to give something back.”