Life Insurance

He was Scott Hudgens, known best as a private businessman who succeeded in several fields — construction, finance and insurance — and who later developed more malls in Georgia than any other person.

Two of Scott's biggest malls were built in Gwinnett County. He gave the county its first major mall, Gwinnett Place, in 1984. In 1998, he gave it the largest mall in the state, the Mall of Georgia.

He built the first covered mall in Georgia, then known as North DeKalb Mall. His other malls included Oglethorpe Mall in Savannah, and malls in Union City, Valdosta, Brunswick, Avondale Estates, Greenbrier Mall in Atlanta and Town Centre in Cobb County. He also refurbished a mall in Gainesville.

He succeeded in business, but he and his wife gave millions away, and in most instances, he gave it away virtually anonymously — and always cheerfully.

One account sticks in my mind. Returning home from being in the middle of many battles in Europe in a tank recovery company during World War II, Scott got a job at the lumber yard near his home of Union Point.

The economy took off that year and, as Scott said, "We sold a lot of lumber," as people built homes. At Christmas, the lumber yard gave its workers a substantial bonus.

Scott, shopping for relatives and friends, found that he had money left over. As he heard the Salvation Army kettle bell ringing, Scott rolled up a bill and dropped it in the kettle. No doubt in 1946, a Salvation Army worker was shocked to find a $100 bill in the kettle.

"It made me feel good," to have given $100 anonymously, Scott told me later. That set off a career of deliberate, quiet and often anonymous giving.

On another occasion, he sent a friend to south Atlanta's tech school to determine its needs. He didn't want to make a gift to repair the roof, or paint a classroom, but to help people.

His quiet gift to Atlanta Tech helped send teachers back for additional training in modern teaching techniques and provided scholarships for "C" students.

Another time, he asked several acquaintances to figure out independently what Gwinnett County needed in the way of facilities. Amazingly, he got the same answers from more than one person: more for the young and for the aged.

Out of this, led by major gifts from Mr. Hudgens, grew the Gwinnett Children's Shelter and the Peachtree Christian Hospice. Today these two institutions are thriving, thanks to Scott's upfront generosity.

Yet, more than anything else, I miss the slow, casual way of hearing Scott talk, exploring first one idea, then another, or recalling times past. He had an enormously full life.

Scott was able to think well into the future, into people's shopping patterns, and from these projections was an amazing financial success. Through it all, however, he remained the same Scott Hudgens, who made money, then found creative ways to give it away.

• Elliott Brack is publisher of the Brack Group, which produces GeorgiaClips, an e-mailed digest of significant Georgia news, www.georgiaclips.com, and GwinnettForum, a moderated, online community forum, www.gwinnettforum.com. He is the former associate publisher of the Gwinnett section of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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