Photo contributed by Maria Latham / Molly Hudgens is the first recipient from Tennessee, and only the tenth female recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor Citizens Honor medal awarded to her by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society in 2017.It takes Molly Hudgens, a guidance counselor and the only recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor Citizens Honor medal in Tennessee, about 30 minutes to give the short version of the day she stopped a middle school student with a gun from shooting up the school.
What she did during those 90 minutes with the 14-year-old to talk him into letting her take the .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol and rounds of ammo strapped around his ankle is heroic enough, but it’s what she did in the 18 years leading up to that Wednesday at Sycamore Middle School in Pleasant View, Tennessee, near Nashville, that likely saved untold lives.
Hudgens will return to Chattanooga and the Charles Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center on Saturday, Feb. 20, to promote her book, “Saving Sycamore: The School Shooting That Never Happened,” and to celebrate the museum’s one-year anniversary.
On Sept. 18, 2016, Hudgens was in her office around 7:30 in the morning when a student she had counseled on the prior Friday came in and said he needed a follow-up chat. She arranged for him to come back later in the morning. Just after 8, he was back saying he didn’t think he could wait.
“Within 15 minutes, I knew something was very wrong,” she said. “His eyes were jittery and darting around the room. I felt light-headed and thought I might pass out.