Molly Bradley Hudgens is currently completing her twenty-sixth year as an educator in the Cheatham County School System where she serves as a school counselor at Sycamore Middle School in Pleasant View, Tennessee.
On September 28, 2016 she talked a student with a loaded handgun out of committing a mass shooting at Sycamore Middle School. Hudgens, the 2004-2005 and 2016-2017 Sycamore Middle School and Cheatham County Middle School Teacher of the Year, became a Congressional Medal of Honor Citizens Honor recipient for a Single Act of Heroism from the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation in March of 2017. She is also the 2017 recipient of the Tennessee School Counseling Association’s Phoebe White Award for Excellence in School Counseling and the 2019 Mental Health of the Midsouth's I.C. Hope Award for bringing mental health awareness to schools.
Hudgens has been the recipient of three state recognitions for heroic actions on September 28, 2016 – a Proclamation from the TN House of Representatives in October of 2016, House Resolution No. 66 from the TN House of Representatives in March of 2017, and Senate Resolution No. 40 from the TN State Senate in April of 2017. Mrs. Hudgens has also been a nominee for the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission as well as the American Hero Channel’s Red Bandanna Hero Award in 2017.
Hudgens is a member of the Professional Educators of Tennessee, the Tennessee School Counseling Association, and the American School Counseling Association. She is also a treasurer at Friendship Church. As the first Congressional Medal of Honor Citizens Honor Recipient from Tennessee, her story is exhibited in the Charles H. Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center in Chattanooga, TN, where she serves as a member of the Advisory Board.
Molly's story will become part of a national initiative when her Sycamore Middle School counseling office will be recreated as it appeared on September 28, 2016, as part of the Congressional Medal of Honor Citizens Honor exhibit in the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas, when it opens in 2024.
Mrs. Hudgens is the owner of Molly B. Hudgens Communications and is a national motivational speaker and violence prevention specialist. Hudgens' book, Saving Sycamore: The School Shooting that Never Happened, published by Dave Burgess Consulting in October of 2020, chronicles the story of 9/28/16. Molly is also a speaker for Safe and Sound Schools through Kirkland Productions.
Molly resides in Ashland City, TN, where she lives on her family farm with her husband, Jason, and sons, Bradley and Henry.