At age 19, Isaac Hudson drove an Army ambulance in the D-Day invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.

He survived his nightmarish task, and was acknowledged for his service collecting dead and wounded from five separate battlefields of World War II. Years later, he was haunted by memories of French women and children, their villages destroyed, walking aimlessly in the chaos of war.

After the war, he settled in San Francisco, built a family and was chief of outpatient services at the Veterans Administration's Fort Miley hospital. Even at 84, Hudson was in the peak of health, jogged regularly and worked a security job at the Bechtel building on Beale Street.

Eight minutes into Nov. 11, Veterans Day, Hudson was driving home from work when he was struck and killed near his home at Alemany Boulevard and Congdon Street.

On Wednesday, prosecutors said Arthur Clark Jr., 20, had been charged with hit-and-run and vehicular manslaughter. Clark rammed Hudson's 1994 Ford Escort at 50 mph, then ran, authorities said.

Clark has racked up three felony convictions just this year for weapons, drugs and evading arrest, records show. Each time, judges allowed him to plead guilty and released him with credit for time served behind bars, despite objections from prosecutors, records show.

Clark left his DNA behind on an airbag that deployed in the 1990 Lexus he was driving when he hit Hudson, authorities said. He was arrested for allegedly possessing marijuana for sale Nov. 20, and last week authorities made the DNA match, prosecutors said.

Hudson's wife, Susan, said Wednesday that it hurts too much to dwell on how he died. Instead, she wants to remember his life.

Born March 18, 1925, in Memphis, Tenn., the sixth of seven children of Will and Lovie Hudson, Isaac had survived the longest of his siblings.

After he served in World War II, Hudson came first to Los Angeles and then San Francisco, working government jobs before getting a post at Fort Miley, where the couple met. They married in 1964.

Susan Hudson said her husband did not speak much of his time in the war until his later years. When he opened up, he talked about the vacant look in the eyes of the women he saw wandering the roads in France, or of collecting bodies on the beach at Normandy.

He drove ambulance No. 13. "People said, 'Oh man, I wouldn't drive that ambulance,' " Susan Hudson said. "But it was always a lucky number for him. That got him through."

Both the couple's children were born on the 13th of the month.

Hudson spent his spare time studying. "He always had goals for himself, and found a way to reach those goals," his wife said.

At age 59, he earned a bachelor's degree from the University of San Francisco. Three years later, he got his master's in public administration, also from USF.

And he never really retired. Even while he worked at Fort Miley, Hudson ran a parking lot he owned in North Beach and kept at it after leaving the hospital. He ultimately sold the lot, but then took up security work.

He had just gotten off the 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift working security at the Bechtel building when the crash happened.

Hudson was never a flag-waver, his wife said. He was more low key in his dedication to his country.

"When he worked for the VA, he helped veterans get their benefits," Susan Hudson said. "He wanted to make sure they got everything they were entitled to. ... He believed in veterans. He was very much for the veterans.

"He was a very good person," his wife said. "He would give you his last dime."