JUDY ELIZABETH WATTS

1946 - 2024

Judy Elizabeth Watts, a loving mother, grandmother, widow, sister and friend, retired federal civil servant, and a person who above all sought to help others, died Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, in Boston. She was 78. Born Sept. 25, 1946, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she grew up with her parents, Anne Dempsey Watts and Ray Dean Watts, and three siblings, attending Missionary Ridge Elementary School and Chattanooga High School. She attended the University of Georgia, studied one summer at the University of Dijon in France, and in 1966 transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science and a minor in mathematics in 1968. She never lost her Southern accent, despite living most of her adult life in the Boston area, primarily Cambridge from 1969-2007. That is where she and her husband, Whitney "Terry" Coffin Colby II, raised their two children: Edward "Ned" Colby, born in 1980, and Susannah Colby, born in 1984. For all that she did in her life, she was most proud of them. Effusively social and warm, Judy had a wonderful smile and sense of humor. She met, connected with and loved many people during her time on Earth — which began and ended quietly, but in between, my, how she talked. She was generous, loyal, strong-willed, vibrant and feisty. Community- and civic-minded, she fought against secondhand smoke and advocated to preserve rent control. She was briefly a teacher in East L.A. and worked at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in Washington before becoming a career employee of the U.S. Veterans Administration, later the Department of Veterans Affairs, in Boston. She was a unit chief and disability ratings specialist, as well as a loaned executive to the United Way. She achieved a midcareer MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 1981 - 1983. She raised her kids in a small, top floor apartment on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge, between Harvard and Porter squares, described by a childhood friend as "such a little bubble of feeling safe and welcome." While humanity was her religion, she raised her children in Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church, where she went for the music, social values and community. After retiring in 2005, Judy moved back to the South with Terry in 2007, living in Woodstation, Georgia, on the former Watts family farm. They rescued a beloved German collie mix, named Trixie, in 2009. Judy and Terry had a complicated marriage, but his death in 2011 was a grievous loss. Her remains will be buried next to his in Massachusetts National Cemetery on Cape Cod, as she wanted. After Trixie's death in 2013, Judy rescued a second dog, Spot. She returned to Massachusetts in 2019, where she lived in Westborough, initially with Susannah and her husband, Craig, as well as their daughter Esme, born in 2020. Survivors include her children, Ned and Susannah, and their spouses, Tanna Tanlamai and Craig Barnes; three grandchildren, Barnaby and Autumn Colby, and Esme Colby-Barnes; siblings, Emily Watts Card, Janie Watts Spataro and husband Stephen Spataro, and brother Ray Dean Watts, Jr. and wife Gail Lingerfelt Watts; numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, extended family and friends; and dear lifelong friends, Margo Turrentine and Toan Trinh, wife Nancy, and their three sons. The Burial will be at Massachusetts National Cemetery, in Bourne, on Friday, Nov. 8, at 12:45 p.m. The Memorial Service is Saturday, Nov. 9, from 11 a.m. to noon at Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, with a reception until 2 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to Hebrew SeniorLife (hebrewseniorlife.org/TributeGift), the nonprofit that runs Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale, where she lived her final seven months.

View the online memorial for Judy Elizabeth WATTS