Josephine Julia Judson

1922 - 2015

Josephine Julia Judson
October 2, 1922 - November 24, 2015
A Resident of Santa Cruz
Josephine was born in Chicago when airplanes were being invented in Kitty Hawk. She must have been enamored with adventure because she fell in love with my father, the horn jazz player. For you see my father, Loyal Frederick Judson, and mother grew up in Chicago at the crux of the depression when things were going downhill, it was the place open for discovery. Popular Mechanics gave my father a whole new evolution of fun: he found schematics to build your own flying machine and guided the neighborhood to build a glider. My mother was stuck with adventure. Her job was to tow the tethered glider in the family Pontiac to an apogee so that flight would happen. My Father must have been good at this as the air force hired him in World War II to migrate to Arizona in a venture to train pilots to glide troops on a Kamikaze drop to Normandy. Not a very successful venture, but relatively fortunate for me, their son, Dennis Loyal Judson, I was conceived in Wickenburg, Arizona. At the demise of this most unsuccessful military project they moved to LA where dad got a job with TWA, another burgeoning flight business. LA in the 40's was loaded with adventure and my mother was surrounded in it. There were fields with 7 foot grass, creeks with crawdads and pollywogs, and an ocean within bicycle ride filled seafood. My dad was the instigator-my mom was left with the logistics. I remember the first time I brought home an abalone, we broke the kitchen tile trying to get the meat out of the shell-now what to do with it! Josephine wasn't much of an adventurer but she had no choice. Flying was a trip for her but it was a mode we took to many travels as my father worked one of the major airlines. For her, it was, however, better than my father's second passion tent camping. In retrospect, Mom had to be a powerful women as she had to control my father's adventuresome urges. Mom produced a daughter, Judith Judson, at the request of me for a companion, who to the chagrin of all died early of a Hollywood bipolar disease. I migrated Josephine from her home in Gardena to Santa Cruz' Sunshine Villa. It was close and she could see her grandchild and great grandchildren, Odin and Ophelia. In some ways my mom was a terror-what do you expect from a 93 year old wife of one of the beginning glider pilots stuck in a body that really doesn't work. She died, November 24th, just before our planned trip to view the monarch butterflies at Natural Bridges. Her heart simply broke. What a run you must admit, from the birth of flight to space travel! I and all who knew her will miss her. She wasn't easy but what in life that is really special is.


View the online memorial for Josephine Julia Judson