For forty-five years this space had been occupied by my wife, Judy Spooner. Judy had a stroke on June 16, 2015 that took away her ability to speak and affected her right arm and leg. She has been living at Norris Square for the last year needing twenty-four hour nursing care.
Judy’s existence was a two-room apartment in Norris Square. The staff was marvelous. They used a Hoyer lift to get her out of bed and chairs. She also had to be fed by a nurse’s aide.
Judy was stubborn. I thought she would not make it to Christmas of last year. But she was stubborn and made it to early Thursday morning November 3, 2016 when she passed away after an agonizing week.
Judy started her reporting in 1967 working as a stringer for the South Washington County Bulletin. Stringers were paid by the column inch for their stories. Bulletin publisher, John Herman, had a number of local people who were willing to spend an evening at a school board meeting or city council meeting and writing about the proceedings.
John and I purchased the newspaper from realtor John Currel in 1970 and soon were able to hire reporters on an hourly basis. Judy was one of those hires.
She soon became known for her weekly column featuring at times Husband Gary, Daughter Margie, Daughter Laura, Friend Ruth or Son-In-Law Eric.
In the middle 1970’s she discovered that our poodle was not registered or licensed with the city. Her column titled “Fugitive Dog” won a national award for writing. She soon won many awards for her reporting school activities, photography and column writing.
Judy loved her job. She loved writing about people especially kids. She did a number of stories featuring children doing a project in a school. She especially enjoyed writing about girls’ sports. She was adopted by the first Park/Woodbury combined girls hockey team. After covering them for the first year they presented her with a pair of hockey skates and a goalie stick. She was very proud and considered the honor better than some of the state and national awards she had received.
The fall of 1996 was a tough time for Judy and me. She discovered that she had breast cancer. Her weekly column became a vehicle for all women to read about her journey with the dreadful disease. She wrote about her mastectomy and her chemotherapy treatments. She allayed the fears of many women about getting mammograms. Women would come up to her in different local businesses and hug her and tell her how proud they were for her honesty and willingness to write about such a personal ordeal. Judy felt if she could help in some way to get someone to a doctor before it was too late she had accomplished her job. She also had a sense of humor about it. When she found that her golf playing partner and good friend, Mary Lou Vining Berg, also had a mastectomy she said they should be able to get a discount because they could go in as one person to get a mammogram. She also said instead of having cleavage she now had “cleave.”
Judy was also instrumental in getting the tiny cemetery next to McDonald’s cleaned up and rehabilitated. She pressured the city into doing something about the overgrown weeds, vines and bushes. She was able to organize the Boy Scouts and other volunteer residents to get the cemetery looking great. Cottage Grove has taken care of the plot of land where some of our founders are buried and nobody would have known it was there if wasn’t for Judy’s insistence.
Judy and I were married for 55 years. We moved into a new little rambler on Hillside Trail three days after our wedding. We have been living here ever since. Our present home is our third home we have purchased in Cottage Grove. We raised two wonderful daughters in this great town. I am surely going to miss her as will our daughters. But we know she is not suffering as she was for the past two weeks and, although everyone says it, she is in a better place.
Why do flowers have to die…..