Our families pass on their essence through storytelling, since cavemen painted on walls, the human spirit has lived on through the stories of those older and the lessons they pass on. Beverly Judd, my grandmother, was the beginning of everything and everyone I hold near to my heart and her life is the reason for mine.
Born, raised, and retired, Beverly has lived her entire life in Colorado surrounded by her many children and grandchildren. Her faith in the Lord and the love in her heart has gifted my family a woman who has lived 83 years.
Beverly was married to Craig Judd for 38 years before he passed away suddenly and tragically in 2001 from a heart attack. Beverly never remarried, her fondness for her late husband never wavered. The two were together for what was at most three months before Craig proposed to Beverly in her parents’ basement and they tied the knot soon after in February 1964. My grandfather passed away long before I was born and for years, he has lived on through the stories of the people he loved and who loved him dearly. For years my one wish was to speak to him, but I feel I have come to know him quite well through their eyes.
“Craig started pestering me and of course I loved it,” Beverly said. “He was so, he was so out there, and I wasn’t, and he was just fun. It was just fun!”
Whether real or not, Craig and Beverly earn the title soulmates. “It started out as a fluke,” Beverly said. The two met at work after Craig was transferred to Colorado for work at the Western Electric Company where Beverly worked as a secretary.
Not long after Craig began “pestering” her he was writing letters home to his mom about the new secretary he met on the job confirming he was indeed interested in Beverly.
“I had no idea he was even looking at me, I mean because he was such an outgoing guy and I was such an inward person,” Beverly said. ” I would smile and laugh and enjoy when he’d yell, and Bill, my boss, would just cringe.”
After teasing about going out to the company picnic, the two ended up together unaware they were the beginning of the Judd family.
After the picnic in August the two began dating; they were engaged and married within six months, proving my own parents wrong with their one-year engagement. They honeymooned in New York. Beverly’s first time in New York she was treated to the New York State Fair, and when the two returned to Colorado they wanted to start their family.
Their love was and is very much alive, even if Grandpa wasn’t the biggest romantic.
“I wanted to have a baby so bad, I wanted to be a mommy so bad, and it was just the biggest thrill of my whole life,” Beverly said. “I love my kids, I wasn’t the bestest mother in the whole wide world…but I loved ‘em, I loved ‘em to pieces.”
Being a mother is one of the most demanding jobs the world can ask of someone. Not only does it rely on physical strength but the mental and emotional strength to raise each one of those children with love.
Not only does Beverley love each of her four children but her array of grandchildren and in-laws that came with them. Motherhood was not the first challenge Beverly had overcome in her life, because when she was young, she fell ill often with many colds, eventually contracting rheumatic fever that left her with asthma and a heart murmur.
The heart murmur she acquired in her youth turned into a much more dangerous situation that led Beverly to have open heart surgery very late in her life.
“I totally believe that the Lord has my number and I believe that He has willed me to be here for as long as I’m here’” Beverly said. “I believe that he has a plan for me and so far, his plan has been to live, and I’m going to try to live the best life I can.”
She has lived, Beverly has seen the world. She rediscovered her love of traveling when Craig’s oldest brother, Jim, and his wife, Mary, invited her on a cruise when she was 70.
Since then, she has been to some incredible places in just the last thirteen years. Her favorite place to date was Prince Edward’s Island. There she toured the house where Anne of Green Gables was filmed, however she longs to still see the vast beauties of Europe and is constantly planning trips to visit family.
Our grandparents are full of stories, wisdom, and lessons that will go unknown unless you sit down, and you listen. Hearing stories in passing is quite different than inquiring about who had to be for you to become.
