Judith Ann Zoey Zitter
As I was not among those with the poise to stand up and eulogize the remarkable Judith Sunday at the simply unbelievably wrenching memorial to her life, attended by over 300 Pasadenans and others at a sad and yet celebratory block party in front of her and Neil's Historic Highlands home, I was not able to tell any Judith stories:
Like the time decades ago when she and her family invited a bunch of us to go white-water rafting, my first time, on the Kern River. It's rated 4+ on a 5 scale. My front-of-the-raft rowing partner, who I met that day: the indominitable Isaac Richard, in his pre-council mode. What a guy to paddle with. A Rose Princess -- Portland Rose Parade, that is -- was our guide. In two days, fully two people broke their legs when their boats turned over. It was rough fun. No half-measures for Judith, no mild recreations.
Or when she used her expertise as a former social worker, a career in which she had formal training in adoption, to advise Phoebe, concerned about some (in retrospect) technical issues we had during an adoption: "Don't worry, sweetie -- every single adoption has its own problems. It'll work out fine." And of course it did.
Judith, for many years now involved in health-care advocacy for Kaiser, but formerly a political animal, was the kind of person who makes politics look good. Everything was no more or less than a community issue, one that could be solved by knocking on doors and talking to people and making sense and thus bringing them into your cause.
Judith just made tons of sense for all of her 53 years. It is a devastatingly poorer world without her.
Here's a link to some pictures of the service from Pasadena PIO Ann Erdman's blog: