Judy (Fay) Donahue

4/29/17 - Judy send a brief recap of the last 57 years -
Lately I have become enamored of this pic taken at my grandma’s house on Potter Road in Scarsdale at Thanksgiving 1959. That’s Charles Wilson my first husband, a grad student at Penn State in genetics, a son of friends of my parents met in Ca. during WWII. That baby is now Grandpa Kent Wilson next grandson due 5/7/17 in Red Bluff Ca. The pipe must have been a one time thing, We were friends since he was seven and I was 4. He was an audio visual guy in Lompoc High School and his nick name was’ snake’. We had three more boys after Kent. Amicable divorce in 1969. He died of heart disease and alcoholism in1979.
I saw you all at the 2007 reunion with my 4th husband Rodger Donahue. He had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer but insisted he was well enough to go. Also my sister Jan fay Thompson lives in Katonah so a visit with Bruce and Jan figured in. Rodger died  March 15th 0f 2015 of Alzheimer’s, heart disease and cancer. Seven years of 24/7 care giving have left me knowing that for me 57 years of  marriage, time served, is time served will be my all time best effort. Read More

12/20/08 - A Christmas letter - Read More

05/05/08 – Judy tells about her father's death in WWII and the aftermath in her life -  Read More

01/28/08 - Email from Judy

I didn't get a chance to ask anyone if they remembered Drivers Ed? Was it just my imagination or did the car have a truck clutch in it  ...Read More

01/11/08 - Memories from the war years - from Judy
 
Before my father went over seas they built a house in Munsey Park, Manhasset, Long Guyland. I connect nothing of my life there with my father's being 'at war'. We had a garden...  Read More

12/22/07 - Email from Judy

I can't find the list of addresses I got at the reunion. I really thought I would send everyone a Christmas card but then I discovered that my address wasn't on the list. To get a card from me you have to send one first...Read More

(Editor's Note.  10/27/07 Email from Judy - Subject: Judy Fay Wilson Hamilton Gwinn Wilson Donahue's address - Click Here

(Editor's note.  The following was received from Judy on 8/25/07)

Although I was with the class for perhaps the shortest time, I still remember all of you and tonight after a fifty year silence enjoyed finding out, in one heavy dose, how everyone else turned out.
   What's his name, in the counseling office, told my mother not to waste her money sending applications to any four year colleges so in spite of getting a 4 year scholarship to NYU for creative writing I ended up in a now defunct girls college in VA. Since she refused to let me marry Tom Aveni and work in a dime store, I didn't much care where I went. I suppose there were other bohemians in Chappaqua but none had made themselves known to me. Okay maybe Bob Holland. 
   I was as weird and hippie as I wanted to be in Bristol Va. and then got pregnant and married and shipped off to California to live. Having four boys in five years took quite a hunk out of the time I had assigned for writing the great American novel but I did work for the Santa Barbara New Press for several years as a stringer. We divorced in 1968, I got more education and began a twenty year stint as a Social Worker for Santa Barbara County.
   I remarried in 1971 to a wonderful man who loved children. We started a company that made chassis for the first P.C.s that came on the market. That enabled us to have racing yachts. We raced around the Pacific with the boys for about 13 years. I wrote some and in 1980 I landed a New York agent. While I was back East pushing a novel around the city, my husband sailed off into the blue. We divorced. Twenty five years of living in Santa Barbara, at one time on a boat in the harbor, left a salty/ bitter taste so I moved by to Mendocino County in Northern Ca. to write in the wine country and work for social services up there.
   I married a third time to a man who proved that I drive men crazy. He had a big ranch that needed managing so I quit the public trough. I raised cattle, sheep and goats. Made great wine and goat cheese and sold the stuff under the table at farmer's markets. We lived without power and phone on the top of a mountain in the Redwoods most unhappily for 18 years. Then the voices began telling him to save me from the devil and I left via a woman's shelter. My sons, now all married and with children, bailed me out and brought Grandma back to Santa Barbara where they live.
   I met the love at first sight of my life at church. We got married with all 12 grandchildren in the wedding. I've never been comfortable with places that other people call good living and neither has he. Rodger was a Parole Officer in south central L.A. for 30 years. We were married in 2003. We moved by short range plan to our long term goal, small town America, pop. 300, Birdseye Indiana. We bought a four bedroom two story old old house in town on an acre for what we sold a bathroom for in Ca. We can walk out the front door to the General Store and the Post Office and out the back door to a 300 acre corn field, a creek and the woods. Rodger bought a building in restored old Huntingburg In. and has a Book store there.
   We travel when it has a purpose. He took me to London to the opera for our honey moon. He proposed at Fortnum and Mason at High Tea. I went to France a few times to stand in the road in a small village outside of Paris where my father was killed in 1944. We drive to both coasts visiting kids and grandchildren several times a year.
   We're the first new people in Birdseye in thirty years so we are kept busy 'getting to know you' and learning the local traditions which seem to be old timey gospel music, fried chicken, and standing out at the cross roads with recycled plastic ice cream buckets collecting loose change for the FFA students.
   The death of my little sister Joanne Fay Lyons three years ago has left me bereft. I don't like things in life to go out of order and that and losing a son to SIDS 42 years ago has been the worst. Jan Fay Thompson ' 60 (?) and her husband Bruce still live in Katonah so I go back to visit several times a year.
   I think I have spent the last fifty years much like the year I spent with all of you. Having a good time, getting into trouble and living life with all sails full and driving the rail under. I won't make the reunion but look forward to pics and news from all of you.

07/27/20 - Snail Mail from Judy

(Editor's note.  The following letter was received from Judy sometime in the past 10 years and was just discovered in a pile of old correspondence that had been piling up. Sorry for the delay. Bill