There’s a specific string of words
people use to describe Judy Dyer. They don’t just say she was
smart; they use the word “wise.” They don’t just
say she was funny; they say she was a bawdy smart-ass. And they
don’t just say she was a friend; they say she made each
person feel extra special. “She had the knack of making everybody
in her life feel like the center of the universe, ” says
Cassandra Claman. “Each of us felt like Judy was there for us
completely.”
That’s saying something, because Judy
had a vast collection of friends — some she had gathered at
her job as an attorney with the Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency, some she met through her various volunteer activities
(Sojourn Womens Shelter, Big Brothers Big Sisters, ACLU), some
found at Temple Israel, and some introduced by her kids, Josh and
Erica. Nancy Mackiewicz, a geologist who has been
fast friends with Judy since 1985, says Judy simply honed in on the
good in each person. “With all your friends, you see
something unique in them that you cherish and you love, right?
Well, Judy saw that in a lot of people,” Nancy says.
“She had a huge heart, and all these people could fit into
it.” Realizing that not everybody had such a
flexible cardiac capacity, Judy coordinated her friends by
personality. The specific word they use to describe this quirk is
“compartmentalization.”
“She did it in all aspects of her
life,” says Vera Herst, another IEPA attorney. “She
didn’t tell one person everything. I knew a piece of this,
Cassandra would know a piece of that.”
The compartment Cassandra and Vera fit in was
something Judy called the Three Furies. The name referred to
goddesses borne from the three drops of blood that fell when Cronus
castrated Uranus. The women enjoyed the chilling effect the name
had on the men in their lives, but it mainly meant meeting for
lunch every Wednesday . “I felt sorry for other people eating,
because we were so loud and noisy, screeching and cackling, oh my
god, it was very therapeutic,” Vera says. Kathi Davis belonged to a slightly different
compartment. She and Judy had become friends in 1988, when they had
cubicles next to each other at IEPA. Kathi was an intern, but they
bonded, partially because they both grew up as the only girl in a
family with four brothers. Judy initiated a tradition of going to lunch
every month with Kathi and Janet, another IEPA colleague. As she
would later do with the Furies, Judy turned these lunches into advice sessions. “If I’d had a bad day or I was
going through a lot, she’d never let me whine, she’d
smack me,” Kathi says. “Not physically, of course, but
she’d say why not look at it this way? She was just this
empowering force.”
They knew Judy had breast cancer in the
1990s, but had been healthy for more than five years. Last fall,
Judy mentioned that the cancer had returned, but it never became a
topic for lunch conversation. “She never focused on herself. She
always wanted to know how you were doing, how your life was going,
how she could help,” Kathi says. “Janet and I never
knew if it was because she wanted to act for an hour and a half
like she was just one of the girls or what.”
By winter, Judy began to lose strength in her
legs. She used a walker, then a wheelchair. Finally, she became
homebound. The Furies had lunch wherever Judy was
— the chemo lounge, the hospital, or at home. When Judy could
no longer eat, they had “unlunches,” just getting
together to chat. Still, Judy made them laugh. She started
composing a “goners list” of people she wanted to
“take out” before she died, “to leave the world a
better place,” Vera recalls. “She had this gallows humor,”
Vera says. “Like one time we were talking, and I said oh god,
we’re both going to hell! And she said, ‘Well, I’ll
be all burnt up by the time you get there.’ ” As the cancer pillaged Judy’s body,
friends from every compartment teamed up to provide her family with
home-cooked meals three nights a week. Another team took over the
yard, dug out the overgrown shrubs and installed new plants to give
Judy the garden of her dreams. When they heard about the Yard to
Yard Challenge sponsored by this paper, they submitted a contest
entry on Judy’s behalf, and won. The friends she had kept
apart so they wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves got
together to take care of Judy. “The compartments started to break
down,” Nancy says. On Monday night, Judy’s husband, Jack,
phoned eight of her female friends and asked them to be pallbearers
at her funeral the next morning. It was, perhaps, the ultimate
bonding experience. “After we got her into the hearse, we
all started sobbing,” Cassandra says. “It’s no
accident that they normally ask men to do this; male pallbearers
are not nearly as messy.”
This article appears in Nov 10-16, 2005.
