Obituary
Judith Hope Reynolds died on December 15, 2024 in her colorful and festive adobe home in Albuquerque, NM. Born in Buffalo, NY in 1939, she was raised in southern California where she lived until completing her Bachelor of Arts at Scripps College in 1961. She went on to study at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she earned an MA in 1966 and a CPh in 1968, both in History. Judith moved to Albuquerque when her first husband, Peter Blakewell, took a teaching job at UNM in the early 1970’s. She worked at Zimmerman Library, and made many friends in the UNM community. Both were scholars of Latin American History, and had studied and lived in Spain and Bolivia, a place that fed Judith’s love for colorful, patterned textiles and ceramics which adorned her houses throughout her life. Her home was always a rotating museum of the things she collected. Every Christmas and Easter were an opportunity to see the ornaments and painted eggs that Judith had spent decades collecting.
During the 1980’s, Judith worked as a technical editor for two defense contractors in Albuquerque. There she made many more life-long friends, and met two men who became her partners: Peter Rask an attorney, with whom she lived for five years, and later, Vernon Stevens, an engineer and co-worker, who she married in 2004 and traveled extensively with, including to Antarctica, until Vern’s death in 2014.
Judith’s passions in life were reading, “thrifting”, and helping struggling artists, actors, and anyone she believed in. The walls of her home were covered with artwork from the artists she helped and those she admired. She was an avid reader, with an extensive library. Judith loved hearing people’s stories and traveling to every small town in New Mexico and beyond, to see how people were living. She would come home from a trip and report about what restaurants were new or closed, and what she had to eat that was outstanding; what great find she had made in a thrift store, and how life was looking up or down in any place that she visited. She loved discovering extraordinary details about the lives of ordinary people and reporting them to all of her friends.
Judith was a “landlord extraordinaire”! She screened her tenants carefully and often chose people who she felt needed a break in their lives, and proceeded to charge them below market rent. For years, she was her own property manager, doing much of the clean up work herself.
Judith attended to the needs and desires of her numerous friends, by searching endlessly through thrift stores for the right items that would make them feel as though she had looked into their souls! In fact, she had perused their home very carefully, making copious mental notes of missing important details that she could address at Christmas with a bag full of seemingly custom ordered gifts! Knowing her was an enriching and enigmatic experience that will leave us pondering and marveling at what she did and the way she lived, which is one of the best legacies a person can leave.
Judith leaves behind her nephews Kevin, David and Mathew Nelson, her niece Kathleen Nelson, and a much loved host of grand-nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her mother Rose (Harding) Reynolds, her father John Lynn Reynolds, her brother Timothy Hobart Reynolds, her sister Dorothy Gara (Cotton) Nelson, and her niece Jennifer Nelson.
There will be a celebration of Judith’s life at a later date in the Spring. So for now, to honor Judith, please help someone in need!
Check back on this website for updates as we finalize dates for the celebration of life.