Judy Dothard Simmons: A Friend On Our Level

Listen to the words of someone who knew Judy Dothard Simmons way-back-when, and try not to smile. Okay, go ahead and smile. Says Winifred Wrisley, Judy Dothard Simmons' high school music teacher, who met Judy when Judy was just 14 years-young:

"(Judy) was unlike any other person who has ever come through my life. She had a lot to give to people who cared to understand her. And (Judy) was not terribly understood."

"She sailed right through, making enemies all over the place, because she was so far ahead of everyone."

"I couldn't keep up with her when it came to the piano. She refused to practice -- she didn't need to practice. I think I was smart enough to realize that I wouldn't help Judy any if I tried to hold her back."

Another pupil who went through the Allen High School for Girls in Asheville, N.C., a few years before Judy arrived was a young musical talent who later adopted the name of Nina Simone. Said Wrisley: "Judy was that much ahead of the modern stuff that was coming out. Nina Simone -- Judy was ahead of (her). There was something in Judy that was pretty much ahead of what most people were doing."

And that was in the late-1950s. Fifty years later, I'm not sure many of us ever managed to catch up with Judy. But I don't recall her ever - ever - wanting me to feel dumb or deficient. Judy had a way of finding your gift and pointing it out to you. She didn't flatter or stroke -- she wanted to share what she knew, and learn from you, too. Conversations with Judy - at least those "let's update each other on our lives" phone conversations I'd have with her -- were pleasant respites from a normally harried life. Judy served as Confessor Priest to me, when I thought I didn't have time to reflect on my days. A call from Judy was permission to relax. Maybe I can say that because I was never Judy's editor. (Editing Judy could be like trying to comb a lion's mane. You needed to have the touch.)

But we did have a relationship as writerly colleagues. A few years ago Judy got me involved in writing book reviews for a print-on-demand publishing company called iUniverse. Before their self-published books went to print, aspiring authors would pay iUniverse to have folks like Judy and me (Judy and I? Help, Judy, help!) grade their work and either launch it to "star" status or make recommendations for improvement. At just $75 to read and review a work, it didn't pay to dwell too long on any one title. But Judy wrote pages upon pages of analysis and suggestions, far more than she was getting paid to generate. I'd challenge her on this, but she admittedly could not help herself from being helpful. If an author showed just an ounce of literary promise, Judy offered a pound of literary therapy. I should never have begrudged her that gift she gave others. She was my best reader, too, and she didn't charge me a slim nickel.

Judy channeled Ancient Greek poets and philosophers - in their own vernacular, of course - while providing no-nonsense modern language to the issues of the day. When I tried to engage her in conversations on politics I was usually disappointed ... in my own lack of vocabulary. As her teacher Wrisley said: "Judy was so far ahead of everyone." Certainly, she was over the heads of our politicians of today who find success in keeping their messages simple. Very ... simple. (Here envision Judy miming a robot as she recites, "Very ... simple.") Perhaps Judy was a political idealist, but if so, hers wasn't a simplistic idealism. It had nuance to it - for those who cared to understand it.

Judy - in the few years leading up to her mother's death and the years since - also developed a spirituality with nuance. She thought about spirit no less rigorously than she thought about other things in her life. In 2002, Judy sent Wrisley a book by Bishop John Shelby Spong, "A New Christianity for a New World," all lit up in highlighter pen. Here are a few highlights of Judy's highlighting:

"To suggest that God and one's own understanding of God are the same is not only to stop growing, it is to die to the quest for truth."

"I will attempt to free Christianity of its exclusive claims and its power-needs, which have totally distorted its message." (Judy was very skeptical of power as a corruptive force. Probably none of us will ever reach Judy's level of skepticism, but shouldn't we all be a little more skeptical than we are?)

Judy goes on with her Bishop Spong highlighter:

"I speak ... of the God I experience as the Ground and Source of All Being and therefore the presence that calls me to step beyond every boundary ... into the fulness of life with all its exhilarating insecurities."

"If God is the Ground of Being, you worship this divine reality by having the courage to be all that you can be -- your deepest, fullest self."

And this, my favorite of Judy's highlights:

"God is the ultimate source of love. One worships this God by loving wastefully, by spreading love frivolously, by giving love away without stopping to count the cost."

My, my, was Judy uneconomical - in personal finance - but most of all her friendships. Her friendship circles are multiple and vast, like ripples in a pool from a dropped pebble. She had her print journalist friends like me, but also the friends she made through her piano performances, the caretaker friends she made in the eight-plus years of caring for her mother, and the friends she made of friends of friends. (When Judy came to my wedding in October 2000, she befriended my Uncle Mike from St. Paul and they talked forever about their favorite presidential candidate: Ralph Nader.) There are the New York crowd who, likewise, occupy several different rings of her life, from her years training as a poet at Columbia University to the radio station and so on, and so on. Judy, the consummate journalist, could hang with anybody - and I mean anybody. She dealt with people, not in the world of appearances, but on the soul level. You weren't dealing with someone who fit into a demographic cubby-hole. You were dealing with a human being.

I like the image of Judy's friendships being like ripples in a pool, on a single plane, because I don't believe Judy put friends on pedestals or played favorites. She was far too democratic for that. When I expressed awe upon learning from her that she'd once accompanied the now famous jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson on piano, her response was not pride, but something like: "Playing with her was hard. We couldn't keep up with each other. It was a mess." I suggested that she might have established a beat and let Cassandra keep pace with her. "Is that the way it's done?" she asked, possibly teasing me, as she loved to do, usually signaling a tease with her delighted - and delightful - girlish snicker.

I strongly suspect Judy was most comfortable in life playing her music solo - though "solo" certainly does not mean "alone." Never alone. We know that well, having known Judy like we do.

P.S.

About three weeks before Judy died, I received a last phone call from her. There was no way I could have known it to be a final word from her. It sounded to me like -- not the recently tired, old and sickly Judy -- but the more familiar, serene, magnanimous, unencumbered Judy. I can only imagine she is all those things still.