Joanne Carol Judson

Joanne C. Judson was born on June 5, 1932, in Iowa City, Iowa, to parents Lloyd E. Aker and Eleanor J. Aker of Tipton, Iowa. She died peacefully, surrounded by family, on December 27, 2025.

Joanne graduated from Tipton High School and then attended the University of Iowa, where she graduated with a B.A. In Home Economics Education in 1960. She used to tell the story of working as a lab tech for the man who invented buffered aspirin, Dr. William D. Paul.

She was married briefly to John N. Golubowich in 1952 and had one son, William Nicholas, born in 1953. William would sadly pass away in a skiing accident in Maine in 1972, in what was one of the tragedies of her and her family's life.

In 1959, she met John I. Judson, fell madly in love, and married him a short two months later, on October 30. They were married for 60 years. Joanne and John had three more children: Lisa Spencer (Thomas) of Rancho Mirage, CA, Gary Judson (Theresa) of Edina, MN, and Sara Heinzen (Jesse) of Saint Louis Park, MN. They moved to La Crosse, WI, in 1964, where John was an English Professor at UW-La Crosse, and Joanne was a homemaker for many years before going on to pursue her Master's in Educational Media with an emphasis in Library Sciences and graduated from UW-La Crosse in 1978. She was a librarian at Holy Trinity School, WWTI, HSR Architects, and other speciality libraries for the rest of her career.

Joanne is preceded in death by her parents and her husband, John. She is survived by her grandchildren: Emma Heinzen, Julia Judson, and Carson Nida, all of Minneapolis; Evan Judson of Los Angeles, CA, and Lilith Nida of Fort Collins, CO.

She enjoyed traveling to historic or scenic sites. Her hobbies included photography, needlecrafts of needlepoint, counted cross stitch, and quilting. She also loved researching her family history and genealogy, where she identified that her relatives, Samuel and Edward Fuller, had sailed from England on the Mayflower.

Special thanks to the kind and generous staff of Friendship Village in Bloomington, MN.

A Celebration of Life will be held on what would have been her 94th birthday, on Friday, June 5, 2026, at 11 am at Gearty-Delmore Funeral Chapel at 3960 Wooddale Avenue S. in St. Louis Park, MN. Visitation will be held one hour before the service. Pastor Eric Silberschmidt will lead the service.