A Festival Like No Other

               I have this shirt.

               It’s pink and black and festooned with flamingos. I bought it in Key West. I wear it as often as I go to Key West, which is infrequently. Thin line between fashionably whimsical and, well, cheesy.

               Last Saturday I wasn’t in Key West, but I wore the flamingo shirt anyhow. The occasion: a unique, memorial gathering for a unique, deceased friend.

               No, it wasn’t Hunter Thompson.

               It was Judy Dibbs, 65, who you may not have heard of. She wasn’t famous — merely important.

Judy’s main societal contribution was working hard at making the world a better place. When not doing that, the Sumerville, Mass., native was the avatar of courage for the way she confronted her terminal breast cancer.

Judy was a Florida HRS medical case worker for nursing home placement in Ft. Lauderdale. But that’s like saying Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. She quickly earned renown for empathetic advocacy and relentless persistence. She was the lady — the pretty one with the Doris Day smile — that no bureaucrat dared cross.

“She helped people without a voice,” recalled social worker Ruth Gartland Michael. “She focused on the least of the least. She was so compassionate – but she knew when to be political and pragmatic. She cut right through the bs. The bureaucracy never got the best of her.”

After stints as an Eastern Air Lines trainer and the director of human resources for Cellular One in Chicago, Judy (and husband Dave) moved to Tampa, where Dave grew up. The last four years became the ultimate crucible. Each day – after the reoccurrence of her breast cancer – a daily mortality memo.

And, yet, she had these other priorities: she had four “perfect grandchildren” that needed doting, and she was a Guardian ad Litem volunteer, once again advocating for the powerless. In this case, abused and neglected children.  

She later became an inspirational Survivor Speaker for the American Cancer Society and was honored in 2006 with the ACS Courage Award. She was also a fund-raising force. In 2008 her Making Strides Against Breast Cancer team topped all others in Hillsborough County. 

“Judy was very intelligent, very well spoken and always professional,” said Charles Nelson, regional director for the Guardian ad Litem program. “She was never satisfied with the status quo. She could be tough. She had a remarkable ability to go after the issues while still making people feel good.

“Despite the pressures of the (GaL) job and her health, she never lost her sense of joy of life,” noted Nelson. “I saw her a week before she passed. She was still the one making us feel good.”

Stena Campagna, who coordinates the Moffitt Cancer Center’s FACTors (patient support) program, remains in awe of Judy’s indomitable spirit.

“Judy Dibbs lived every day to the fullest – and gave back,” said Campagna. “She didn’t live her life as if she were dying. She was always high-spirited. Coming here for chemotherapy was her ‘spa day,’ she would say…The fact that she was a Guardian ad Litem was amazing. Everything she did, she did with great gusto.

“Even though she knew there was nothing else to be done, she continued to fight the fight and raise money for those coming behind her,” added Campagna. “She took charge of her care and always looked for options. She spoke her mind freely but politely. She was the ultimate patient role model.”

                                            Festival of Judy

 So we gathered — per Judy’s final wishes — with Dave, her two sons, Elliot and Scott, and relatives — and each other — for “The Festival of Judy” open house in South Tampa. The theme was Key West good times, the dominant motifs: flamingos and anything pink. To celebrate the life she led, to savor the lives she touched, to revel in her “killer margarita” recipe — and to swap Judy Dibbs stories. Morrison Avenue as Margaritaville.

“I looked down (from his back porch to an overflow crowd) and I thought, ‘What an eclectic mix of people,’” recalled Dave Dibbs. “I knew it was right. I got the lump out of my throat. And, then, after that first chuckle, I knew I would be OK.”

The Improv this was not.

It was humor as the universal antidote for loss. The sort of humor – from self-deprecating to the ironic — that Judy employed shamelessly as a coping mechanism.

Dave referenced one of their first dates. He was a Virginia Military Institute cadet and Judy a scholarly undergraduate at Duke University – back in the days when few of those scholars were female.

 Dave was visiting Judy on the Duke campus. But it coincided with a big Duke-Michigan basketball game that night. And Judy was as hardcore a Duke Blue Devil fan as any guy.

And a certain life-long trait would manifest itself. Even then, Judy was into taking charge, however politely, on behalf of a worthy cause.

“She said,” deadpanned Dave: “‘If I can get you a ticket, great. If not, I’ll see you after the game.’”

The crowd loved it.  

Others spoke of Judy as a mentor, as a mom and as a model for guts and grace under fire. There were accounts of the “Judy stare” that indicated a level of consternation or disapproval that might have elicited a rant from others. She also had a grammar-maven side. The exercise in redundancy that is “very unique” was repeated with impunity in Judy’s memory.

Inside, a video of images chronicled Judy’s life. One photo was particularly poignant. It showed a chemo-bald Judy surrounded by her grandchildren. She had just submitted to a face-and-pate painting.

She didn’t want her grandchildren to be afraid of the disease. She wanted to max out on the limited time they would have together. It gave them a wonderful memory. And it was one more opportunity to thumb her nose at the Grim Reaper relentlessly stalking her.

Then there was Pat Knowlton, a breast cancer survivor who became one of Judy’s countless “best friends.” Only more so. They were comrades in harm’s way who both found it therapeutic to treat cancer with wickedly humorous disdain.

“I never felt depressed after talking to her,” said Knowlton. “She would laugh about the side effects. She always found hope. She was my personal cheerleader. Judy Dibbs lived more every day than most people I know who are not ill.”

Near the end, Judy made her promise that she would wear a certain teal,  flamingoed muumuu with a complementary blinky-light necklace to the inevitable “festival.”

“This is what Judy wanted me to wear,” explained Knowlton. “I said, ‘This is God awful.’ She said, ‘If anyone can pull this off, you can. And I expect you to.’”

It was vintage Judy. Thinking of others. How do you grieve inconsolably in a teal muumuu with blinky lights?