Judith "Judy" WILCOX

Judith Wilcox Friedlander

Judy's 2011 Autobiography

After graduating from Staples I attended Wilson College, in Chambersburg, PA, and left after my freshman year. I took summer courses at the University of Bridgeport to bring up my grades, then was accepted at UConn and attended the Stamford campus for a semester and the Storrs campus for a semester. The following summer, in 1963, I married Chris Young, who had grown up in Westport but didn’t go to Staples. I met him through Sandy Watts, who had married his friend Bruce Kent. Chris joined the army rather than wait to be drafted, hoping to be assigned to the army radio station (he had studied communication arts at NYU) and he drew missile maintenance instead. We lived for nine months in El Paso, where I attended Texas Western College for a semester; in Lawton, Oklahoma for a few months, and then Pittsburgh, where I attended the University of Pittsburgh for a semester. After the army, Chris got a job with Encyclopedia Britannica Films, in New York. We lived in a nice building in a terrible neighborhood, at 9th Street and Avenue D. I got a job as Research Assistant at the Long Island Historical Society (now the Brooklyn Historical Society), in Brooklyn Heights, and started going to Hunter College. Chris and I were divorced in 1968.

I finished my BA at Hunter in 1968, majoring in history, and got a masters in history (medieval) at Hunter in 1973. Meanwhile, in the fall of 1970, I entered the doctoral program in history at the Graduate School of the City University of New York and was fortunate to work with Richard Lemay, an historian of medieval science, and an expert with manuscripts. My dissertation was a critical edition of a medical-philosophical work entitled “On the Difference between the Spirit and the Soul,” by Qusta ibn Luqa, a Syrian Christian polymath who lived in Baghdad and Armenia and died around 910 CE. “De differentia” was translated from Arabic into Latin in the 12^th century, in Spain. I worked on the Latin version, establishing the text and classifying the 150 or so surviving manuscripts, as well as discussing the work itself and its author.

I took a leave of absence from graduate school to earn money to go abroad and worked in a law office full time for a year and a half, until the fall of 1978. I had passed the German reading test for the graduate program but had forgotten just about every word of German, so it made sense to spend my time in Germany. A colleague suggested that I live in Muenster (in the north), which has a fine university and, he said, not too many English speakers to distract me from speaking German. This turned out to be true. I was permitted to enroll in the university and I took its intensive German course for foreign students, in which I was the only English speaker. After five months I was pretty fluent and could read what I needed to read. It seemed like magic to be speaking German, as I had never been able to speak any foreign language in my high school and college courses. I had a few contacts at the university through professors at home and one of these arranged for me a student job that allowed me to stay another year in Muenster. I worked in the library of the university’s Institute for the Theory and History of Medicine and made some good friends and enduring professional contacts. I enjoyed very much going around to professional meetings in Germany with them that year.

It was right after returning from Germany at the end of 1980 that I met my husband, Mordechai Friedlander, an Israeli, through friends living in my apartment building on 102^nd Street and Broadway. He was getting his masters in electrical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic (now part of NYU) and had a job in the defense industry at what was then Bendix Corp. in Teterboro, New Jersey. We lived in Palisades Park, New Jersey for a couple of years, got married in December, 1983 and a year later we bought our house in Rockland County, New York. I finished my degree in 1985, and because we needed the money, I worked in the NYC law firm I am working in now full time for a while, then part time, for years, which left me some time for research and writing. I had taught history as an adjunct soon after returning from Germany and had little desire to teach again, particularly if it meant moving away from New York. I wanted to stay in one place, have a family and have my office and my books.

We have two daughters, both adopted. Rachel, our older daughter, now twenty-one, was born in Olathe, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. Driving to Kansas City to pick her up in 1990 was one of the big romantic adventures of our life. Our other daughter, Nely (Cornelia) was a Chinese orphan, and flying to Nanjing to pick her up was equally exciting. That was in 1995 (she was fourteen months old), and she is now seventeen. Nely turned out to be autistic. She is now in high school and doing well in a special ed program. She is a very good kid and easy to live with, but unlikely to be able to live on her own. When Rachel was three, we found a synagogue (Conservative) and I converted to Judaism, in 2000.

Rachel’s boyfriend, Andrew Benner, moved in with us three years ago, and his sister, Taylor, who is now sixteen, also moved in shortly after, so that for the last three years the house has been fully occupied. Last spring Rachel and Andrew became engaged and they told us they wanted to live with us and eventually take care of us in our old age, and take care of Nely, and we thought this a good idea. We had the wedding a month ago, on May 6. We have had to add to the house, and this project is nearly complete. Last year, in July and then in December, I had total hip replacements, and spent my five weeks’ recuperation looking on while Mordechai drew up our plans during the summer and watching the work go forward during December and January. I am feeling very well after my surgeries, and hope to be able to work for several more years, part time, if possible. Over the years I’ve published articles and attended professional meetings but, working full time since 2003, I have been able to do very little. I am also finally ready for grandchildren, when the time comes.

Judy’s Update (2021)

I just looked at my bio from the 50th reunion, and have a few updates:

I retired at the beginning of 2017 and at the end of 2019 we moved to Heritage Village, in Southbury, CT. We live near my sister, Nancy (Staples '54), and like it very much here. The children are still living in NY, Rachel with her family in Suffern, and Nely in a group home in New City, which she loves. Rachel and Andrew have two little girls, Hailey (8) and Addison (6), both wonderful in every way.