Foot, Judith

Daughter of the first headmaster

Date of Death: 24/01/2012

From The Gazette 55.

Judith Goodman née Foot - 17 September 1939 - 24 January 2012.

Judith was born in India in 1939, where her father was the headmaster of the Doon School. She lived there for the first six years of her life in a colonial home with lots of servants, an Anglo-Indian nanny, sunbathing naked every day for a set time in the garden, sleeping on the veranda, and always an elephant for a birthday party.

At the end of the war she came to England and was sent to boarding school while her father continued to work in India. When he was appointed headmaster of Ottershaw School she then left her boarding school, lived at Ottershaw and went
to a day school until she was 13, when again she went to a boarding school, Cranbourne Chase. From school she got a place at St Thomas’s Hospital to train as a doctor. However, she found this very hard going and changed course to train as a speech therapist, which became her career. After qualifying as a speech and language therapist, Judith took up a post first in Oxford and then in Plymouth, where she set up and ran “the Speakeasy Club”, a highly successful group for stroke  sufferers.

When she decided to take a year out she went to Malaysia with VSO, handing out balloons to children whenever she met them on her adventures. On her return to the UK, she took up a post in Warwick as part of the team of speech therapists working in the Child Development Centre. She was a skilful and sensitive therapist with an endless supply of love and empathy for the children and their parents, inventing games and activities full of fun and colour and imagination. When she retired, she continued to help support disadvantaged youngsters through the Friendship Project and also worked with adults with learning difficulties in Leamington Spa.

She brought colour, enthusiasm and creativity to all she did. None of us who ever attended any of her parties or picnics will ever forget them, whether it was punting down the Isis, roller-blading at the Warwick Arts Centre, ice-skating in Coventry or playing Murder in the Dark at New Year. Her picnics were works of art, and catered for all tastes, beautifully and caringly prepared and eaten nearly anywhere – in parks, on hill tops, in woods or in her lovely garden. She was a party-and picnic-giver par excellence!

Although not highly musical herself, Judith loved music and regularly attended concerts. With her eclectic taste, she was as happy listening to jazz as to the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Meanwhile, she loved the theatre and was generous in sharing that love with others – pantomimes for great-nieces and great-nephews, the Royal Shakespeare Company for their parents and the Loft for friends. She also read widely and deeply – especially poetry, which spoke to her magination.  In addition, she was a talented artist and sculptor in her own right, and her pencil sketches of people captured the very essence of the person she was drawing. Her hand-made cards were things of delight and wonder! She was a free spirit and loved travelling by herself. For many years she had a mini-van fitted out with the essentials (i.e. a tiny cooker and a sleeping bag) and travelled all over the UK, taking in the Edinburgh Festival, sometimes staying in Youth Hostels or visiting
family and friends en route.

We were all incredibly happy when, after a dramatic relationship with her first husband, she met John Roberts; they were together for twenty years living in Cliffe Way, sharing a life and a relationship which encompassed many mutual  interests. Their lovely peaceful garden with its plants for birds, bees and butterflies, their pond full of newts and frogs, John’s vegetable garden and Judith’s scented shrubs and flowers – everything reflected their common love of nature, and their care and concern for a more sustainable environment. Their own lives were simple and careful, but with wonderful holidays together walking or cycling in the Lake District or Yorkshire Dales, or in Wales, following many of John’s own routes.

Judith remained to the end one of the fittest seventy-two-year-olds most of us will ever meet – as anyone will know who tried to keep up when walking with her! Judith was an exceptional person with exceptional gifts. She has touched the lives of all of us, and taught many of us the true meaning of loving friendship and generosity. She was the most amazing sister and sister-in-law, aunt and great-aunt, and all her nieces and nephews, great- nieces, great-nephews and the vast network of extended families she loved will miss but never forget her. She brought fun and laughter, colour and creativity to whoever she was with and whatever she was doing.

We will miss her so very much.
George Foot