SPRINGFIELD, Vt. – Judith Edwards, who lived in Springfield, Vt., until 2021, died recently at her residence in Brattleboro.
Since moving to Springfield in 2000, Judy has been active in many organizations in the town. She was a school board member and then director, was elected to the board of civil authority, and ran the series “All About People” on SAPA TV. During that period, she also performed as a singer with the Ascutney Trio, and continued her large psychotherapy practice, with offices in downtown Springfield for many years.
Judy grew up in Glendale and La Canada, Calif. After a year at the University of California at Berkeley, she headed east to pursue a career in opera and theater. She studied voice privately, and graduated from The Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater in New York. She met and married music critic Conrad Osborne while performing in Lake George, N.Y., and while raising their three children she directed a children’s theater school and group called Imagination, where very young children, including her own, improvised plays that Judy then scripted and directed.
Judy returned to school at City College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English (magna cum laude) and a master’s degree in creative writing, before moving in 1972 to Cambridge, Vt. Judy and her children began a whole new lifestyle on a farm while Judy also taught at Johnson State College and ran the Imagination Players, a troupe of professional actors performing plays and musicals that Judy wrote, supported by the Vermont Council on the Arts. She reviewed plays and musical performances for Vermont newspapers and Musical America Magazine, and wrote several features for Vermont Life. She then moved on to a position teaching theater at Florida International University in Miami, where she also wrote and performed her first one-woman show, “The Women of Ibsen and Strindberg.” This was followed by another stint in the New York area, teaching at The New York School of Musical Theater, Hofstra University, and the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y., along with wide touring for additional one-woman shows.
At age 50, with all children grown up and grandchildren on the horizon, Judy decided to go back to school for her “retirement career.” She earned an MSW from the Hunter School of Social Work in Manhattan, and began a thriving therapy practice in New York, before moving back to Vermont in 2000 and opening a practice in Springfield. She also continued her work as a teacher in Vermont, with seven courses at Usher/Dartmouth on literature and history, presenting material that she also published in middle school books on her two great historical passions – The Lewis and Clark Trail and the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Judy is survived by her children Christopher Osborne (Marcia), Lauren Osborne (Robert Lieberman), and Melissa Osborne; and by grandchildren Carolyn and Clifford Osborne, Benjamin, Martha, and Aaron Lieberman, William Varble, and Thomas Gressier. No funeral service will be held, but a local memorial service will be held in the spring, date and time to be announced.