Judith L. Pool

NORTHAMPTON – Judith Lynn Pool, 89, died February 4, 2024, in Baystate Hospital after
suffering a ruptured brain aneurysm. Born May 2, 1934, in Memphis, Tennessee, she was the daughter of the late Lester T. and Lou Ola (Hall) Billings.
Judith grew up in Wynne, Arkansas. After graduating from Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans in 1956, she went to France for 7 years, teaching English and traveling extensively. From one friend describing her adventures, “At 25, alone…taking the Trans-Siberian train across Asia, and taking a ship to Japan. No name of the streets, no GPS, no Japanese…. Still she was able to find her friends there.” Back in the States she was a popular French teacher at Frontier Regional High School in South Deerfield, where she taught for 25 years. During that period she met her partner, Jeanne Adele Powell, who taught Biology at Smith College, and they travelled throughout the world making lifelong friends both here and abroad. Jeanne died in 2002.
Throughout her life Judith had a passion for both teaching and learning. Among her many interests were foreign languages. In her early years at Frontier she spent several summers studying German at Middlebury College in Vermont. For many years after her retirement from high school teaching, on Friday afternoons, she gathered around her a small group of other retirees who wanted to keep learning French. She was an inspiration to all the members of that group, entertaining them with stories, encouraging them in speaking French, and discussing or bemoaning the state of the world, and always curious, broad minded and open hearted. Members of the group considered those afternoons a treasured gift. In her eighties she and a few others traveled every week to UMass in Amherst for tutoring in Italian. Also in her eighties Judith took up the study of Russian. Every Wednesday she would spend 2 hours with a Russian teacher in Amherst, have lunch, and then go to UMass for her Italian lesson. She also had a passion for the arts, especially opera, first going to live performances in NYC and in later years viewing them on the screen at the Cinemark theaters in Hadley.
Judith suffered from inherited neuropathy and lost feeling in her feet, legs, and hands. She never complained or let it stop her from doing the things she loved. She was a unique, caring, and courageous woman whom her friends and students loved as family. Daughter, sister, life partner, teacher, incredible friend, world traveler, and language enthusiast, she was a life force to those lucky enough to be her friend. Her positive outlook on life was contagious and will live on in the people that surrounded her.
Judith was predeceased by her parents and her younger brother, James Thomas Billings, and his two daughters, Kelly Taylor and Lynn Billings. She is survived by her sister-in-law, Pam Bradley Billings, of Wynne, Arkansas, Pam’s children, Brad Johnson, Sanders Johnson, Paul Johnson, Russell Johnson, Geri Flores, and her brother James’s three grandchildren Ryan Jones, Riley Jones, and Connor Wilson.
Memorial gifts may be made to Safe Passage, 76 Carlon Drive, Northampton, MA 01060. Ahearn Funeral Home of Northampton is in charge of arrangements.