Judith Morris - Obituary

he Orioles baseball season ended September 27, 2026. With their elimination from a chance at the playoffs and tech challenges hindering her ability to regularly watch the Ravens, our mom Judy let her guard down and passed peacefully after a short illness on October 5, 2026. Judy/Mom/Rev. Judy/Jude/Nana was born April 22, 1947 to Betty and John Morris. She was the youngest of four girls born in 6 years, the last attempt at a boy, and despite her sister Jean’s best efforts at teaching her to throw a baseball (apparently with some permanent damage inflicted on her elbow in the process, oops), not overly athletic. Musical theater and performance were her jam, and she figured out how to knit those skills together throughout her life. After a successful career as a journalist that earned her a Pulitzer nomination, she followed her husband out to the Left Coast and settled in Berkeley, California. She fought for social justice: El Salvadoran refugees and migrant workers in the 1980s, food banks and shelters for the unhoused throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and always for the poor, disenfranchised, and systemically oppressed. Her children, Jeanne and John, were her favorite props in the early years. While they sometimes chafed at it (Did Jeanne really have to play “Golde” from Fiddler on the Roof in the church lip sync contest? Was it appropriate for John, a non-Jewish person, to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah?), Judy's values and her ability to connect with people are her greatest legacy to them. She always stopped to know the individuals others might ignore, inviting them into her house for a bath, washing their clothes or giving them a ride, and always talking with them, offering them the worth and dignity that she believed everyone deserves. She credited her older sister Sue for teaching her from the very beginning how to always hold a generous heart. For her second career, she earned her Masters in Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry, working with some of the theological greats of the day. She went on to be the founding minister of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Sacramento, serving there 9 years before heading into a series of interim ministries with her loyal German Shepherd Samwise, in Florida, Virginia, and Texas. Each Spring, the Sunday before opening day of baseball season, she would preach “baseball theology,” annually crafting an entirely new service around the morality, spirituality, ethics, and love embedded in baseball. These efforts are immortalized in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, where one of her sermons is installed. Along the way she loved and lost and loved again and lost again. Our mom was an eternal optimist and a constant flirt– she had a wicked sense of humor and loved to say the thing that would shock the most. She toned it down in recent years, or perhaps what was shocking in the 1980s became less shocking by today’s standards. Either way, until her final days she was the consummate storyteller, regaling her family with tales from her apartment building, Victoria Park, which she named the “Victoria Park Secrets.” She built a deep community there with her beloved Westie, Sally Eleanor, named for her oldest sister, and lived her final years surrounded by love, laughter, and sisterhood. Her final illness burned hot and fast, much like her. Before slipping into a coma, all she wanted was a cold beer, and her final meal at home was a glass of sauvignon blanc and half a wheel of brie cheese. She would always show up for a good steak with shrimp or a sausage and mushroom pizza. She loved playing games her whole life, and her kids grew up hearing indignant stories of Great Grandma Ruby, who would cheat her own grandchildren at cards! Imagine our surprise when Nana started flexibly interpreting the rules of every game, and somehow managed to win every time. Apparently the apple did not fall far from the tree. She moved out East 15 years ago, following the allure of kids and grandkids. She started in southeast Washington, DC and when the family moved to Maryland, she followed, moving into Victoria Park, a senior apartment building up the street from Jeanne. Though she had initially resisted the idea of living in a community of seniors, because she loved being around children, she found her tribe there. She was the President of the Tenants Association, coordinated the free food delivery for the seniors living there, and was an active planner or participant in Rummikub, Mah-Jong, the bookclub, Bingo, and virtually any other activity happening. Judy was a “yes and” kind of person– always down for an adventure or a creative undertaking. One time, when John and Jeanne were 8 and 11, she let them pound about 100 nails into the garage to string Christmas lights. Surely there was a better way, but she wanted to see how it would turn out. Another time she let them adopt two kittens, and promptly bought leashes for them so they could “explore the outside.” The cats were delighted, as one might anticipate, by the kids merrily dragging them around the neighborhood. She took a hamster on a road trip to someone else's Thanksgiving, because the kids asked, and adopted two dogs from a friend who needed help. She was always late, refused to let her kids turn on “find my” on her phone to keep tabs on her, because “I don’t want you to know if I’m at the bar!” and could get lost driving down a straight road, as evidenced by an aborted effort to visit John at work that took her through Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC. In her final years, she did know the route to her grandkids, and would show up at the house with sweet treats for them, embarrassing t-shirts that they would never wear, or so she could tag along to a soccer game, a horse show, or a swim meet. She preached what would be her final sermon in July of this year at her church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis. It was entitled, “The Irreligious and Their Love of God,” and it wove three threads: 1) the story of her days as a hospital chaplain helping people come to grips with their own mortality, 2) the teachings of James Luther Adams, a contemporary Unitarian Universalist theologian, who wrote extensively about being human and how the love of God fits into it, and 3) her own religious understanding of the meaning of life and the place of God in it. She closed her sermon by writing: “Some people live with the comfort of knowing that God is their answer. I, who once called myself an atheist but no longer can, believe that the word God is the Ever Elusive Question. Each day I awaken and choose to live, some larger mystery that I am free to call god– liberated boldly from the box of my narrow childhood definition– is the answer. My answer to the meaning of human existence. My answer to whether there is something more sacred than I am. Because the answer is clear: Life Itself is most sacred. All kinds of life. And for me, at least for today, at least in this moment, that is enough. Blessed Be. Amen.” She is survived by her children John Bayer and Jeanne (Christian) Contardo; her three grandchildren Audrey, Charlotte, and Elliott; and her nieces and nephews, Connie (Glenn) Fontaine, Larry (Shannon) Coomes, and John Coomes. She is preceded in death by her parents, John and Betty Morris; her stepmother, Lois Morris, who raised her from the age of 14; and her three sisters, Sally, Sue, and Jean. A celebration of life will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 3, from 2:30-4:30 in Edgewater, Maryland. Please RSVP here. In lieu of flowers, we ask that the next time someone asks you for help, you think “WWJD?” (“What would Jude do?”) and you offer assistance without judgment or expectation of return. Over and over again, she provided meals, a handful of dollars, a blanket or a coat from the car, or whatever else she could provide, even when she didn’t have much herself. Be generous. Be like Jude. Please leave a condolence for the family by signing the guestbook at the Memories tab located on the left side of this page.