Judith B. Liefeld

Judith Brown Liefeld - 1939-2018

Judy Brown passed away in Brandywine Hospital, Coatesville, PA on Tuesday, April 17, 2018 from complications from surgery for a broken hip from a fall caused by Parkinson's Disease. She was 79 years old. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Audubon, New Jersey in her family of father and mother, Charles Pitman Brown, Jr. and Margaret Henry Brown and her younger brother, David Craig Brown. Judy graduated from Audubon High School in 1956 and entered the University of Delaware, where she met her future husband, Walter L. Liefeld during their Junior year. They graduated in the Class of 1960 and were married on August 27, 1960.

Judy and Walt returned from their honeymoon to The Pennington School in Pennington, New Jersey, where Walt had joined the faculty as school librarian and Judy worked as a secretary in the Academic Dean's office. They lived in an apartment on a dorm where they were house parents of a bunch of senior boys. Over the next eleven years at Pennington, as their family grew and Walt worked on his Master's degree, they would live in three more faculty apartments or houses. Their daughter Susan was born in 1962 and their twin sons, Andrew and Peter in 1965. In 1966 they bought their first VW Camper and began summer family camping and canoeing trips, an activity they would continue for the rest of their lives.

In 1972 Judy moved with her family to St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware where Walt became the librarian and Judy the librarian of The Broadmeadow School, a small country day school in town that their three kids attended until they entered St. Andrew's. When Broadmeadow closed in the 1980's, Judy became the parish secretary at their church, St. Anne's Episcopal in Middletown. They lived on campus in a home that had a girl's dorm attached to it so that they became house parents for a group of girls. When their twins graduated in 1983 Judy and Walt were able to move into their dream home, an off-campus cabin in the woods at the end of Noxontown Pond. They all have wonderful memories of that home on Hickory Point.

Judy and Walt retired from their jobs in 1997, bought a Winnebago motor home, sold all their furnishing , and lived as full-time RVers for the next seventeen years, traveled to all 49 states and many Canadian provinces on the North American continent, and visited most of the U.S. National Parks. They spent every winter on an RV site they owned on the Gulf coast of Alabama, the spring and summer months volunteering with the U.S Forest Service in North Carolina or with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on the coast of Oregon. Every fall was spent as campground hosts at Killen's Pond State Park in Delaware and with frequent visits to their kids' homes in California, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

In 2014 they felt the need of give up the RVing and settle near family and moved into their apartment at Millview Apartment Homes in Coatesville, PA. Judy enjoyed music and gardening. She minored in music in college, sang in church choirs wherever she lived and listened to classical music almost every day on the radio or in recordings. She had a large garden at Hickory Point and has always had a variety of house plants. They lived on the dashboard of the motor home when it was parked and in the bathtub when it was moving. She has a Christmas cactus that dates back to the 1960's.

Judith Liefeld is survived by her brother, David C. Brown and his wife Leslie of Audubon, NJ; by their daughter and Judith's niece, C.J. Sharpless, her husband Randy and their sons Avery, Ryan and Troy of Cochranville, PA; by her daughter Susan Liefeld-Tresselt, her husband Tony and granddaughter Margaret of Pomeroy, PA; by her son Andrew Liefeld, his wife Julie and grandchildren Amanda, Aidan, his wife Bethany, and Joshua of Old Lyme, CT; by her son Peter Liefeld and his wife Jennifer of Rohnert Park, CA; and by her husband of 57 years, Walter L Liefeld of Coatesville, PA. Contact with Judy's family can be made at 1904 Saginaw Drive, Coatesville, PA 19320, at WaltLiefeld@gmail.com, or 610-384-4989.

Services for Judy Liefeld will be held on Friday, June 8, 2018. The Service of Burial of the Dead with Holy Communion will be at The Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 406 Second Ave, Parkesburg, PA 19365, at 10:30am and the Committal of her ashes in the family plot will be at Old St. Anne's Episcopal Church Cemetery, South Broad St., Middletown, DE 19709 at 3:30pm.

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