Judith Kramer Greene

Judith (Judy) Kramer Greene, passed away on July 27 in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was born on August 14, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois, to Samuel Kramer and Milly Kramer (nee Tokarsky). When she was three years old, her family moved to Philadelphia, which became a city she loved. She attended Philadelphia High School for Girls, also known as Girls High, graduating in 1953. She then attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, for two years and then transferred to Barnard College in New York City where she graduated in 1957 with a degree in French.

In the fall of 1958, she started graduate school in the French program at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. There, she met Robert (Bob) Greene, the love of her life and the man she would be married to for nearly 60 years. Their first date was going to see a movie - Ingmar Bergman’s the Seventh Seal - in February 1959. Going to the movies together became one of their favorite activities. They were married at Philadelphia City Hall on September 4, 1959. They deeply enjoyed their graduate school years and made dear, lifelong friends at Penn.

Judy completed a Master’s degree in French in 1961. Soon after graduation, she and Bob went to Paris for his Fulbright fellowship from 1961-1962. She attended classes at the Sorbonne, and they went to movies frequently. This was their first of a dozen stays in Paris over the next forty years, a city that meant a great deal to them and was home to some of their best memories.

After moving to Berkeley, California, in 1963, where Bob got a position teaching French at University of California at Berkeley, Judy earned her Master’s in Library Science degree from Berkeley from 1966-1968.

In 1969, they moved to Iowa City, Iowa, when Bob was hired into the French Department at the University of Iowa. There, Judy ran the library of the University of Iowa’s Graduate School of Health and Hospital Administration, a new library at the university that she organized from the ground up. Later in Iowa City, she worked as an editorial assistant at Philological Quarterly, a journal put out by the University of Iowa’s English Department from 1972-1974. In 1974, when Bob was offered a professor position at the State University of New York at Albany, the family moved to Delmar, New York, just outside of Albany.

For the rest of her working career, from 1974 – 1999, Judy was the in-house Editor at Forest Press, the unique publisher of the Dewey Decimal Classification system. The Dewey Decimal Classification system is used by most public libraries and public schools in the United States and is also used in over 100 countries throughout the world to provide a predictable and organized method of presenting printed works, making scholastic research more efficient and reading more enjoyable. She found the job challenging and rewarding and was loved by her colleagues.

In 2005, Judy and Bob moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, to be closer to their family and grandchildren, Justin and Emily. Judy loved being “Nana” to them and her other grandchild Alexander, with one of her favorite activities to play on the floor with them when they were little. Additionally, she combined her love for her grandchildren with her love of movies, and would watch any movie with them they requested, including those she would usually never watch (i.e. zombie movies).

She and Bob loved their house in Worcester and enjoyed retirement there, being grandparents, seeing family and friends, reading copiously, and continuing their passion for watching movies. Mostly, they loved each other and being together. When Bob died in 2019, Judy was devastated but continued on and continued being a great mom and Nana.

Judy was an amazing woman, kind and decent, and a fierce believer in helping and protecting those in need. She was loved dearly by all her family. She was lively, fun, intelligent, and deeply interested in the lives of her family members and friends. She was a proud liberal who watched the news daily and read three newspapers a day but could also get along very well with people who had different views.

She is predeceased by her husband, Robert Greene, and her dear brother, Daniel Kramer. She is survived by her daughter, Rachel Baldino, and son, Sean Greene; her beloved grandchildren, Justin Baldino, Emily Baldino, and Alexander Prosser-Greene; her son-in-law, Michael Baldino, and her daughter-in-law, Sarah Prosser; her sisters-in-law, Chenda Kramer, Nancy Souther, Marjorie Greene, and Darcy Greene; her brother-in-law, Jim Greene, and nine nieces and nephews – Tamsyn, Bruce, Elspeth, Catherine, Carolyn, Christina, Moira, Michael, and Matthew – and their families.

We would like to thank Notre Dame Health Care in Worcester, Massachusetts, for taking such good care of our mom. In lieu of flowers, please consider giving a donation to Notre Dame Health Care.