I met Judy Spevack in 2014, when she and Gil offered to let me use their telephone. I was staying at a friend’s home outside Albany while researching a book at SUNY Albany, and while there, I got a request to do a live radio interview. My friend’s home had no landline, and radio call-ins never sound good on mobile phones. So I put out a request on Facebook for a landline in or near Albany. Jenna introduced me to her parents, who volunteered theirs. “They’re actors,” she warned me. “Don’t let them take over the show.”
But Judy and Gil had no intention of taking over the show; instead, they made me feel right at home. When I arrived at the Spevack’s home in Delmar, there was a tray of cheese and crackers set out, and a bottle of wine open. A room had been prepared for me to use the phone. After I did the interview, Judy insisted I stay for dinner. She was cooking a chicken. We ate and then sat and chatted about everything: books, politics, acting, writing, birds, lives. I hadn’t realized how lonely and isolated I had been feeling, living alone in a strange house, spending every day in the archive, eating dinner by myself at the bar of Cafe Capriccio. Judy fed me, befriended me, and made me feel a lot less lonely, all without knowing one thing about me beyond my being a friend of her daughter.
After that, Judy would drop me an email when she read something of mine in Nature Conservancy Magazine, which she read religiously. We exchanged photos of flowers and birds. Whenever I saw her, I felt like I was seeing an old and dear friend. Her face was always lit up with delight, and her mind was always curious. She was a pleasure to know and to talk to. But I always remained grateful for that time when she made me feel like I was among friends with folks I barely knew, and right at home in a strange town.