Judith Ann "Judy" Flynn, a faithful servant of our Lord, Jesus Christ, died in peace on the afternoon of Monday, May 18, 2020.  She was 68 years old.  The family plans to hold a private viewing and funeral Mass at Saint Theresa Catholic Church, Ashburn, Virginia, on May 26.  She will subsequently be enurned at the Chestnut Grove Cemetery in Herndon, Virginia.  When coronavirus restrictions have been sufficiently eased, the family will plan a broader event to remember Judy's life and work.

Judy lived her full life with two principal motivations: to nurture her natural love for her fellows, and to explore all of the gifts in this world that the Lord has placed within and around us.

Prolific curiosity filled her.  Her years of education were replete with challenge and fulfillment.  She graduated from the prestigious Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1969.  She studied architecture, design, and geography at the University of Cincinnati, earning a bachelor's degree.  She then entered Indiana University, Bloomington, for graduate studies in geography and was awarded her master's degree.  She continued her graduate studies at Indiana, spending a summer session at Yale to study the Czech language and culture.  In the 1979-1980 academic year, she was a scholar in residence at Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia).  Her specialized area of research in Prague was demographic profiles and patterns of commuter migration in Soviet-era cities.  Her work at Charles University was sponsored and funded by IREX, the International Research and Exchanges Board.

Judy began her professional career in 1982 as a geographic analyst at the United States Defense Mapping Agency, with principal responsibility for Soviet-bloc place-name studies, and investigation into the evolving development of international and administrative boundaries in Eastern Europe.  She left the Defense Mapping Agency to continue her work in geography at the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress.

She left Federal service in1989 to pursue another passion:  teaching.  She acquired Commonwealth of Virginia secondary school teaching certification through George Mason University.  In the 1990s she worked as an Earth Science teacher with the Fairfax County Public School System, principally at Lake Braddock High School.

Judy's curiosity struck again, this time to delve into her interest in landscape and topography.  She earned certificates in horticulture and landscape design from Northern Virginia Community College, and subsequently spent many years helping and advising friends, family, and neighbors in embracing their local landscape in spaces as small as a container garden, or as large as one-acre yards.  She keenly investigated local indigenous plant species of particular landscape design interest, and how to keep such indigenous species thriving.

Throughout her life, she was an avid and accomplished pianist (when she had a piano at hand!), with Chopin, Schubert, and Beethoven her favorites.  Her work in small paintings of folk art, in an American primitivist tradition, displayed her unique visual  appreciation of her fellows and their places in the landscape.

She had a lifelong love of animals, dogs in particular.  The bonding of a dog with a human group fascinated her.  She spent a number of years as a volunteer with A Forever-Home Rescue Foundation, working primarily as an evaluator of prospective dog adopters.  Her responsibility was to ensure the dog would be entering a safe and welcoming household, but especially to help guide the adopting family through the process of bringing into their home a new family member, of a slightly different species.

Judy is survived by her loving husband, Randy.

No flowers, please!  If you would like to honor Judy's life and work, please consider a contribution to A Forever-Home Rescue Foundation, Chantilly, Virginia, https://www.aforeverhome.org/ , info@aforeverhome.org .