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Judith Leonora (Skaret) Jensen
January 8, 1913 - March 27, 2001

On January 8, 1913, Judy Jensen was born to Ole and Hanna Skaret. Her parents both came from Norway to North Dakota as young adults and that’s where they fell in love and got married. After their first child was born they had moved to Saskatchewan, Canada, and that’s where Judy was born. According to her birth certificate, she was the 914^th child born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and she was named Judith Leonora Skaret, Ole and Hanna’s first daughter and the second of seven children.

By the end of 1916 the family had moved back to the United States - to Wolf Point, Montana. Perhaps the weather was too bad in Canada? They possibly moved in a covered wagon, or perhaps a truck - Judy remembered laying in the back and seeing canvas flapping in the wind. The family lived several different places in Montana as Ole worked at various jobs, one of which was running a general store on a Sioux Indian Reservation, right off the Missouri River. Judy became a citizen of the United States on her father’s naturalization papers.

Judy started 7^th grade in Grand Forks, ND. She went to the Lutheran Bible School for high school (this is when it was still in Grand Forks). She was saved at the age of 13, through an evangelist, while attending the mission meetings at the Bible school, conducted between Christmas and New Year’s. The whole family went to the mission meetings every year and church was a very big part of family life. Judy graduated from the Bible school in 1932.

Judy’s sister Aggie wanted to go to New York, but their father wouldn’t let her go unless Judy went with her. So Judy and Aggie went to New York City in April of 1934. They stayed in a house with one of the seminary students and his wife, and her brother Ole Kittelson, while they looked for jobs. Not too long after this the Skarets had moved to Brooklyn also. The family began attending the Evangelical Free Church sometime in 1935 or early 1936, and this is where the Jensen family attended, so eventually Judy Skaret met Stanley Jensen.

Judy and her sisters were friendly with a girl named Violet, who invited Judy and Myrt to a wedding shower for Ruth Nelson, who was going to marry Connie Jensen. It was early spring. The young men were going to prepare “the eats” for after the shower. Stanley Jensen (wearing a knitted cap) stuck his head in the door to announce the food, and that is the first time Judy set eyes on him. At the coffee social after the ladies’ shower, Stanley was the MC - calling on people to make a toast to the bridal pair. Myrt decided she was getting out of there, but he had already spotted Judy as the prettiest girl in the room and called on her to make a toast, even though she didn’t really know the bride or groom! The next incident in their relationship occurred at the Sunday School picnic in Van Cortlandt Park - Stanley asked Judy out on a date. Their parents knew each other, so it was okay. They dated for three months, and saw each other at some point every day. After the third date he asked her to marry him. His mother objected - she said he’d never settle down. Her family was happy about the match, but didn’t want to have a wedding if his family wouldn’t come.

So Stanley and Judy went to City Hall to get a license - and she paid the $2.00 for it. Afterwards they went to lunch at Child’s Restaurant (the original purveyors of English muffins). On 9/29/1936, Judy and Stanley went to Pastor Thiele’s house in the Bronx, along with her brother and his girlfriend, and that’s where they got married. The bride wore her turquoise graduation gown for her wedding. The Skarets had a cake and coffee party for the newlyweds.

They lived in the bride’s room for several months, until their first son, Bob, was born, in 1937. They then moved to a small apartment, that Judy remembered as being roach infested, so they moved someplace else fairly quickly. On the day their daughter Dorothy was born, in 1938, they moved again, to 190^th Street - just 40 feet from where Stanley was born. They moved to Brooklyn in 1940, where Stanley worked in the shipyards. Their third child, Richard, was born in 1945.

The family moved to East Hartland, CT in 1947. Just about all of Judy’s family was already there. Their last child, Paul, was born in Connecticut in 1949. Judy checked herself out of the hospital the day after Paul’s birth, figuring she’d get better care at home - her mother-in-law, a practical nurse, was there waiting to take care of her. The family moved to Long Island in 1950. The senior Jensens had summer property in Smithtown that they sold to Stanley and Judy - there was a bungalow that Stanley had started to winterize - no indoor plumbing, heated by a pot-belly stove. They had raised the roof and were building bedrooms. Then - the Fire. It was January 1952. It had snowed and the kids were all home. Little Paul threw a dustrag in the oil burner and the flare up set the sheer curtains on the door on fire. Bob tried to put the fire out, but couldn’t. Dorothy, barefoot, ran across to get help. A utility man on a phone pole saw her and put the call in to the fire department. Stanley was called from work - he rushed home and ran upstairs to look under the beds for Paul, who hid there when he did something wrong, but the family was at the neighbors. The local bank gave them a loan, and the lumber company gave them credit also, to rebuild. So they tore the remains down and started from scratch - that was 64 South Avenue. A group from The Mission Church in Paramus, NJ came out and raised the frame in one weekend. Clothes and blankets were collected through the schools. They stayed with Aunt Clara (Stanley’s mother’s cousin) while the building went on. This is the home where the children grew to adulthood, and this is where Stanley really got into the food service industry.  In 1957 he began working as food service manager at The King’s College in Briarcliff Manor, NY and commuted from Smithtown until 1969.  During those years both Judy and Stanley became “parents away from home” for many of the students, who have kept in touch through the years.

Judy and Stanley moved to Schroon Lake, NY in 1970, where Stanley worked first for Word of Life, and then eventually retired from teaching at the Adirondack Community College. In 1988 they moved to Hendersonville, TN, where Stanley was associated with Opryland and the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the American Culinary Federation. In September of 1999, Stanley and Judy moved back to Long Island.

Besides her enjoyment of her husband, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Judy loved to read, play Scrabble, do crossword puzzles. She always had a glass of water on the table beside her and a Kleenex up her sleeve, and willingly shared her seat with any of the kids.